Americans are no strangers to authentic Italian food, and Bay Area residents know it well.

In the 19th century, there were more Italian immigrants on the Pacific coast than in New England, and their influence has not waned: today, San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood is a bustling epicenter of Italian-American cuisine. But Italian and Italian-American are not synonymous, as Chef Valentina Guolo-Migotto noticed when she arrived in 2006 and founded Ca’ Momi, a restaurant and vineyard that seeks to provide authentic Italian food to the Bay Area.

Ca’ Momi is a complete food experience, encompassing a vineyard, restaurant, and casual go-to market. It describes its food as “Obsessively Authentic Italian,” something that Chef Guolo-Migotto says is often surprising to clients accustomed to Italian-American food.

“It’s challenging and at the same time extremely rewarding to both disappoint and exceed our guests’ and clients’ expectations at the same time,” she says. “Often guests walk through our door with a predetermined concept of what Italian cuisine should be, but when they don’t find the garlic bread and spaghetti and meatballs, they’ve got to take a leap of faith to trust in our heritage and commitment to the history and culinary authenticity of our home; to let go of their preconceptions and love us.”

Neither the red-sauce type of joint that most Americans think of when they evoke Italian food nor the sort of Italian-inspired product-based restaurant that seems to be so popular these days in a region where chefs are constantly renewing and revisiting recipes, Ca’ Momi is all about authentic Italian food, made with time-tested recipes.

“Everything we serve is culled from history,” says Guolo-Migotto. “It’s sometimes a hardship, but the creativity in our cuisine comes from the mission to produce our recipes with historic accuracy with the best quality ingredients we can.”

But finding the ingredients of truly authentic Italian food wasn’t as easy as it seems. When Chef Guolo-Migotto realized that she didn’t have easy access to certain key items from her native Veneto region, like delicate puntarelle chicory, Chinese dates, and different varieties of radicchio like castelfranco and Treviso, the team decided to grow them on-site.

Today, the Nicadado farm supplies about 30 to 40 percent of the produce for the restaurant and 100 percent of that of the Osteria and Enoteca.

In the winter season, this means that guests can enjoy traditional dishes like cappelletti con radicchio e zucca, a recipe that Guolo-Migotto says is “a perfect amalgamation of my favorite flavors.”

“It takes on this wonderful bitterness from the radicchio that is perfectly offset by the nutty sweetness of the butternut squash,” she says. “These two ingredients just play perfectly in the pan to create the most buttery and creamy sauce without the need of dairy to bind them.”

A heavy hand of piave, the indicative cheese of Guolo-Migotto’s region, does add a bit more richness to this dish.

Puntarelle chicory, meanwhile, is served with an anchovy vinaigrette and a nice amount of lemon.

“Think of the best aspects of the Caesar salad,” she says of this dish that flies out of the kitchen so quickly that the farm can hardly keep up with the puntarelle demand.

While the folks behind Ca’ Momi are resolute about not caving to outside influences as far as the menu is concerned, they have been inspired to create as sustainable a production as possible. While Nicadado does not yet hold an organic certification, composting is key — everything from pizza oven ash to vegetable scraps, and everything is grown as naturally as possible.

It’s clear that aspiring to serve food that is good, clean, and fair, is as important as authenticity in this restaurant, which is remaining resolutely and refreshingly grounded in tradition.

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ColumnIt’s easy to focus only on the fruits and vegetables that make their way to our plate. They are after all what we touch, smell and taste. But there’s an essential component to sustainable food that is often forgotten, perhaps because for most of us, it’s something we rarely interact with: soil.

Soil is essential. It’s full of life. There is a complex web of organisms beneath our feet that is responsible for keeping us alive. And we simply destroy it.

Conventional agriculture has certainly played a big roll in the demise of soil health. Think back to the 1930s and America’s Dust Bowl. The environmental disaster that ruined farmland, and left millions homeless (by the time it was over, 2.4 million people had left the Plains), was the result of years of unsustainable agricultural practices, farmers essentially working the soil to death. In its wake the government worked to put policies in place that would prevent such a disaster in the future, and created the Soil Erosion Service, which would later become the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

But while the Dust Bowl is a history lesson, our mismanagement of soil is an ongoing, current problem, and it is one with severe consequences. According to the Organic Consumers Association, “Without protecting and regenerating the soil on our four billion acres of cultivated farmland, 14 billion acres of pasture and rangeland, and 10 billion acres of forest land, it will be impossible to feed the world, keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, or halt the loss of biodiversity.”

Soil as it turns out, is at the root of everything, and it’s the key to a laundry list of our modern day ailments. If we respect the soil, and start to implement agricultural policies that work on regenerating the earth beneath us, instead of extracting what we need and destroying the rest, we can begin to find a sustainable path forward. And that is a path that’s not just about food.  “Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the food crisis, the health crisis, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy,” said activist and author Vandana Shiva.

