Local food reconsidered
September 2, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 5 comments
As a self-professed more-than-occasional geek, I am susceptible to splitting-hair optimizing theories about just everything. Here is my confession: though I am enthusiastic about both organic and local food, I have never been able to convince myself, let alone anyone else that organic and local food are ABSOLUTELY the way to go.
It’s been observed that organic standards are under the threat of dilution to pave way for corporate profits. Horizon organic milk, for instance, has been criticized by many as barely hanging on to the text of the organic label by the skin of its teeth and wholly lacking the spirit of the organic concept.
We’ve all seen organic labeled frozen vegetables imported from countries with dubious food health standards.
What about local food? Is the concept bullet proof?
A couple of years ago, I happened upon an interview of Peter Singer, a professional ethicist (who knew there was such as profession?) who was best known for his 1975 book “Animal Liberation” – a canonical text of the animal rights movement.
In his book The Way We Eat, aside from discussing ethical issues with animal husbandry, he provided a curious example against the local food movement. Singer argued that the “socially responsible folks in San Francisco would do better to buy their rice from Bangladesh than from local growers in California.”
(image courtesy of www.greenpeace.org)
Why? California rice is produced using artificial irrigation and fertilizers that involve intensive energy use. Rice grown in Bangladesh takes advantage of the natural flooding of the rivers and does not require any artificial irrigation. It also doesn’t require as much synthetic fertilizers since the river washes down nutrients. The energy used for the Bangladesh rice to get to our table is quite efficient compared to the artificial irrigation and local trucking. Shipping, it seems, is ten times more energy efficient than trucking.
Interesting food for thought.
Then another article this year pointed out that local fruits and veggies might have more food-miles than produce at the supermarket. Wandering about San Francisco’s famous Ferry Plaza farmers’ market, the author observed that most farmers there drove their “Ford, Isuzu or Chevrolet trucks, packing anywhere between 200 and 2,000 pounds of goods”. They trucked their produce an average of 117 miles.
In comparison, the produce from a conventional distributor who buys from California, Arizona, Washington, Texas and Mexico averages 942 miles.
But they mostly use semi-trailer trucks that can pack 40,000 pounds of food. After a bunch of detailed carbon calculations later, the author concluded that the wholesaler won for the most part as far as CO2 emission was concerned.
The author of the article proceeded to provide a few other examples of local food losing out when it came to overall energy usage. “Raising lambs on New Zealand’s grassy slopes required four times less energy than U.K. lamb, which relied more heavily on fertilizer”.
More good food for thought.
I got a splitting headache when imaging tremendously controversial and detailed carbon calculation for each food. To be complete, shouldn’t we also throw in factors such as local fair land use, environmental standards, impact on endangered species, and fair labor regulations into the gigantic ethical food formula?
I gave up on splitting the hair of ethical food.
A friend came to visit with her young children this weekend. She and her husband have been expats in Malaysia for the past three years. Like on most Sundays, we went to our local farmers’ market.
My daughters’ went straight to berries and peaches. My friends’ 5 year old boy suspiciously eyed the strawberries my girls were devouring. He stuck out his tongue, “bleh.” After some inaudible exchange among the kids, apparently he was convinced to try one. A couple of seconds later, he asked in his perfectly polite English accent, “Can I have another one?”
Before long, two baskets of strawberries were gone. The only trace left was the stains on their shirts. I asked my friend what changed her son’s mind about these berries.
She laughed, “believe it or not, in our local market, we get strawberries from Watsonville.”
“Watsonville? You mean the town 30 miles south of here? All the way to Malaysia?” I was amazed.
“Yep. But the strawberries we get are always so horrible. Rubbery and bleh, like he said,” my friend pointed to her son.
“I am sure the ones we get are picked not quite ripe and sprayed with bloody anti-rot juice,” she semi-joked.
“Wow!” I was still thinking about how these strawberries got shipped all the way to Malaysia.
“Obviously he loves real strawberries,” my friend quipped as she watched her son’s stained mouth and fingers.
It was then I threw the big hair ball of food calculation out of the window. Though legitimate issues have been raised about local food, as of now, it is still a far better option for many foods in many parts of the world.
