Food, Self, and Society

The Argentinean interior trade secretary has recently placed a ban on “import foods that can be produced at home” according to an article in the Financial Times. Apparently, the government is worried that a weaker Euro will negatively impact local producers and thus the economy. Still, I can’t help but think that this is a rash move that may have unintended consequences.

In many ways it reminds me of  the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) model that many Latin American countries adopted in the 1930s. During this time, the state, in an effort to protect local infant industries placed high tariffs on imports. As history proved, this was a “bad move” economically as it provided local producers with no incentive to improve quality and become competitive on a global scale.

Perhaps the ban on food imports could have a similar impact on food quality? With no foreign competition local producers are under no pressure to maintain high standards. At the time, if foreign imports were banned on a global scale then there would be no race to the bottom as different countries attempt to provide lower prices at higher environmental and social costs.

This bold decision is definitely worth investigating further and I am curious to see what the outcome will be. How do you all feel about the government implementing local food as law?

This past weekend I went back home for Mother’s Day. After a lot of laughing, eating and celebrating with my whole extended family I settled down on Sunday night to read April’s Vogue. It seemed a decent chunk of the magazine was dedicated to eating, dieting and food in general. One article caught my attention as it was about “mindful” eating.

The article explained how people who practiced yoga tended to weigh less than those who didn’t regardless of what they ate for the simple reason that they were more aware of their bodies and by extension what they put inside of them. The author of the article actually hired someone to teach her how to eat mindfully (American paradox anyone?) and the basic message was pretty simple; take your time to chew and reflect on your food. After all, it takes about 20 minutes for your body to register you’re full and meanwhile most people- and I am one of them- typically eat a meal in half that time. On that note, we could all save ourselves some money on a personal food guru by simply thinking in between mouthfuls.

In my last post, I ended my rantings by wishing that Sunnyside would become a “real” neighborhood. Apparently people in high places and by that I mean NY Magazine already feel that it is. As I waited on line at CVS, the title “The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York” caught my attention and I flipped through the magazine wondering if any neighborhood in Queens made the cut. To my surprise and delight, right under Park Slope and the Lower East Side were the letters s-u-n-n-y-s-i-d-e. Yep, Sunnyside is now “officially” one of the top 3 neighborhoods in NYC which makes me feel about 3% cooler.

Now on to food. I was strolling the aisles of the library yesterday waiting for a title to grab me when I noticed the name Mark Bittman on the spine of one of the books. I recalled his name from the NY Times food blog “Bitten” which I thought was clever considering his last name, get it? The title of the book is “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating” and hoping to expand upon my meager collection of scary food books I decided to rent it out.

Once home, I cracked it open and began to read. First of all, I like Bitten’s writing style better than Pollan’s but then again I wanted to hate Pollan from the second I heard of him for some reason. Perhaps because he’s so popular? Or, is it because he’s bald? I’m really not quite sure but anywho Bittman skips the animal farm portion which everyone knows the horrors of and focuses on the amount of energy used in animal production. He makes the case that overconsumption has led to a ton of stress on the environment and our bodies. Bittman also addressed my big fear of not getting enough protein if I were to not eat animal products. I’m not sure who drilled the notion of protein deficiency into the American psyche but it has definitely been a concern of mine.

After reading this entertaining book through, I have decided to challenge myself by going “vegan” for two out of three of my daily meals and not buying/eating anything that is sugary or processed when I’m out. I would completely cut out the sugar but I’m realistic and know that everytime I’ve tried this I have miserably failed. And besides, when I’m home the options for sugary/animal products are limited to the box of biscotti, six eggs and three yogurt cups that I bought yesterday. Monday through Thursday should be OK though when I buy my daily iced coffee (soy milk, no sugar) I will seriously miss the accompanying sweets. I’m more worried about Friday and Saturday when I’ll be in Chicago for a conference. Yes, I, a mere mortal will have to face that table where all types of cookies are laid out staring me in the face and inviting me to take just one bite…