Even the United Nations is calling for a radical shift in how we do agriculture. A 2013 report (titled “Wake Up Before Its Too Late”) from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development called for a “paradigm shift… from conventional, monoculture-based and high external-input-dependent industrial production towards mosaics of sustainable, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers.”

With better agricultural practices that benefit the earth — which can involve leaving land untilled, and planting cover crops to increase the amount of organic matter in soil — we can reduce or even eliminate the use for pesticides, make crops more productive, and be better able to deal with things like drought. We can literally turn back the clock on the destruction that modern agriculture has done, and farmers benefit financially in the process. “Nature can heal if we give her the chance,” Gabe Brown, a farmer in North Dakota, told the New York Times in an article earlier this year on the topic. The important thing to remember is that healing nature isn’t just good for nature, it’s good for us too.

But sustainable food and agriculture isn’t just a question of whether or not you can get heirloom tomatoes at the local farmers market in August, it’s a question of global food security and addressing an environmental crisis.

Regeneration International is a group of researchers, activists and farmers which has formed to “promote the multifunctional benefits of regenerative forms of agriculture such as agro-ecology, holistic grazing, cover cropping, permaculture, and agroforestry.” This group is working hard to challenge the agricultural status quo.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the topic of climate change. What we do in the face of crisis isn’t always an easy solution. But the point of regenerative agriculture, is that it all starts from the ground up. That if we started rethinking how we did agriculture, then we could deal with some of the serious problems that we are struggling with today. The solution is literally right under our feet.

According to the Rodale Institute, “recent data from farming systems and pasture trials around the globe show that we could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to widely available and inexpensive organic management practices, which we term ‘regenerative organic agriculture.’ These practices work to maximize carbon fixation while minimizing the loss of that carbon once returned to the soil, reversing the greenhouse effect.”

So what can you do? Start supporting and advocating for organizations that work on the topic of soil health and regenerative agriculture. Respect the soil in your own garden, learn how it works and learn how to make it as healthy as possible. Boycott agribusiness and support farmers going against the status quo.

There is a sustainable path forward, we just have to choose to walk it.

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This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Natural Resources Conservation Services

The post Care About Sustainable Food? Start Thinking About Soil: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column Want to build a more sustainable food system? Think a little less about yourself and a little more about your community. 

We live in an individualistic culture, where everything is about me, me, me and very little about us, us, us.

In the Western world, our important life questions are most often about what studies we do, which get us thinking about which job we will have, and whether or not it will be well paying enough so that we can buy a big house, and so that hopefully there will be enough for us to take fancy vacations to help us relax.

Our general cultural dialogue is very rarely about our impact on our community. Instead, it’s about what we as individuals need and want. You could look at this individualistic way of thinking as biological; we are trying to survive, and therefore, to each their own. Of course we make decisions based upon our own well-being. But there’s also the other way of looking at it, considering the necessity of more communal thinking for our success and survival; if we tribe together with those around us, we protect ourselves, better our situation.

The me is a part of the us.

We are all a part of a community, and our actions that affect the community in turn affect ourselves. When we only consider the me, we don’t consider our individual impact on the people and planet around us. We take, take and take some more, because there are no immediate consequences to pay. But someone, somewhere in the world, pays those consequences.

In food, this plays out in many ways. When people argue about the benefits of organic, it’s about whether or not organic produce is healthier for them the consumer, as opposed to healthier for the environment and the producer, whose health isn’t threatened by pesticides. When people talk about buying local, it’s often about how the purchase makes them feel good, not that it actually helps to improve the social network and economy of the community around them.

Your actions have a larger impact than the nutritional value of what’s on your plate. Fortunately, thinking about the impact of those actions is good for your health too. What’s good for the community as a whole is also good for us as individuals.

If we started putting communal benefits in front of individual, not only would we create a food system that was better for the environment and people producing the food, but we would build one that would improve our own lives as well, providing us access to healthier, more sustainable food.

When we focus on more sustainable food, we build community. And when we focus on the benefit of our community, we build more sustainable food systems. The way forward isn’t an individualistic one, it’s a communal one.

Building a more sustainable food system means more collective thinking. It requires thinking about the whole – the soil, the plant, the animals, the humans – and not just the me.

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This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Mosman Council

The post For a More Sustainable Food System, We Have to Start Thinking Communally: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

A film about entrepreneurial solutions to social issues.

The statistics surrounding the state of public health in the United States are overwhelming. Today, 72.5 million Americans are obese, resulting in $146 billion dollars per year in obesity-related costs. That number is estimated to jump to $343 billion by 2020.

This is how the documentary film Apple Pushers begins, with a strident reminder of the food and health crisis we’re currently in. We live in a country where the disparity between communities that have access to fresh food and those that don’t is shocking. In fact, 23.5 million Americans don’t have a supermarket within one mile of their home, putting these Americans in the heart of food deserts, and while convenience stores and fast food may abound, getting healthy and affordable food is difficult and inconvenient.