The satisfied look on the face of my friends’ son also told me that what got lost in all the calculation was the enjoyment of “real” food. Can you put an index on that?
Unless a clean, complete and convincing theory is formed, I am sticking with eating and enjoying local food.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Once a geek always a geek
August 7, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 5 comments
Yesterday I had some time to read an incredible article by Nathan S. Lowis, a chemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology. Though the paper is one year old, it includes so much astounding information that makes my head spin. I love numbers because they speak facts to me.
I’d like to share some of his thoughts in the conclusion section first:
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In the United States, we spend more money buying gas at the pump in ONE hour than we spend funding basic solar research in our country over an ENTIRE year.
In that ONE hour, more energy from the sun hits the earth than all of the energy consumed on our planet in an ENTIRE year.
We don’t yet know how to capture the solar energy cost-effectively.
We spend $200 Billion annually to fund the Iraqi war (I added this from NYT), $28 Billion on health, and $0.028 Billion on basic solar research.
I translate it to myself: We can avert the climate crisis IF (big if here) we have the will power and the vision further than what’s on TV tonight.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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It worked! sort of
August 5, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 1 comment so far
Vacuum cleaners are not that complex technically. However it is still frustrating to trouble shoot and to fix if you are like me, a hopelessly non-handy person. But after lamenting about the lost art of fix-it, I had to try and try to fix (or break) our vacuum cleaner.
But sometimes, with enough perseverance even I can fix a simple household appliance. Well, sort of.
After two hours of laying out all the unrecognizable parts, reading the trouble shooting section of the manual, pulling my hair out and cursing up a storm, I managed to make the vacuum run.
I can’t say it is fixed because I still have two small plastic pieces that don’t fit anywhere. The power cord no longer retracts. Yeah, I fixed something while breaking others. Don’t know how long it will last, but the vacuum cleaner is doing its job so far.
Considering other options - tossing it into the garbage or paying half of the price of the vacuum for repair, I am happy with the outcome. Honestly, I even felt an inflated sense of accomplishment. “It’s not like it’s a car or anything, or even a bike,” you say. I know, but someone has to pat me on the back.
But if it breaks again, I am taking it to a repair shop. While playing around me, my kids asked, “what are you saying?” as I muttered too many curse words. THAT is worth avoiding.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Luxury or Frugality
July 28, 2008
Posted by CindyC in : Opinions & Thoughts , 10 comments
During a weekend get together, some friends and I got into an interesting discussion. It started out simple enough with us talking about summer movies. Amazingly, I had actually seen a few before they came out on DVD. In any case, we were talking about Sex and the City (SATC) when one friend said, “You must be totally excited about these rent-a-designer-handbag websites.” It took me a second to realize she was referring to “Louise”, the wanna be fashionista in the movie, and her economical entry into high fashion that involved renting Louis Vitton handbags online.
Huh? I admit, once upon a time, I had the same obsession as those glamorous ladies in SATC (except I wasn’t so glamorous). But that was long ago, before a mortgage, family and a clearer shopping conscience. So I was a bit confused by her comment.
“Well, doesn’t it warm your heart that fashionistas are embracing the idea of community and recycling?” I must have had a doubtful scowl on my face since my friend defensively responded, “Does it really matter that these people are renting and reusing bags to satisfy their own vanity as long as they are reusing and not buying another handbag? How is that any different or worse than buying at consignment stores? Aren’t you a pragmatist?”
I suppose she has a point. I often tell my friends that the motivation doesn’t concern me too much as long as people are cleaning up their act. I also believe that you don’t have to make significant changes in your lifestyle to start making a difference, as long as you make changes and stick to them. But does renting (rather than buying) expensive handbags actually counts as a change? After all, does anyone (other than Carrie Bradshaw and company) really need a Hermes Birkin bag, especially considering the cost can probably feed some impoverish village for a year?
Maybe I’ve become less pragmatic and more skeptical but I don’t buy this idea as a change for the better.
CindyC at Organicpicks
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Seasonal food with shark fin soup
July 24, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 9 comments
Without unique local food, traveling would not be nearly as intriguing. Every bite takes me closer to a culture. Elizabeth Gilbert devoted a third of Eat Pray Love to her eating her heart out in Italy.
