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.

So I was watching T.V. a couple of days ago and this awful commercial came up.  Apparently now, if you buy a bucket of KFC chicken, each purchase that is made, 50 cents will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. What in the world is going on here? Why would this ever become a partnership? Does nobody realize the hypocrisy in this? KFC is donating money to help find a cure to breast cancer, when the actual food at KFC causes health problems. Well now this will give people an excuse to go and buy some friend chicken without feeling guilty that they are eating it. I was reading a Washington Post article about this called “Is buying KFC by the bucket a good way to fight breast cancer?”. I the article, Jennifer Huget says that “studies have shown that an increased rick of developing colorectal, pancreatic, and BREAST CANCER is associated with high intakes of well-done, friend, or barbecued meats…” Way to go America!!!!! You are now one big contradiction!

An issue came up with my friend Costa and I while we were eating a salad which i have never considered. Apparently we underestimate how much our bodies crave whole foods. What are whole foods? Anything that hasn’t been processed. For example, eating and apple is very different from drinking apple juice. There are certain key ingredients that your body can be missing. When you cook whole foods you are also taking away certain substances that you could have had if the food was uncooked. Vitamins are not foods, and according to Costa they are “just singular chemicals”, whereas food contains properties that can only be found and made in nature. This can also be considered when you are sick and need vitamins. Vitamins are “chemicals that lack important food substances that you can only get with food”. And this comes as no surprise to me. Whole foods contain natural vitamins and minerals that the food produces itself, antioxidants, etc. Most of the time, when eating processed foods, you are not only digesting chemicals that are found in whatever whole food, for example vitamins found in an apple in apple juice, but also chemicals and vitamins that are not found in that fruit. Eating processed foods and drinks can make us forget to eat other foods that we need. If I were to eat an apple, I would have to eat something else as well to get all of the nutrients that I need, which encourages exploring different types of whole foods and what each one can do for your body. This I think is much better than eating a cliff bar and calling it a day. After this discussion I was convinced that I should start eating more whole, uncooked foods. When we get into the science of food we can learn a lot more about what we are actually eating, and the implications of our actions.

I will keep it short and sweet this week. I really want to raise the issue of campus food, and why it is so unhealthy. I think it has a lot to do with the University’s budget. For example, Lehman College doesn’t not have a big budget right now, and that can be easily seen when you enter the cafeteria. There is nothing but fast food there, with a small salad bar in the Blimpie station. I really think that colleges should try harder to make the food that the students are eating more enjoyable and healthy. The patties at the burger station resemble the frozen ones that we saw in Fast Food Nation, which is not surprising. A week ago I went to visit some friends up at Wesleyan University, and I wasn’t surprised to see how much better their food was. Why wouldn’t it be when tuition there is 52,000 a year. That money has to be going somewhere, right? I hope I’m not asking for too much, but it would be nice to walk into the Lehman Cafeteria and be able to choose forma wider variety of foods, instead having to see the same burger and pizza stand every single day. Anyway, the moral of today’s rambling is more money for college equals better food for college.

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…

For spring break I traveled to Belgium with my family. My cousin Joey is studying in Brussels for the semester and his family was going to visit, so a whole bunch of us jumped on the bandwagon. All together there were 10 people roaming around Belgium trying to become as cultured as possible while still having a great time. The flight there was around 7 hours long, which wasn’t that bad seeing as I had my Sudoku to keep me occupied and my brilliant neck pillow for cat naps. It was a night flight and we got served dinner. We had the option of chicken or pasta, or something vegetarian. I always go with the pasta, I never trust individually packaged airplane meats. The meal came with a salad, cheese and crackers, and a water cup. I felt a little like Ed Norton in Fight Club, with all the individualized items. The meal looked something like this:

It actually wasn’t that bad, but of course it was nothing compared to my homemade manicotti

We got a little breakfast on the plane, some juice and a muffin, not quite a meal, but enough to tide us over. When we landed we had to take the metro into the center of the city. As soon as we got off the metro into the central station, up the escalator to go outside, we smelt the most delicious scent. Waffles! They were beckoning us to them. The Belgians have two kinds of waffles, one is covered in a sweet glaze and the dough is a little thick – it is often eat at dessert or as a treat during the day. There are street vendors everywhere selling waffles as we sell hot dogs in NYC. You can put almost any topping you like on them – ice cream, whipped cream, fruit of all varieties, chocolate sauce, nuts, and the list goes on. They are absolutely delicious. I had one almost every day, and went for the chocolate sauce because the Belgians are well known for their chocolate, and I could eat the sauce out of a bowl by itself, it was that good. Here are some waffles my father and I got our last night there:

The other type of waffle was more of what we think of when we hear Belgian Waffle. It is crispy on the outside with a fluffy inside. Usually they are in a rectangular form and can be eaten for breakfast or dessert. I ate mine for lunch because I was just dying to try it. I am a pancake and waffle lover, so I was in heaven.

Belgian food has been majorly influenced by French food, so they eat a lot of croissants and baguettes for bread. Our lunches were frequently on baguettes, with a wide range of sandwich fillers from grilled ham and cheese, to omelets, and sea food. Most of the food was very familiar and I didn’t encounter anything I haven’t seen before. I was surprised at how many Italian restaurants there are. My cousin said that since it’s so easy to travel between countries in the EU, many people relocate to different places and that most of these restaurants are run by real Italians. We ate at an Italian restaurant once and the food was excellent. The only thing that threw me was the presence of mushrooms in lasagna. It wasn’t labeled mushroom lasagna, it just said lasagna and it had a ton of mushrooms in it and in the sauce it was covered in. I wound up trading with someone else because I’m not the biggest fan of mushrooms – I don’t like the texture.