In response to food deserts in New York City, in 2008 the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund gave a $1.5 million grant to launch the Green Carts initiative, creating 1,000 permits for green carts, mobile food carts that sell raw fruits and vegetables. The grant funded micro-loans and technical assistance for Green Cart operators to ensure that low-income communities would have the access to healthy food they so desperately need.

The story of the Green Carts initiative and its positive effects is the subject of documentary film, Apple Pushers, screening online April 22-30 as a part of Whole Foods’ online documentary film festival Do Something Reel, featuring a variety of documentaries on food and environmental issues.

First approached by Laurie Tisch, filmmaker Mary Mazzio launched herself into telling the story of four immigrants positively impacted by the initiative, all starting their own mobile food cart businesses, and the effects that this kind of philanthropic effort can have. In the process, she was immersed in the world of food politics and the importance of access as it relates to healthier communities.

“When these low income residents can use their food stamp cards, demand skyrockets, whether it’s farmers markets or pushcarts… [it]has to be a price point that makes sense. Low income communities want access to food too,” says Mazzio.

Providing access to good food might seem like a no-brainer, but watch the film and you soon learn that getting Green Carts launched was not a path without obstacles. A contentious issue when it came to City Council, politicians were concerned about the effects on local business that such a model would have, contending that mobile food carts would pull consumers away from local establishments. In the film, we see the heated debate that ensues. “I waded through all the 100s of pages of testimony… what was really interesting was, yet another universal concept, whether you have a 2×4 cart or you’re Walmart, people go ballistic because it means change,” says Mazzio.

But the launching of a program that would support mobile food carts wasn’t just an economic question. “What did surprise me were some of the arguments, like ‘those people don’t eat fruits and vegetables.’ I think that is a misguided notion of how you look at the issue. That’s like saying ‘oh, those people don’t have checking accounts’ Well guess what, where are the banks? It’s an issue of red line food districts,” says Mazzio.

Put good food into these places and people will buy it. “Low income communities want access to food, too,” says Mazzio. (That this should even be a matter of debate says much about our current cultural climate.) When we’re talking about public health and eating habits, we have to start with infrastructure and equality.

And the stakes are high. As Mazzio points out, obesity alone “is a problem that could bankrupt our children if we don’t keep it in check. It’s going to overshadow almost every other problem we have financially. Really? This is a problem we can fix.”

And that’s where the idea of mobile markets comes into play. From mobile grocery stores in Nashville to a mobile supermarket in New Mexico to a $25,000 grant to fund a mobile farmers markets in Houston, initiatives similar to Green Carts are popping up around the country, providing a grassroots solution to an overwhelming problem. Beyond providing access to good food, as they are “rooted in micro entrepreneurship” as Mazzio says, these programs are also economically empowering.

For Mazzio, if we’re going to solve the obesity crisis we need more programs like this. Not just government subsidies, but the kind of micro loans and programs that bring long lasting returns. Ultimately, programs like Green Carts are “entrepreneurial solutions to social issues,” says Mazzio. Because when it comes to food, we all need to eat, and we all deserve the access to the food that is good for us.

“This is basic human rights. That’s kind of overstating it, but this is food justice,” says Mazzio.

“The Apple Pushers” theatrical trailer from Paul Gattuso on Vimeo.

Do Something Reel festival opens April 22, with a live screening of “The Apple Pushers,” followed by a panel discussion with the film’s writer and director, Mary Mazzio; executive producer, Laurie Tisch; and celebrity chef, food policy advocate and founder of Wholesome Wave, Michel Nischan. The event will take place at Alamo Drafthouse’s Slaughter Lane Theater in Whole Foods Market’s hometown of Austin. Additionally, theaters in Boston, Detroit, Pittsburgh and San Francisco will host simultaneous screenings and will stream the panel discussion. For more information click here. To learn more about Apple Pushers visit the film’s website. 

Image: Apple Pushers

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ColumnA book about oysters teaches the real meaning of farm-to-table.

A month ago, a good friend put a copy of Shucked into my hands and said, “You have to read this.”

I looked at the cover. A watercolor painting of an oyster and a fork paired with the title of Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm was intriguing.

“It’s about a woman food writer that decides to trade her city life for working on an oyster farm.”

While I have never expressed the specific interest in working on an oyster farm, I saw where she was coming from. Having grown up in the country, I have my personal organic farm and vineyard dreams, the kind of place where you can get your hands dirty and find a new appreciation for the food and drink that ends up in front of you every evening. A personal narrative about what farm-to-table really means was therefore right up my alley. What I didn’t realize before diving into the pages of Shucked was how much I would fall in love with oysters in the process.

Odd as it might seem to fall in love with a food via a book, author Erin Byers Murray opened up an entirely new world to me, one that involved saltwater, hard work, rain boots and oyster recipes.

A few months ago, I had scribbled in my worn Moleskine notebook that finds itself along on most food adventures, “Oysters are the new bread.” It was a comment induced by a weekend of overindulgence of seafood, but working my way through Shucked, I again realized that oysters were everywhere.