Everywhere I look I can’t help but notice the absurdity of what Michael Pollan describes as the “American Paradox” an unhealthy people obsessed with the idea of eating healthily. In my own apartment I see this firsthand in the choices my roommates and I make. One of them J. will take the train one stop to the gym when it’s only seven blocks away. She will also eat a bag of cheetos for breakfast and then for dinner say she’s only having a can of creamed corn because she just came from the gym and doesn’t want to “blow it.” Hmmm… I feel like if I told this anecdote to someone abroad they would laugh and simply think I was telling some sort of joke, sadly it’s not. I’m guilty of this too. I carefully scrutinize the labels of the food I buy, can be seen comparing different products in the supermarket aisle and for the most part eat vegetarian at home because I’m too worried about antibiotics, hormones and all the other scary stuff that goes into raising these animals. Then, when I go out to eat at a restaurant I’m suddenly a different person; one who orders chorizo and items laden with sugar.

It makes me come to the conclusion that the further away we are from our food, the more deluded our choices become. When I’m at the supermarket I can actually see the food in my hands and make choices based on net pros and cons. Meanwhile in a restaurant, there is an additional veil between my food and I which makes it easier to forget those certain chapter in The Ethics of What We Eat or the scene from Fast Food Nation. I’m sure it would also be true that if I grew my own food and literally saw for myself the entire process, I would be “most” conscious of my food choices.

On a brighter note (this blog has gotten way too pessimistic) this past weekend I had the opportunity to venture out to Park Slope, Brooklyn with a friend. We started off our “tour” by going to Gorilla Coffee, which our professor recommended, for iced coffee. Then we walked around the neighborhood checking out the pretty  brownstones, discussing urban development and working up an appetite. For dinner we went to Chiles & Chocolate, a Mexican restaurant, that had some interesting choices on the menu. I ordered vegetable quesadillas and the aforementioned chorizo although I was quite tempted by this dish that had grasshoppers as a topping. My friend ordered chicken mole which had chocolate as an ingredient which made for an interesting earthy taste. From there we went to check out some local bars and now I’m sort of wishing Sunnyside could hurry up and become a neighborhood’s neighborhood.

Recently, I’ve been reading a lot about behavioral economics which revolves around the concept that people don’t always make rational decisions. When it comes to food choices, I feel that this holds to be especially true. If people know oreos and chicken nuggets are not good for them, why do they continue to eat these foods? We can argue that they lack the nutritional education, access to healthier alternatives, and/or the means to actually purchase higher-quality food. Despite these challenges, I feel I can offer a tiny solution.

While analyzing the neighborhood health comparison map available through epiquery, I quickly scanned the list to find my own neighborhood and instinctively compared it to the others. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in the class who did this. And that’s when it hit me. What if people living in “high food risk” neighborhoods were given a “bill” that compared their household’s health statistics with that of another neighborhood. Would seeing that your family only eats fresh fruit twice a week while a family in the Upper East Side eats that same amount in one day make you implement any changes? Would seeing that your children weigh 20% more than their children have any effect on your shopping list? I’m willing to bet that it would.

I understand that this scenario is an oversimplification of a larger issue. But really, aren’t smaller solutions like this technically more viable?

Last Monday, in my Latin American and Caribbean Political Systems class we discussed Brazil and the fact that it has the world’s highest income inequality. While this nation is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, the elite’s gated communities sit a stone’s throw away from the favelas where many of the poor live without access to running water or electricity. Then on Wednesday I went to my Food, Self, and Society class and learned that approximately 3 million New Yorkers live in food deserts. I guess you can say I had a very “enlightening” week at school, and you’d be right. I started looking at things very differently than before. I started thinking about the neighborhood where I live now and the one where all of my family still lives, Sunnyside and Bayside respectively. I wanted to learn more about how access to food and health differs between these two localities. In particular, I set about to learn about what alternatives there were to the industrial food supply. The following is a list of my top 3 for each neighborhood:

Sunnyside*:

1) Sunnyside CSA: 26 weeks of local, organic veggies will set you back $515. Which comes up to less than $20 a week. This year they are expanding their offerings to include fruit, grains, beans , herbs and even coffee. I want a membership and wish you could pay-as-you-go.