The Belgians are famous for chocolate, and there’s no question as to why. All types of chocolate were much better than American chocolate, most likely due to the fresh ingredients and lack of preservatives. One of the fancier chocolate stores told its customers to eat the chocolate within 8 days otherwise it would go bad. That chocolate was expensive and exquisite.  — The people of Brussels had a strange obsession with this statue called the Mannequin Pis. It is a little boy who is peeing into a fountain. He can be found on magnets, t-shirts, bottle openers, and made out of chocolate, as seen here:

This cracked me up, although I don’t know why it’s such a big deal there. A national symbol in a national delicacy. Yummmm.

There were also some more artistic chocolate sculptures, like this dragon, that reminded me of the food network challenge to make fashion out of chocolate. I’m sure the Belgians could do it!

That’s it for part one, wait for more deliciousness in Part 2!

Yesterday morning I woke up fairly late, around 12, for my 2 o’clock seminar class. I love Tuesdays because nobody is home when I wake up and I can cook whatever I please without having to listen to complaint about how bad the apartment smells. I woke up with an empty stomach that was growling “FEED ME!!!”  So, I went to the ktichen to see what I could make for breakfast, even though it was half past 12 in the afternoon. Here is a list of things I found in my kitchen for the sole purpose of a deliciously filling breakfast that would make any French person or diabetic cry: Pancake mix, chocolate chip cookies, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream from costco, eggo maple syrup (which anyone could hardly call syrup), and of course my savior, Nutella. So I started off by whisking the pancake mix in with water and two eggs. After that I added the chocolate chips to the mix, along with some vanilla extract. Don’t ask me why, but I always see chefs use vanilla extract when they are making a desert mix, so I thought “why not!?”. I cooked the pancakes with a generous amount of butter. The mix gave out 4 flapjacks. Basically, I piled on a couple of scoops of ice cream, some maple syrup, and the whipped cream to top it all off. If you are wondering what I did with the Nutella, then you should know that I smeared a generous amount on the flapjacks before poouring the maple syrup, Yum! If this was ever on a menu at a restaurant, it would be called the “gut buster”. I actually couldn’t even finish the damn thing. I hung my white flag up about 3/4th of the way through, and threw the rest out. I always feel guilty throwing food out in the garbage. After the breakfast that should have been a brunch I felt full and tired, and a little horrible for feeding my body such unhealthycarbs. This is definitely a breakfast that SHOULD be shared and SHOULD be eaten no more than once a month. The concoction was amazing, an explosion of different sweet flavors in my mouth. The only thing that made me feel good about eating this was that the pancake mix was whole grain and supposedly ”healthy”, but ironically I turned it into an unhealthy guilty pleasure. Im just thankful for having a fast metabolism and burn most of what I eat through swimming.

Very few significant things happened this week as far as food goes. The one story I do this is blog worthy is my pesto story. This past Saturday my mom and I decided to make some pesto together. We went to the nearby farmers market on Roosevelt island and bought fresh basil, walnuts, and garlic. The parmesan cheese and the olive oil we already had. Since we didn’t have a food processor, we used the blender instead to mix everything together, which worked just as well surprisingly. We didn’t really have a recipe, just some show my mom saw on food network. After we made the pesto we let it cool in the fridge. That night we made pasta with pesto and it was amazing. I’ve had pasta with pesto before but the pesto was always store bought. Tasting the pesto that we made can easily exacerbate the different between homemade and not homemade. I have really began to appreciate home cooking more these past couple of weeks. Not only does it save money, but it also tastes so much better. I can attribute this change of diet in my schedule. I’ve had so much more free time lately that I don’t need to rush food. Sometimes it is important to collaborate with someone to make a meal. There’s nothing better than making food with someone else and eating it. Another dish I like to make form scratch with my girlfriend Sue is apple pie. What better way to learn how to make apple pie than by following the instructions in the Joy of Cooking cookbook. Since apple pie is traditionally an American dessert, a traditionally American cookbook is perfect. The process of making food and then eating it makes me appreciate the food that I’m eating even more. I find it funny how many people don’t realize that they tend to care about food more if they took part in making it. It comes as no surprise that someone would enjoy a slice of apple pie they themselves made as opposed to a restaurant. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but that whole “love is the missing ingredient” bologna is true to me!

This past Monday I went to my girlfriends Passover dinner, or Pesach for short. Basically this holiday is commemorating the biblical events of Hebrews’ escape from enslavement in Egypt. Turing this holiday into a dinner is in my opinion fascinating. We went around the table and each person got a chance to read from the Haggadah. The Hagaddah basically gives us intructions to the whole dinner, what to eat, when to eat it, etc… There is lots of Matzah ball soup, gefilte fish, brisket, chocolate covered matzah, and delicious jelly treats. Not only that, but there is also wine throughout the whole dinner. My favorite part of this holiday is how they use food to symbolize the different parts of the holiday. The roasted shank bone represents the lamb that was in the early days sacrificed in the temple on Passover. The roasted egg symbolizes an additional offering. The karpas which is a green herb represents spring and new life. The bitterness of Maror represents the bitterness of slavery that the Jews endured. Of course, the matzah serves as a reminder of how quickly the Jews had to flea Egypt that they had no time to wait for the bread to rise. My favorite part of the dinner came when we started singing. We sang many songs from “Let my people go” to “had gadya”. I think that is it fascinating how the food connects everything together in this very important holiday.