My brain full of words like bivalve and oyster farm, my eyes and ears sought out any mention of the seafood. Byers Murray’s descriptive personal narrative and informative approach to describing life at Island Creek Oysters made me feel like I too was working on an oyster farm, or at least had an intimate understanding of the industry and the food she and so many others were working hard to harvest.

Which is how I ended up at The Walrus and The Carpenter.

The oyster bar in Ballard, just north of downtown Seattle, Washington, had been recommended by two food enthusiasts: a food photographer that worked with a friend of mine, and a charismatic wine connoisseur at McCarthy & Schiering Wine Merchants, who on a chance encounter with their Saturday afternoon wine tasting, had launched into a long conversation on wine, food and beyond. “So, are you a food writer?” he asked. (Is it that obvious?) A mere nod got me a list of eight places to visit, all scribbled on the back of his business card. The Walrus and The Carpenter had a star next to it and the name of a server we were supposed to track down.

After a two hour wait, which no one at the oyster bar seemed to mind, we were seated on stools at the bar, watching as a man with a bright red beard that went all the way down to his collar line pulled oysters from various buckets full of ice and shucked quicker than I can type. A menu full of local seafood, the “least” local of the oysters coming from British Columbia, only a few hours north, our server pointed us in the right direction of some of the stronger tasting oysters. Always trust your server. Soon we were in the midst of shells from Effingham and Dabob Bay, and I had a newfound love for this bivalve shellfish.

I am not alone in oyster love, however. As it turns out, they really are everywhere.

“[Oysters are] actually making a comeback – they were this hugely popular a century ago but then oyster populations around the country were depleted or completely wiped out by over consumption, pollution, and other factors. But there’s been a real effort to rebuild wild stocks around the country along with a huge rise in popularity of oyster farming on both coasts. Essentially, there are more oysters on the market than there have been in decades and restauranteurs are finding them to be a popular menu addition. I’ve been to a few sports bars that now boast raw bar menus – it’s pretty incredible to see one food product cross over so many different tastes and styles,” says Byers Murray.

Oysters aren’t just a fancy delicious component of a dinner party, they’re also a key part of our ecosystem. When I asked Byers Murray what she thought the single most impressive thing about an oyster is, she responded with, “oysters can filter up to 40 gallons of water a day – imagine what that can do help clean up our waterways.”

Oysters may have struck such a personal chord because they play the key role in my home state’s economy. According to Geoff Menzies, Manager of the Drayton Harbor Community Oyster Farm, a project by the Puget Sound Restoration Fund to “engage community members in the actual act of growing oysters and getting muddy,” Washington State is actually the leading producer of farmed bivalve shellfish in the U.S., producing 61 million pounds of oysters in 2011 which accounts for $58 million. Menzies cites Rowan Jacobsen’s book A Geography of Oysters when he says, “No city is as oyster-mad as Seattle.” It’s like I was born to fall in love with them.

Looking at the efforts in the Pacific Northwest and the East Coast, it is clear that there is a significant effort to rebuild wild stocks, which is good for both the environment and our health. Oysters are low in saturated fat, contain Omega 3 fatty acids, and as Menzies points out, are “especially good sources of high-quality protein, minerals: Iron, zinc and copper, and Vitamin B12.”

Oysters also have a positive communal effect. “When a community is located next to a bay which supports commercial  oyster harvest, they benefit from all of the efforts of that business or nonprofit to restore and to keep marine waters clean. Oyster farmers need clean marine water in order to survive. Everybody benefits. They often lead the charge to reduce bacterial contamination from livestock farms and septic systems, which are often the leading sources of pollution that close shellfish beds,” says Menzies.

Take a step back, and oysters are a good reminder of all of the elements of the food system that are essential to keeping us and our communities alive. Byers Murray says that if there is one lesson she can take away from Island Creek it’s “that there is an enormous amount of human effort and energy that goes into our food supply and we should do everything we can to appreciate and support that effort.”

Ensuring that we are well educated about that supply chain is the game changer when it comes to food politics. “I think we need more transparency in the food system overall. The media has really picked up its game in terms of reporting what’s happening behind the curtain at some of these massive food producers. But so much more can be done at a more basic level, such as in our education system, to bring awareness to what we’re eating and where it comes from,” says Byers Murray.

Keeping all of this in mind, I savored my oysters at The Walrus and The Carpenter, with a new appreciation of what, for so long in my mind, had just been another shellfish. But as is clear with good food, everything we eat has a story. Nothing on our plates can be paired with the word “just.”

A place of production, people to produce it, a system for getting it to a restaurant or a store and lastly the people that prepare it for us, or the preparation that happens in our very own kitchens; that entire system happens with every single thing that we eat. Every. Single. Time. Discovering that story is part of enjoying and appreciating what we’re eating, and putting us on a path to better food and food system.
Erin Byer’s Murray Drink and Oyster Preparation Recommendations

• Drink: It depends on the oyster but for an East Coast oyster like an Island Creek, I’d go with an ice cold Pilsner or a glass of mineral-ly white wine.
• Preparation: One of my favorite methods is throwing them on the grill until they pop open. You quickly pull the tops off, then add a pat of butter and a dash of Mexican hot sauce, like Cholula. Let the butter melt just slightly and serve.

