ColumnTake that obsession with food porn and sea salt and do something with it.

“I just had a Portland moment and only you will appreciate,” my friend said, calling from Tuscon in the middle of a Sunday.

“Ok, what?”

“Well, so we walked into this cute coffee shop and the first thing I thought to myself ‘I wonder where they roast their beans?'” she paused. “Who am I?”

At first thought I saw nothing wrong with this situation. Good coffee shops tend to sell good coffee, and if they’re really good, they’re probably running a coffee roasting operation in the back. Nothing weird there.

But at second thought, I realized what she meant. Most people, even those in coffee-centric cities, are probably more concerned with what coffee drink they’re going to buy than where the beans were roasted. We’re in the minority.

This call came less than six hours after brewing a morning French press on a quick one night girls’ camping trip. I had ground the beans before leaving home to ensure that we had good coffee on the trail. As we’ve already discussed, coffee is exponentially more delicious when brewed after a night in a tent.

“What kind of coffee is that?” one of my girlfriends asked.

“Water Avenue,” I responded.

“Have you tried Oblique?” she offered up

“Have you tried Extracto?” chimed in the third of our trio.

Here we were by the side of a stream in the middle of the forest discussing craft coffee roasters, and although we left it at that, I am certain that the conversation could have continued, naming off a handful of other small coffee roasting companies in the city that are neighborhood favorites and garner cult-like followings.

The rest of the world thinks Portlandia is guided by Stumptown, but the rest of us know better than to put all of our coffee desires into one basket, even when we’re not extreme coffee aficionados. Most of us just want a good, strong cup, and like being able to purchase beans that are roasted on site. When we travel it’s not surprising that we seek out the same thing.

Back to the phone call a few hours later.

“This coffee thing has gotten me thinking,” continued the friend calling from Tuscon. “I realized this weekend how many times I thought “food porn!” and it’s getting a little out of control. Am I a foodie now? I think you should write about that in your column. When did you realize that you were a foodie? What was your defining moment?”

Good question.

What is it that makes you a foodie?

Is it when you’re sitting on your couch post-run eating a semi-failed batch of No Bake Chocolate Energy Bars with Sea Salt that you made the day before because you just felt the need to tweak a recipe? Is it when your friends ask you to plan dinner? Is it when you look at your phone and realize that 75% of your photos involve food or drinks? Is it when you took your own syrup with you to a restaurant because you knew you wouldn’t be happy with what they had to offer? Is it when you’re in the backcountry drinking specialty coffee because you refuse to bring instant?

It could be all of those things, or a long list of others, but does a defining foodie moment even matter? Why is it that having an appreciation for good food is all of a sudden an indicator for something larger?

As human beings, we have a need to define ourselves. We’re born with a tribe mentality, and because food brings us together more than many other things do, if we like good food we seek out those that do the same.

But unfortunately the word “foodie” also has a negative connotation to it. It’s stuffy, implies the obsession with a certain type of menu and a little pretentious. I in fact, hate calling myself a “foodie.” “Food-obsessed,” “food crazed” or “food freak” sure, but “foodie” just has an odd ring to it.

However, we have yet to find a better word for the phenomenon and it has come to define a cultural trend and shift. A trend of people that have started thinking about food. Although we might smirk at craft coffee obsessions and the need to check out every hole-in-the-wall operation that claims to be farm-to-table, we are thinking about the value of food, the time that goes into it and the people that are behind producing it.

Or are we?

A Mother Jones article last week cited that only 13.5% of food workers earn a living wage.

Americans love to talk about food—how asparagus is best prepared, which preservatives to avoid, which types of fish are in peril, where to find the best tacos or most delectable peach pies. Most of us spend far less time contemplating the people that pick, slaughter, sort, process, and deliver the products of this 1.8 trillion dollar industry—a group of workers that makes up one-sixth of the country’s workforce.

Herein lies the problem. We are obsessed with food, talking about it, taking pictures of it, and making our own judgements on the establishments that serve it, and even so we are still disconnected from the entire process. This thing that is at the core of all of our daily routines and we still don’t really know where our food comes from, who’s producing it and how much those people are getting paid.

That is frightening.

All this talk of and obsession with food doesn’t amount to anything if it doesn’t lead to change. Be that change in public health, workers’ rights, or corporate social responsibility, there’s a lot that needs to happen. Which means that voting with your fork does make a difference. Not once or twice a week, but every single day.

Having a vested interest in food has to be more than a trend, it has to be a movement. If we’re in the position to be making smart choices about every item that we eat, we should be. That means no food from China, even when it comes from a store with a fancy name, always thinking about if we’re eating the most sustainably sourced product, even when we’re tired and lazy, and choosing brands that are committed to working directly with independent farmers, even if doing so takes a little more research.

Maybe our defining foodie moments aren’t when we realized we were food obsessed, but when we realized we were making choices that made ourselves, our communities and our planets healthier. And that is something that anyone can do.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

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A look at the people and practices behind California’s foie gras ban.

Considering the number of people who have actually eaten foie gras it’s surprising the amount of attention California’s pending ban of the sale and production of foie has generated.

Last week a group of big-name chefs made headlines by coming out against the ban. Calling themselves the Coalition for Humane and Ethical Farming Standards, the chefs traveled to Sacramento to ask lawmakers not to enact the ban, offering this charter instead. The bill, SB 1520, was passed seven years ago, with a grace period until July 2012 to allow producers to explore alternatives to the controversial practice of force-feeding.