It’s fascinating to observe what people eat and how people procure their food in various countries, the closer to the food source, the better. A number of years ago, I visited the Tokyo Tsukiji fish market, the sheer scale of which completely shocked the “romantic” inference of The Old Man and the Sea out of my system.
I love visiting fresh produce market in different regions and countries. This one is fairly typical in China. In smaller cities or rural areas, markets are often outdoors. Notice there is no refrigeration, no spraying of fine mist to keep the produce “fresh”. When asked, the vendors told me exactly where the food came from - all within 25 miles of the market.
One of our bus rides took us to hilly farm fields in the south east of China. Farmers plowed their fields with water buffaloes and planted with hands. I was also told that most fields were mix-planted, i.e., many different produce and grains planted in close vicinity. This picture has beans, peanuts, orange trees and some other green veggies. The endless plantable Midwest plains simply don’t exist in China. Mass production of a single crop is probably not feasible.
In the northwest of China where deserts reign, amazing fruit and nuts are harvested in occasional oases - grapes, melons, apricots, dates, plums, walnuts, and almond. Sorta like the central valley of California.
Spices were one of the precious trading items along the Silk Road two thousand years ago. You can still find crates of spices lining the streets.
Along with the good, we also found the absurd - gimmick food like these nectarines that had patterned paper pasted on them as they were ripening. The end result? nectarines with characters on them.
And of course there is the ugly, very ugly! Shark fin soup is often served at Chinese banquets as a symbol of wealth and prestige. While the practice of finning of sharks has always been brutal, the problem was not noticeable until the economic booming in China. With the rise of the middle class, the demand for shark fin soup has been increasing. The demand is likely a primary contributing factor in the global decline of many shark species.
This restaurant proudly displays its shark fin. I am there to demonstrate the size.
Every time we are in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I read about the horrifying practice of finning of sharks. But I think they are preaching to the wrong audience. Spend money and run smart ads in China. Educate the young. Hire celebrities if it works there. Traditions with hundreds of years of history are not easy to over throw. Then again, women there no longer have bound feet.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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My welcome home committee
July 21, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 4 comments
I am finally back from our month-long journey to the far east. It was both exhilarating and exhausting. Even though we are footloose in our bones (even our kids are getting to that state of mind), it is still nice to be home.
The first thing we visited was our nascent vegetable garden. Our hard dug and freshly planted palm-sized garden was on our minds, even when we wandered about the ancient Silk Road in the deep desert. I’d imagine the luxurious silk, satins, rubies, diamonds, pearls, rhubarb, pilgrims, monks and nomads that journeyed through this route and shaped many civilizations. Then I’d wonder how my vegetables were doing with an experimental sprinkle system.
In the cool morning air, our welcome committee glistened in the sun. My gosh, they surely grew while we were gone!
Have you ever seen one and half foot tall red-leaf lettuces? Here is one of my monster lettuces with its open arms.
Our corn is not bearing any sweet kernels yet. Still the plants are tall and graceful.
Bush beans are ready to be picked.
So are the carrots.
Apparently some uninvited visitors have been feasting on our strawberries and have taken the liberty of lifting our peppers altogether. But seeing our other healthy plants put me in a good mood. So I won’t hunt them down or even hold any grudge. But critters, we are back. Don’t mess with my garden again!
I laughed at my strange attachment to our silly little vegetable garden. I’ve come home from far away places many times before. But this time, it is different. This time I have a welcome committee.
p.s., I will post pictures of our journey later this week.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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More experience less stuff
July 14, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 6 comments
We are still on the road where internet access is at best inconsistent. Still, every so often I check in with friends and family via email.
Last week among my large collection of unread messages was a recommendation email from a friend in the bay area. She wrote, “If you visited our home in the past, you know what a mess it was. We couldn’t see the floor in the kids’ rooms, couldn’t find a shirt in our closet, and certainly couldn’t park a car in the garage. But Karen changed all that. She is a professional organizer highly recommended by my local mother’s group. She did an amazing job creating a flow in all the rooms. She compartmentalized the kids’ rooms. Now I can actually find something to wear in my closet. Our minivan finds itself happily parked in the garage with space to spare. I highly recommend Karen to anyone who may need to reorganize their homes.”