Want to win a copy of Shucked?! We’re giving one away! To enter to win, leave a comment below telling us why you’re committed to local food. 

Image: samantha celera, The Walrus and the Carpenter, Geoff Menzies, Anna Brones

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ColumnAn interview with Burger King’s Executive Chef.

The food coverage approach at EcoSalon can be summed up as: “Good food, from good places, with good people.” That can be broadly interpreted, but as the Foodie Underground columnist I get the chance to take a look at the food movement from the perspective of food lovers. After all, “from supper clubs to mini farmers’ markets to beyond…weekly!” was the original thrust of this column. So I was intrigued when I was approached by Burger King to interview the fast food chain’s Executive Chef John Koch. With a new bacon-related launch – we’re living in a “Bacon Nation,” I’ve been told – they had most likely come across one of my various references to bacon-wrapped-anything that has topped foodie menus over the course of the last two years.

Being someone who, for the most part, strictly abstains from fast food, I was interested to see what someone who plans the menu of a nationwide chain had to say about the process behind what they serve, where it comes from and its nutritional value. I agreed to an interview and found myself one early morning on a Skype call with the man behind the Chef’s Choice Burger, which includes new and improved bacon, as well as a variety of other moves that Burger King is making towards what they deem in a press release as “real food.”

“Bacon is also a “real food,” which is another big trend right now. We are becoming more aware of additives and heavy processing. We’re moving toward clean foods, foods and ingredients we recognize and can pronounce. Real foods.”

But what does “real food” mean to a nationwide chain known for pumping out highly processed, highly caloric meals? When it comes to bacon, at least, it means that Burger King is stepping it up in the fast food realm, opting for naturally smoked meat as opposed to “spray on smoke.” (This is how some fast food chains achieve that smokey flavor.)

An interview with Burger King’s executive chief and columnist Anna Brones.

Koch cites Burger King’s efforts towards selling “real food” with such examples as “eggs [prepared] in house every day” and “domestically sourcing” all bacon. What that means is that other restaurants are doing the opposite, warming up pre-made eggs and importing their bacon from abroad. But simply because Burger King is taking a step away from such a direction, is what they’re doing really very forward, let alone enough to make a significant change in the food system?

I turned to Jeff Harvey, President and CEO of Burgerville, a Pacific Northwest-based chain food restaurant with 38 locations (soon to be 39) in Oregon and Washington. In the Northwest, they’re known for their seasonal milkshakes – blackberry is an annual hit – as well as their commitment to locally-sourced ingredients.

Burgerville’s model is based on creating personal relationships with farmers in the area, working with growers to understand who they are and what they can provide and then introducing them to Burgerville’s distribution partner, Sysco.

“It’s not a moral thing, not an ethical thing, it’s a business thing,” says Harvey.

Their burgers are made with pastured, vegetarian-fed and antibiotic-free beef from local farms. The chain partners with companies like SeQuential Biofuels, which recycles cooking oil into biofuels and in 2007 helped the chain convert used oil into 39,750 gallons of biodiesel. Burgerville also purchases wind power credits equal to 100 percent of their electricity use. The chain’s efforts get it plenty of accolades in the sustainable business community.

But is such a model a viable option for larger fast food chains?

“Do we believe you can expand that model? For us the answer is yes. Is it economically feasible? I think that is a big question in terms of how companies have built their model,” says Harvey.

Ultimately, the chosen model depends on the goal of a food provider. “The commitment to local only works if the [company’s business] model is intended to build vitality and sustainability in the local marketplace. You do need genuine relationships to accomplish that. You can’t do that if you’re a nationwide chain,” says Harvey.

Going local, after all, means a commitment to production on a much smaller scale, something that isn’t possible for nationwide chains.

“If everybody in the world, especially the big players, declares ‘local is our thing’ … that should raise concerns to people. When you are committed to local you are committed to lower capacity. If you start to push local beyond what the capacity of the land is you move beyond sustainability,” says Harvey.

If the model can’t be changed, what opportunities do larger chains have for improvement? A clear option is the nutritional value of what they’re serving. Americans spend nearly $100 billion on fast food a year, and with an ever-expanding obesity rate, the impact that fast food chains could have on public health is clearly correlated.

Are the current efforts anywhere near to enough?

As Christina Munsell, a registered dietitian and research assistant at the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, points out, the degree to which fast food is at fault for the state of health in America, “is impossible to quantify, but is definitely a factor.”

For Burger King, when it comes to nutrition, as Koch told me, the company follows the guidelines of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and a “total diet approach.” For Burgerville, it’s about offering a variety of choices so that guests can opt for smaller portion sizes. In short, the responsibility of healthy eating is on the customer.