Leaving aside the fact that their coalition name conjures up images of Astroturf why would chefs such as Thomas Keller, Charles Phan, and Michael Mina advocate in favor of a feeding practice that expands ducks’ livers to 10 times their normal size, by inducing a fatty liver disease called hepatic lipidosis (basically hepatitis). Many would say, “It’s delicious,” others would say, “it’s a culinary tradition,” and still others would say, “I don’t want the government telling me what I can cook.”

The crux of the chefs’ argument is that they only source from humane suppliers and a ban would put these good producers out of business, leading to a black market. Most of these chefs source from the one foie gras producer in California, Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras.

The two other producers in the U.S. are in New York, and both use methods that chefs who serve foie would describe as humane. After a visit to one of these farms, Sarah DiGregorio concluded in The Village Voice, “The fact that some industrial farms elsewhere are making foie gras in inhumane ways doesn’t mean that all foie gras production is inhumane.”

According the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) the humane standards put forth in the charter by the Coalition for Humane and Ethical Farming Standards basically seek to continue the practices that are already in place in virtually all U.S. operations, such as regular visits by animal health care professionals, USDA inspections, hand feeding, and cage-free living quarters. This chart shows side-by-side comparisons of the charter and current practices.

Regardless of feeding methods and living conditions, the question of whether or not the practice of force-feeding a duck up to three pounds of food a day is a humane practice has been the subject of much debate. Even the veterinarians can’t agree. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has considered resolutions opposing the practice on humane grounds, but has stopped short of taking a position, due to concern by food supply veterinarians that it would lead to the group having to take a position on other much more large-scale factory farming practices.

The AVMA says that empirical research regarding the health and welfare of birds during and after the feeding process is limited, but the group’s backgrounder does say: “force feeding (sic) overrides animal preference and homeostasis. Although ducks may, under some conditions, voluntarily consume large amounts of food, if force feeding (sic) is interrupted they will fast for a period of 3 days or longer, indicating that ducks have been fed past the point of satiety.”

What do chefs who aren’t a part of The Coalition have to say?

“I’ve eaten foie gras a number of times,” said Aaron French chef at the Sunny Side Cafés, in Albany and Berkeley, CA, and author of The Bay Area Homegrown Cookbook. “The last time I had it I thought, ‘I don’t really need to eat this ever again,’” adding, “It’s inherently unnatural, and I don’t believe in eating any meat that’s not raised according to the animals’ natural cycles.”

In addition to being a chef, French is also an ecologist and ornithologist. He concedes that migratory water birds do have a natural tendency to store fat, but taking it to the extreme of foie gras is “kind of silly.” He tells me there are some producers producing a foie gras-like product (faux gras) without force-feeding, but says, “It’s not really the same. It’s a choice we’re making to choose this force-fed foie gras as the best. Why can’t we as a society choose the qualities of a naturally fattened liver as superior?” He likens it to the production of feedlot beef, in which the cows are fed an unnatural diet of corn, as compared to 100% grass-fed beef, in which the cows are allowed to graze naturally. As a society, we’ve decided we prefer the taste and texture of feedlot beef, but that’s starting to change.

French thinks that, rather than a ban on current practices, which he believes will create an alternate market for the current product, we should use this opportunity for education to shift our perspective away from force-feeding and toward a more benign product that doesn’t require the practice, much like we’re starting to shift our tastes to prefer grass-fed beef.

Samin Nosrat, an Oakland-based chef and writer and founder of the pioneering Pop Up General Store echoes some of French’s thoughts.

“Foie isn’t one of my go-to ingredients,” she says, “I don’t condone force-feeding ducks or geese. On the other hand, I care about food traditions, and I feel sad whenever a family business goes away,” adding, “this could be a great opportunity to look into other ways of producing it.”

Besides the farmer in Spain known as the Duck Whisperer, made famous in this TED talk by Dan Barber, there doesn’t seem to be anyone producing a product that is truly foie gras, without the use of force-feeding.

Charlie Hallowell, owner and chef of Pizzaiolo and Boot and Shoe Service in Oakland, CA, doesn’t serve a lot of foie gras. “I serve rustic Italian food,” he says, but, “I don’t get the justification for banning. It’s misplaced. It’s a cheap and easy target for animal rights activists. We should f*cking ban McDonalds!”

Adding, “it’s a teensy market.” “We should ban corn syrup and other things that are part of a large structural apparatus…There are things in the food system that have a widespread impact on our communities and the way we live our lives and foie gras isn’t one of those things.”

Hallowell adds, “I’ve been to foie gras farms and I’m most concerned about the labor practices on these farms.” He goes on to tell me that for the really high quality livers, the same worker has to feed the duck throughout its life because ducks become stressed by new people, and stress damages the liver. The workforce on foie gras farms is mostly an immigrant workforce, and it’s not uncommon for a worker to go without a day off during the entire feeding cycle of 20-30 days. This information makes me wish the chefs’ charter had taken up humane treatment of workers.

By press time, no California legislators have offered to champion the chefs’ proposed charter and the ban is still scheduled to go into effect. The city of Chicago repealed an earlier ban in 2008. Many countries prohibit force-feeding of animals, but the only country with a large foie gras industry to ban the practice has been Israel, whose Supreme Court ruled against force-feeding in 2003. When it comes to agriculture, the impact of any action in California cannot be overstated. California’s ban on battery cages for egg-laying hens led directly to United Egg Producers pledge to work with HSUS toward enacting federal legislation banning the practice. Perhaps a ban on a food of the 1% is just the first baby step toward banning some of the large-scale factory abuses that will have a much larger impact on the health of animals and our environment.

Images: Stu Spivak, VirtualErn, and Just Chaos

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