3) Go Natural Health Foods and Juice Bar: Sells mostly dried goods, vitamins and has a tiny fresh section. They also sell prepared foods and fresh squeezed juices. The people who work there are really nice but the last time I went in I just bought almonds, banana chips and dried rosemary and it came up to $10 so can’t say I’d do all of my shopping here.

Bayside*:

1) Health Nuts: Always passed by, never went in and don’t know anyone who actually does all of their food shopping here.

*As you would have noticed by now there were not enough alternatives to round out the “top 3″ list and I did not have the heart to name it my “top 2″ or worse my “top only.”

Conclusion: The borough of Queens may not necessarily be a food desert but it can definitely be compared to a food prairie; bleak with not much variety.

I’m personally a “summer” person and generally do not care much for the winter. However, this past weekend I layered up, packed a duffel bag with warm clothing and on a 4-hour notice went skiing with my friend Yaji and her coworkers. On the car ride there, we stop for food at Wendy’s. I personally try to avoid fast food and haven’t had any in probably over a year. Yet, somehow I convince myself that I shouldn’t make a fuss and just go with the flow and order something. After all, at age 21 I don’t want to be “that” person preaching about health and being uptight. I order a chicken Caesar salad and muse about the fact that none of these salads are any better than the hamburgers as they are loaded with creamy dressings, fried chicken and an assortment of crunchy toppings. Whatever, I eat and drift in and out of sleep for the entire ride. In addition to having eaten rubbery tomatoes and wilted lettuce, I am suddenly struck with the realization that I have become an anticlimax to myself. Usually, I’m the boisterous one on road trips, singing out loud, laughing and being ridiculous and now I find myself fighting the urge to take out my book on Latin American political history and just reading. I’m not sure where and when I starting becoming so lame, I’ve always been a self-professed dork but even this was too much. I blame it on the winter even though its more realistic to assume it’s the combination of school, work, volunteering and extracurricular activities that’s weighing down on me.

I push all my responsibilities to the back of my mind and think of skiing and nothing else. The next morning we set out to the slopes after a hearty breakfast at McDonald’s (haha) and I’m ready to hit the bunny slope! I haven’t gone skiing since high school and I’m even scared of the chair lift (bad experience in the Andes mountains) still when I go down the tiny hill, I gain confidence and soon I’m zooming around small children and sloppy adults. After a few times, I convince my two friends who opted for skiing versus the cooler snowboarding, to join me on an intermediate hill. I asked around and was told there was no intermediate hill but that I could just “take it easy” on an advanced one. I thought sure why not and took the long chair lift ride up, telling Ricardo, a first-timer, that he would do just fine. Well long story short, I went too fast and opted to crash into a tree instead of zooming down the steep hill and into oblivion. I hit the trunk with full force and was mangled in my skis. I just kept saying “OWWWW!!” and a kind stranger came over and helped release me from the scene of the crash. With my thigh bruised and my back feeling dislocated , I chose to walk down the hill which took 45 minutes with Ricardo and Yaji who after watching my accident before their eyes did not feel like taking too much risk.

Once on solid ground, I buy deep-fried oreos because sugar makes everything better. Besides, after McDonald’s and Wendy’s my food morals have gone out the window. We meet with the rest of the group and since the sun is setting and we’re all starving we head to a diner. We sit at the table and the first thing I notice is that there is literally a flat screen TV on our table! Bewildered, I look around and see that every single booth-style table in the diner is outfitted with a television set. This feels so wrong and yet so American that I am not surprised as much as disappointed. I turn to gauge the public opinion at my table but everyone is too excited yelling out channels and ordering food. I tell Yaji that this is crazy and she says “No, its genius, it’ll keep kids quiet.”