The problem with focusing on calories alone, however, is that it detracts our attention from a more holistic approach to food. A strip of bacon may only have 70 calories, but that isn’t the only indicator of how it is going to influence our health. As with all foods, where it comes from, how it has been processed and how we eat it all have an impact on our health.

An active individual, I could probably loosely interpret the “in moderation” guideline, because as Koch notes, the quantity of bacon cheeseburgers that I can eat with a good conscience depends on my output. But even with a week of 30 miles of running under my belt, I wouldn’t go near one, and the reason for that goes far beyond calories. Read Omnivore’s Dilemma or Fast Food Nation, and calories all but cease to count.

So how many fast food bacon cheeseburgers should you be eating? In my mind, the frank answer is zero; the national fast food chain system, no matter how improved, by nature makes it impossible to truly focus on locally-sourced ingredients or supporting regional producers in a meaningful way. And, if you care about where your food comes from, this should be your first red flag. Beyond that, there are too many negatives attached to the fast food industry in general, from how ingredients are sourced to the inevitable labor and environmental consequences, as well as the security issues of producing standardized, inexpensive food on a mass scale.

Just because you can “Build it Your Way” doesn’t mean you should.

Image: Håkan Dahlström, star5112, Pink Sherbet Photography

The post Foodie Underground: Can Fast Food Be ‘Real’ Food? appeared first on EcoSalon.

A look back at the stories that inspired what we ate and how we ate it. 

When it comes to comnsuming, it’s not just about what’s on the table, it’s about how it got there and how it is being enjoyed. Over the last year we have come to make our Food section reflect our mindset of “good food, from good places, with good people.”

Food sustains us and brings us together and gives us a common ground, no matter who we are. At times complex, and at others, very simple, food is a topic that we can all gather around. Here are 10 stories that proved this point and have defined this section in 2011.

Dr. Marion Nestle Weighs in on Food Issues

When the federal government launched MyPlate, the Harvard School of Public Health came out with their own version called the Healthy Eating Plate. To get perspective we chatted with one of the leading voices on food, Dr. Marion Nestle, to get her perspective on eating better and how to change the food system.

The Replacements

Burned out on the cupcake trend just like we were? Fortunately there were plenty of replacements, and we hope that 2012 gives us more macarons and cookies delivered out of second story apartment windows.

Global Street Eats

Food is one of the best ways to explore a new culture, and nothing gives a real look into a country and its people like street food. In this article we took a look at 10 street foods that defined their home countries to give you a salivating virtual world tour.

Behind the Scenes at an Urban Winery

It’s nice to buy wine that’s made just a few blocks from your apartment. Enso Winery in Portland, Oregon is leading the way for urban viticulteurs, getting their grapes from local vineyards and making their wine in the same warehouse space as their welcoming tasting room.

How to Shop, Cook and Eat More Sustainably

The post The 10 Stories That Defined Food in 2011 appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnIt’s only April, but 2011 promises to be a big year for food issues in the news.

We’re not talking about big food (so long, Supersize). But food is big this year. From longtime recipe columnist Mark Bittman of the New York Times switching to a food issues beat, to the USDA’s approval of genetically modified alfalfa, to the possibility that foodies might save the green movement, edible stories early this year indicate big changes on the horizon in the world of food.

Foodies Might Save the Green Movement

As movements go, the food movement has relatively quickly become a mighty force that is both decentralized and diverse. According to Bryan Walsh, in a much discussed article in Time, this force might just save the environmental movement because the good food movement, which is about both pleasure and health, speaks to a broad swatch of Americans. How does activism around better, healthier food have anything to do with the environmental movement? Because the way we grow food is environmentally disastrous and resource intensive. Reforming and revolutionizing our agricultural practice in the service of better food can go a long way toward breathing new life into the environmental movement.

Mark Bittman Ends Minimalist column and Takes up Food Issues

After 13 years of writing a column aimed at making cooking more accessible to more people, New York Times columnist and cookbook author Mark Bittman throws in the ladle and starts a new column that focuses on food policy, environmentally sustainable eating, and diet and health issues.

This shift did not come as a surprise to those of us who have followed his personal journey from a rather standard meat-heavy diet to a way of eating that considers both the environmental and health costs of a meat-centric diet. But it’s huge news signaling that The Times is taking food issues very seriously. And that means readers are, too.

USDA Approves Unregulated GM Alfalfa

Earlier this year, the USDA approved the unregulated planting of GM alfalfa. Since alfalfa is an important feed source in the organic dairy industry and there is a high likelihood of contamination of non-GM crops,  this move could kill the organic label, putting many organic farmers out of business. Expect to see more action in the courts around this issue and increased calls for testing and verification of non-GMO foods.