Home organizers seem to be a profession de jour. Lately I have encountered quite a few in various forms - closet organizer, home organizer, garage designer, etc. Normally when an email like this arrives in my inbox, I simply delete it without giving it much thought. However, being six thousand miles away from my ordinary environment seems to provide me with fresh perspectives. The idea of a professional organizer for an average home suddenly just seems, oh so absurd.
For those who are professional organizers, I sincerely apologize for snickering. Clearly there is a reason for the birth of such a profession in our consumer based society.
Being in the bay area, where the mere purchase of a small lot can break your arms, legs, and more, our homes in general cannot compete in size with an average American home. My friend’s home is 1,600 square feet, about the average in this area. Have we lost the ability to manage 1,600 square feet?
No. But it seems that we have lost the ability to manage what we put on the 1,600 square feet. Simply put, we have so much stuff that we need a professional to tell us how and where to spread it so we don’t trip over it constantly.
Undoubtedly professional organizers have acquired skills to streamline stuff placement and perhaps even help families prioritize and trim their stuff. But isn’t the profession somewhat a band-aid rather than a solution?
Over a beer (actually a few) with a group of newly acquainted folks who were from various corners of the world, the topic of profession came up. “What do you guys think of professional organizers?” I interjected.
Hmmm? What do you mean?
After my probably inadequate explanation, most people in the group were quite amused. “So you spend your hard earned money on too many things. Then you spend your hard earned money to hire someone to either help you get rid of the things or put them away.” A lady from Belgium reflected.
Sounds about right. Fresh perspectives are always helpful.
A man from UK admitted that he could use the help from such a professional, “Our house is a bloody mess!” Apparently the overflowing of stuff is not a unique American problem.
I don’t remember how we ended the conversation, after all a few rounds of beer often obscure one’s memory. But I recall that at one point we toasted to “more experience, less stuff.”
Wait, wait, can that be a solution to our clutter problem? More experience, less stuff instead of professional organizers? Can beer occasionally provide some level of clarity? Can a random group of people with diverse cultural background arrive at such a simple solution to our unique 21st century problem?
I will cheer to that - More experience, less stuff…
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Sweet Sweat of Summer
July 10, 2008
Posted by CindyC in : Opinions & Thoughts , 5 comments
“Mommy, you missed a branch up top!” yelled my daughter.
While others chose to hide at the mall and wait out the heat, my family decided to duck under the shade of our old apricot tree and harvest our ripe fruit. Perhaps an unexpected benefactor of the recent heat waves, our tree has produced more fruit this season than the last few years combined. Okay, maybe it had this much fruit last year but the greedy racoons beat us to the harvest. This year, with a little help from our vigilant dog, we have yet to see those sneaky thiefs.
With a little reaching, climbing and summer sweat, we amazingly had collected 2 whole buckets (and I don’t mean the small toy kind) of ripe golden fruit, just from one side of the tree! Embarassed but proud of our bounty, we filled several bags with apricots and knocked on our neighbors’ doors. Actually, it was just me as my husband is still a bit weary about being the “crazy neighbor” that drops by unexpectedly. Three doors and 45 minutes later, I think I solidified my position as the friendly neighbor 
But my neighborly gesture barely made a dent in the buckets, so in the cool of the night, my mom taught me how to make apricot pie. Four pies to be exact - 1 to eat and 3 to freeze. Who knew you can freeze uncooked pies!
Still with a bucket remaining, the next night I made 3 batches of apricot jam/preserve. Thanks GreenBean for teaching me how to make jam! Although I am suppose to wait 10 days for the jam to set, I couldn’t help opening one this morning to spread on my bread. It was delicious.
Now I am eagerly waiting for the remaining apricots to ripe and searching for new recipes. Anyone got suggestions?
CindyC at Organicpicks
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Comin’ around different mountains
July 7, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 5 comments
One of the great aspects of traveling is meeting new people, people from entirely different walks of life and from far away countries.