Keeping kids quiet or not, I feel that dinner time should be family time or at least time to talk with the people who are joining you at the table. It’s one thing to watch television while you’re eating alone but quite another to do so when you’re actually in the company of others. I kept stealing glances at the many families dining, eyes glued to the screen while routinely forking food into their mouths. There was no exchanging of jokes or stories about their day, in reality the only talking done was to ask for the salt or another condiment. Maybe, I was so intrigued that I began to over-analyze the situation, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the role of technology in today’s society, whether it was bringing us closer or driving us apart. It’s funny how we think other people’s customs, say taking an hour to prepare an obento-style lunch for a 5-year old is plain crazy, and yet fail to notice the absurdity in our own way of life.

This past weekend my Australian friend, Alex, stayed a couple of nights at my place before she continued her trip through great ‘ol America. I met her over a year ago while studying abroad in Sydney and knew I was in for a weekend of reminiscing. Now looking back, I can see that along with laughing about our crazy antics living in Sydney University Village, there were also plenty of events centered around food as a means of getting her acclimated to New York City. Our weekend went as follows:

Saturday: I took her out to Grey Dog’s Coffee near Union Square so we could sit down, eat and talk. I ordered a Mexican hot chocolate and an amazing sandwich (turkey, brie and apple slices) and she opted for a different sandwich with lemonade. As soon as the cashier handed her beverage over, she looked at me and said “I keep forgetting that ‘small’ really means ‘large’ isn’t it too much to drink?” It’s pretty much true, American portions really are, well, out of proportion. Just a quick google search as I write this and I learn that a study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill concluded that portions in the United States have increased over the last two decades in certain food categories such as soft drinks, salty snacks and strangely Mexican food. It’s really no surprise then that people are literally bigger today than before.

Sunday: It was Valentines day which instantly meant that most restaurants would be crowded. Still, I wanted to take her to Pio Pio in Jackson Heights because the food is AMAZING and CHEAP. I assumed it would be fine because I didn’t consider this place to be particularly romantic. I was so wrong. My friend Danny got there a half hour before us and we still had to wait another half hour before we could be seated. Ironically, it was the most crowded I had ever seen it and I have been going since I was a little kid for every occasion from communions to a friend’s mother’s birthday. Nevertheless, the food was very good and we got a free pitcher of sangria to top it off. On top of that, it was definitely funny watching Alex try dishes such as salchipapa and maduros which aren’t readily available in the land down under. She loved it and was glad we showed her this rowdy local mainstay.

Monday: Recovering from the night before was made a whole lot easier with a homemade greasy breakfast sandwich and a stop to the Colombian bakery by my apartment where we shared a guava and cheese pastry. We headed to the MoMA and though the Tim Burton exhibit was sold out, there was still plenty to see. After walking around the museum for two or three hours we were tired and, of course, ready to eat. Since a hamburger seems to be a pretty basic American staple, I took Alex to Lucky’s Famous Burger for our last meal. The bright orange interior instantly energized us and though we wimped out and got veggie burgers we compensated by ordering an order of chili fries topped with suspiciously too-yellow cheese.

Before we knew it our weekend was over and she was heading to Boston. I recommended my favorite pizza place (Regina’s) and thrift store (Garment District) and then she was off into the cold. It’s funny how I recommended a place to eat instead of telling her to visit the Paul Revere House or something of the sort. I guess food is universal and something I just love to share with others. Food is also one, if not the best way, to get to know a new city or even rediscover a familiar one. Until the day I go back to Sydney to drink a flat white with friends, I can still be thankful that in a city like New York I can find anything from a bottle of Tooheys (really bad Aussie beer) to a box of Tim Tams (really good Aussie cookies) pretty easily.