Tomato Pickers in the Spotlight

Early this year, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), finally won an extra penny per pound for tomato pickers in Florida, a fight that has gone on between the CIW and growers and retailers for years. Journalist Barry Estabrook was nominated for a James Beard award for his work highlighting the plight of these tomato pickers in a famous story in Gourmet Magazine, and now he is about to release a book on the subject called Tomatoland. The plight of farm workers in America could be the next issue for ethical consumers and forward-thinking businesses. On Cesar Chavez Day, food service provider, Bon Appétit Management Company and the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), released an inventory documenting the laws and protections relating to farm work in America.

FDA to Reconsider Warnings on Artificial Food Dyes

Following years of studies indicating food dyes might cause or exacerbate behavior problems in children, the FDA is finally considering warning labels, something the food industry does not want to see. But many consumers and consumer groups like Center for Science in the Public Interest do want to see. Will the FDA follow the European Union’s lead and place warning labels on foods containing artificial colors? We will wait and see.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Skånska Matupplevelser

The post The Green Plate: Food Is Big in 2011 appeared first on EcoSalon.

I thought my hometown of Oakland, CA (home to the Eat Real Festival and famous urban farmers like Novella Carpenter) was pretty food obsessed. Then I went to Brooklyn.

It seems you can’t walk down a street in Brooklyn without stumbling over an artisan food purveyor or a fresh new take on the farm-to-table restaurant concept.

On a recent whirlwind trip to New York’s hippest borough, I kept getting whiplash trying to take in all the interesting foodie storefronts. The chilly air whipped around all the good smells and it made me hungry. I know I’m always thinking about food, but it seems, in Brooklyn, everyone else is too. The best thing about the food scene in Brooklyn is the way old school and new school blend together into a non-hierarchical whole. Deliciousness is deliciousness after all.

Here’s a random (not meant to be comprehensive) rundown of some of my favorite discoveries and some of my Brooklyn contacts’ not-so-secret faves:

Specialty Food:

Sahadi’s, specializing in Middle Eastern foods and bulk goods has been around since 1948. Still family-owned and still one of Brooklyn’s oldest and still best specialty food stores.

At the Brooklyn Kitchen you can buy cookbooks, housewares, brewing equipment and really good meat and housemade charcuterie from The Meat Hook, the store’s butcher shop. You can also learn skills like sourdough bread baking, beer brewing, fermenting, and culturing.

Urban Rustic, a grocery store and café dedicated to sustainable local foods, was founded by Aaron Woolf, co-director of the excellent food movement documentary, King Corn. With those ownership credentials, it’s not surprising that the store was built from hand-harvested and milled local wood, is powered by wind, and eschews the use of disposables. A model for the future!

Stinky Bklyn specializes in the stinkiest and best cheeses from all over the world, artisanal meats from hidden corners of the U.S. and beyond, as well as local pickles and other goodies.

Green Markets:

I visited the Sunday market at Smith and Carroll, where I was treated to the best pasteurized milk I’ve ever tasted from Milk Thistle Farm and enjoyed the “never-in-California” experience of buying carrots so cold they were frozen.

Locals also like The Borough Hall market and the Grand Army Plaza Market near Prospect Park.

Restaurants:

Though I didn’t make it to many restaurants, I’m glad I hit up Henry Public a modern take on a casual supperclub with delicious cocktails and juicy “hamburger sandwiches” with homemade buns, sustainable meat, and crispy fries.

Sorry I missed Henry Public’s sister restaurant, Brooklyn Social, modeled after the area’s old time private Italian social clubs.

Coexisting with the modern Supperclub trend, are the twin trends of lighter, healthier, soul food at Peaches and New York style barbecue at The Smoke Joint. Also sister restaurants.

Roberta’s features a tasty, schizophrenic menu of interesting pizzas (mozzarella, pancetta, pecorino, and Brussels sprouts (!)) alongside entrees like sea urchin with carrot granita, vanilla oil, and mizuna, and venison with persimmon, farro, and chestnut.

Bakeries and Coffee:

One bleary morning I walked out of my host’s house depending on my inner good coffee compass to find the best coffee around. With nothing to go on, I had to pat myself on the back when I managed to wander right to Café Pedlar, which features Stumptown Coffee roasted right there in Brooklyn.

I didn’t make it to the famous Gorilla Coffee outpost but wish I had.

Word on the street is that Marquet Patisserie has the best French pastries outside France. I didn’t get the opportunity to find out.

Likewise, I ran out of time before I could visit Baked New York, which seems to be the hands-down favorite of a number of my sources.

Miscellaneous Foodie Fun:

Next time I visit Brooklyn, I’d like to time it to hit up the Unfancy Food Show, which was started as a response to the excess of the Fancy Food Show and features uber-local goodies from small-scale producers. It started in a bar and has grown up quite a bit. 2011 will mark year five of the extravaganza.

I wish I’d known about Nona Brooklyn before I returned home. It’s a one-stop web-based clearinghouse for deliciousness that lets users find their favorite bakers, butchers, cheesemakers, picklers, and brewers at local farmers’ markets, street corners, and other alternative venues.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: BL Photography

The post The Green Plate: Eating Brooklyn – Top Picks from Locals appeared first on EcoSalon.