A couple of days ago, I had a conversation with Anika, a Danish lady on a train somewhere in China. Turned out that these days she lived in the U.S. for the most part. Go figure. Anyhow starting with chit chat about gas prices in various countries - seeminly an international topic these days - we moved on to peak oil. Now I had not read enough books or research papers to be completely convinced whether we were close to, right at, or post peak oil. But the theory of peak oil seemed entirely plausible. My new acquaintance on the other hand was very admant that we still had enough oil reserve to last us centuries and centuries. She believed however that because of the unique location of the oil reserves, we (rest of the world, particularly the west) were clearly hijacked politically by the region.
We beat around the bush about peak oil or no peak oil for a while and it was getting frustrating for both of us. It seemed that we could not come to any common understanding.
But then I found out that back home Anika did not own a car. She biked everywhere, work, stores, and kids’ schools. Apparently she grew up in Holland and biking around town was just the way of life. Further discussion revealed that she was equally admant that we needed to be energy independent to achieve political stability. “Conservation and alternative energy” she insisted would be the only ways to get us out of the current hijacked circumstances.
We seemed to come from divergent paths but somehow landed at the same place - conservation and alternative energy. I almost felt like saying, “hell, why didn’t you just say so?!” Surely she felt the same way.
“Amused” by the conversation, I thought about the “conflicts” I had at home.
Raised by a mother who grew up working on a farm in Ohio, my husband inherited some of her frugal habits. “Please turn off the light”, “Please turn off the water”, “Why go to Starbucks when you can make your own coffee?” he would blabber at me. For a while, I found it extremely irritating.
My parents did not grow up rich. But thrifiness has never been their priority and is certainly not a value that I was brought up with.
So you can imagine that we had a bit of conflict when my husband and I started our own household. My weekly trips to Target irked him to no end. I chalked it up to the compromises we both had to deal with.
It was to his great delight that I stopped buying “crap” and started turning off everything a couple of year ago.
“You’ve finally seen the light and come to my side,” he would tease.
“Not at all. I am not doing it to save money. I am all about creating a better environment. My goal is way nobler,” I would protest.
“But our actions and outcomes are exactly the same,” he would not give up.
“Yeah, but, but,” I would insist.
Then one day, I realized that it was not at all important that we came into this from orthogonal perspectives. Our results are the same - less resource consumption. That was the day we stopped splitting hair and called ourselves Fruecos.
These realizations broadened my view of environmentalism. We’ve all come to this from diverse perspectives and experience. Some of us want a better future for our children, some of us are heart-broken over the dim future of wild lives, some of us see the earth as God’s creation and are protecting it in his/her name, some of us are outdoor enthusiasts and want the beauty of nature here to stay, some of us outrightly reject wastefulness, and some of us are simply brought up with green values and practices.
Anika, my accidental fellow traveler wanted nothing to do with the precarious geo-political instability.
Whichever paths and whatever paces we have taken to get here, we are here. Forget about focusing on individual motivations, forget about arguing over the small differences in approaches. We are all on our way to achieve the same thing.
Now that is something to celebrate!
CindyW at Organicpicks
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My Indulgence
July 2, 2008
Posted by CindyC in : Opinions & Thoughts , 3 comments
Yesterday, one of my friends asked what I’ve been doing with my extra time (freed from my summer blog slacking). Well, I sheepishly opened my handbag and showed her my guilty pleasure - a large single book collection of Jane Austen novels that I picked up for $3 at the library book sale. I admit I am an Austen-holic. I’ve read all her novels and pretty much seen all the versions of Pride and Prejudice that were ever made, including multiple viewings of the 5 1/2 hour BBC rendition.
Okay, I know some of you are probably disappointed by my “confession”. After all, Jane Austen remains a respected literary figure and even have college courses dedicated to her work. I guess I view this as an indulgence as I am rereading Pride & Prejudice for probably the hundredth time, instead of my planned “green” book for July.
However, I am glad to see that unlike me, some of my friends are still diligently reading and thinking about important issues. My good friend Michelle recently took the opportunity to hear Michael Pollan talk about his new book In Defense of Food. Thanks Michelle for a great summary and when it’s finally my turn to get the book from the library, I swear I won’t let Mark Darcy, Lizzy Bennet or Emma Woodhouse get in the way.
CindyC at Organicpicks
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