Fresh from Argentina, with great memories yet broke, I decided to save some money by cooking as many of my meals at home. So, I go to the supermarket and buy vegetables, fruits, quinoa, cans of soup and beans, tofu, spices and other staples. Somehow the total comes up to $76! Normally I wouldn’t mind or even notice but suddenly I’m made starkly aware that something isn’t right (I’m only cooking for one afterall). I scan the receipt and notice that a bag of granola was $7 and a box of chewy granola bars was $6. Then it hits me, I have an expensive habit: granola.

Once I go home, I promise myself I won’t buy granola anymore but then I convince myself that it is too versatile (can be sprinkled on yogurt, cereal substitute, snack, etc.) to give up. Torn between my granola and money, I suddenly come up with what seems like the only feasible solution. I, Priscilla, will set up my own granola mini-factory at home. A glance at the ingredients listed on the back of the banana-nut granola bag I bought, a couple of minutes searching for recipes online and an inspired run to the natural foods store and I have everything needed to make my own stash. The following is a recipe I created by combining instructions from random websites and incorporating my own favorite ingredients:

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cup oats

1/4 cup pure maple syrup

2 tbsp butter, melted

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 almonds

1/2 cup raisins

1/3 cup banana chips

1/3 cup coconut shavings

Lazy Student Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees

2. Mix the first six ingredients in a bowl (I made the mistake of baking the raisins and had to pick them out afterwards)

3. Spray cookie sheet with oil and then evenly spread mixture on top

4. Bake for 45 min or until golden brown, stirring every 15 minutes

5. That’s it! Let it cool and then mix in the last three ingredients

The best part is you can’t go wrong with the choice of ingredients you use, switch the almonds for walnuts, the banana chips for dried blueberries, (almost) anything goes. I would have shown the world how great my granola masterpiece looked, perhaps in an upclose, angled shot, but sadly, my camera along with my savings was left back in Buenos Aires…

Fresh from Argentina, with great memories yet broke, I decided to save some money by cooking as many of my meals at home. So, I go to the supermarket and buy vegetables, fruits, quinoa, cans of soup and beans, tofu, spices and other staples. Somehow the total comes up to $76! Normally I wouldn’t mind or even notice but suddenly I’m made starkly aware that something isn’t right (I’m only cooking for one afterall). I scan the receipt and notice that a bag of granola was $7 and a box of chewy granola bars was $6. Then it hits me, I have an expensive habit: granola.

Once I go home, I promise myself I won’t buy granola anymore but then I convince myself that it is too versatile (can be sprinkled on yogurt, cereal substitute, snack, etc.) to give up. Torn between my granola and money, I suddenly come up with what seems like the only feasible solution. I, Priscilla, will set up my own granola mini-factory at home. A glance at the ingredients listed on the back of the banana-nut granola bag I bought, a couple of minutes searching for recipes online and an inspired run to the natural foods store and I have everything needed to make my own stash. The following is a recipe I created by combining instructions from random websites and incorporating my own favorite ingredients:

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cup oats

1/4 cup pure maple syrup

2 tbsp butter, melted

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 almonds

1/2 cup raisins

1/3 cup banana chips

1/3 cup coconut shavings

Lazy Student Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees

2. Mix the first six ingredients in a bowl (I made the mistake of baking the raisins and had to pick them out afterwards)

3. Spray cookie sheet with oil and then evenly spread mixture on top

4. Bake for 45 min or until golden brown, stirring every 15 minutes

5. That’s it! Let it cool and then mix in the last three ingredients

The best part is you can’t go wrong with the choice of ingredients you use, switch the almonds for walnuts, the banana chips for dried blueberries, (almost) anything goes. I would have shown the world how great my granola masterpiece looked, perhaps in an upclose, angled shot, but sadly, my camera along with my savings was left back in Buenos Aires…