I live in a foodie-centric town. Portland is known for its coffee snobbery, its food cart fetish and its farmers’ market obsession; most of us pride ourselves on eating well. That doesn’t mean that every meal is a well-planned feast of locally grown, freshly picked ingredients, but everyone seems to have a favorite food hot spot or quirky dish that they’re more than excited to talk about. So there has been a bit of local outrage in response to a recently published “Non-foodies Food Guide,” that appeared in the local daily the Oregonian, in which the first lines were pretty spiteful:

I am not a foodie.

To me, food is what you eat, not what you pray to.

Call them gourmands, connoisseurs, picky eaters, or just plain old snobs. Foodies blog, write and chat about pet restaurants, trends and chefs. They leave little room on their plates or in their hearts for fast food, family dining and the untrendy. And they can be pretty mean to some places we love.

The article goes on to mention a laundry list of local chains, from the 24-hour pie place Sharis to good ole family joint The Ole Spaghetti Factory, all of which the author cites as examples of un-hip, foodie turnoffs. This raises the questions: what exactly is a foodie?

Let’s start with the definition. Urban dictionary defines it as:

A person that spends a keen amount of attention and energy on knowing the ingredients of food, the proper preparation of food, and finds great enjoyment in top-notch ingredients and exemplary preparation. A foodie is not necessarily a food snob, only enjoying delicacies and/or food items difficult to obtain and/or expensive foods; though, that is a variety of foodie.

For the sake of this argument, keep in mind that it’s just the obscure, edgy websites that define the term. The word is even listed in Merriam-Webster as a person having “an avid interest in the latest food fads.”

Despite the recent inclination to team the term “foodie” with “snob” there are a whole group of foodies out there that are simply concerned with where their food came from, how it was raised, and what’s being added to it to make the end product. In fact, if there’s one thing the underground food movement has taught us, it’s that local, sustainable, fresh fare is desirable, not just because it’s trendy but because it’s healthy and better for the environment.

Is being a foodie being a snob?

There’s an ongoing debate right now about food democracy. Los Angeles, one of the nation’s most abundant agricultural regions, is now taking a serious look at creating a regional food system that not only produces local, healthy food, but ensures that all residents get to take advantage of it.

The word “organic” has long been associated with higher prices, so much that the national media still questions whether it’s “worth the splurge.” As green blogger Mike Lieberman eloquently put it, “Organic Isn’t a Splurge, It’s My Healthcare.” In his well worded post he points out that questions like these highlight “how disconnected we have become from associating real food with health.” All you have to do is take a look at obesity rates from the CDC to understand the negative physical effect that this disconnect is having.

So is it snobbery or simply understanding what’s at stake when it comes to our health? Only consuming coffee from a particular cafe might seem like putting your nose in the air, but if you frequent the place because the owners are committed to selling fair trade coffee, the pastries are baked locally and they don’t give you plastic lids to your disposable cup unless you ask for one, then you’re probably there for a good reason.

Think about where your money goes

A common argument is “I don’t have the budget to eat that way.” Think being a foodie is reserved for the elite? Think again. In fact take a moment to reflect on all the luxury items that we have deemed necessary in our everyday lives. Flavor Magazine took on this exact question this summer and listed out the following:

Tobacco products, $100 designer jeans with holes already in the knees, KFC, soft drinks made with high fructose corn syrup, Disney vacations, large-screen TVs, jarred baby food? America spends more on veterinary care for pets than the entire continent of Africa spends on medical care for humans.

And yet we don’t have enough money to make sure that we’re putting food into our bodies that’s not only going to sustain us but is also going to protect us from future illness? At the end of the day, there’s simply no excuse for eating well, it’s just all about choices and values. Is the new big screen tv more important to you than a weekly delivery of CSA produce? Fine, but don’t call me a snob because I don’t feel the same way. To quote Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms (yes, the one of Omnivore’s Dilemma fame), “To suggest that advocating for such a change makes me an elitist is to disparage positive decision making and behavior. Indeed, if that’s elitism, I want it.”

What kind of society do we want to live in?

We’ve got a long way to go if we want to be sure that our country has good food available to the masses. Until consciously produced food doesn’t have to compete with subsidies and the quick and cheap petrochemical industry, food will continue to be unhealthier, externalizing the real costs in exchange for a lower price tag. We need personal and infrastructural change to ensure that we’re all eating well.

But in the meantime, we have to change how we think. Being committed to good food isn’t about status, it’s about health, both personal and environmental. If we stop promoting underground food movements, like urban gardens, bike powered compost pick up, and food carts that source all their food in a 100 mile radius, what kind of a world will we live in? One dominated by chain restaurants, high fructose corn syrup and obesity. Do you call that snobbery or sanity?

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Image: Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: What Exactly Is a Foodie? appeared first on EcoSalon.