Global Food and Style Expo 2008 Recap

Well...where to start? First of all, while this show is mainly about food (there are a few token clothing booths), it's not the kind of food the average person eats every day. No, this show is mostly about the kind of food you impulse buy at Whole Foods or that comes in a gift basket you got from your boss. Also, it's sort of the antithesis of the local foods crowd: big companies, importers, exporters, etc.

The keynote speaker was Bobby Flay. I was unimpressed, especially when during the Q&A, he entirely dodged a question on food bans. Of course he did have to field some pretty ridiculous questions, including not one, but two not-so-skinny women, complaining about overuse of things like cream and lard , chiding him for not including more low fat foods on his shows. Rightfully, he pointed out that almost no one in this country is fat because of uncommon ingredients like duck lard.

Much of the show was simply overwhelming. At first I wanted to try everything, but I quickly became more selective. You can only stand so many mustard pretzel dips.


One of my first stops was Wholesome Sweetners. On the rare occasion I do bake, I like their rich organic fair-trade brown sugar. Their new raw honey was fantastic, unfortunately, when we asked why they weren't sourcing locally, they said that there were no organic beekeepers in the U.S. Hilarious, one of my companions was an organic beekeeper, and not the only one either.


These cute gummy bears were made with organic tapioca syrup and tasted much better than most vegan gummies.

At another booth I tried Goji berries, which were good, though I think the whole superfood thing is overhyped. That same booth also had yacon chips, made from a Peruvian tuber, which tasted more like melons than potatoes.



Some of the more unusual offerings came from the Japanese and Korean booths. A friendly Japanese businessman expounded on the benefits of the Maitake mushroom, showering us with packets of a maitake supplement. We were confused, but when I got home I looked it up and it seems like it has interesting properties. In the U.S. it is known as Hen of the Woods.

In other news: while I like kimchi, I don't think it's the next sushi.

I loved the truffles from The Tea Room, they were the best I'd had in a long time. The red raspberry rooibos was my favorite. The really really dark chocolate at Vere, was unusual, but people seemed to be flocking to their booth.

The only teas that pretty impressed me was from Great Lakes Tea and Spice. I really liked their peach white blend.

I tasted what seemed like a million dips, but the only memorable ones came from Herbal Delights.

The only clothing that caught my eye was from Synergy, simply because I had bought one of their dresses before and I love the way they fit.

The trends? It seems probiotics are in. Someone was even hawking a probiotic yogurt for dogs. My favorite was the Nancy's Kefir, though I wish they would offer whole milk kefir. Other trends seemed to include granola snacks and raw vegan items.

In the end though, I much prefer more local-food oriented food gatherings. Having ingested the equivelent of an entire Harry & David gift basket, I left the expo with a a nice capitalist stomach-ache.

The End is Near111!!!

Sam's Club, Costco limit rice purchases as prices rise

Does this mean that the boxed rice that has been sitting on my shelf for ages will soon be considered a commodity investment?

Grandmother hypothesis and slow food

In class yesterday we were discussing how to adjust to eating better food. Upper and middle income individuals can usually afford to sacrifice some income in terms of less hours working and more hours cooking or in terms of spending more on food. However, what about people who are barely getting by in the first place?

The solution touted by most people in government programs. Others favor community groups, but I started thinking about this a different way.

Children don't work, but also don't do well at managing to procure and prepare their own food. But who else doesn't typically work? Grandparents!

Students of evolutionary anthropology may have heard of the grandmother hypothesis. Humans are pretty unique for their long postmenopausal lifespans, which means that human women often live far past their reproductive years. A waste of resources on non-reproducing individuals? No, apparently grandmothers in the past played an important role in helping to raise children.

My grandmother helped out my busy mother with food and in many ethnic communities this is still relatively common. Grandma isn't likely to be part of the workforce, so the opportunity cost of having her go to the farmer's market and cook a healthy meal is low. Unfortunately, it's increasingly common to have grandparents live far away from their grandchildren, either in retirement destinations or nursing homes.

This is a tragedy on several levels. There the lost knowledge of the elders, the loss of family bonds, and increased burdens on the parents.

I would say grandmothers are the missing part of a lot of sociological conundrums, from childhood delinquency to healthy diets.

Weepies- Simple Life

I'll kiss you awake, and we'll have time
To know our neighbors all by name
And every star at night.
We'll weave our days together like waves
And particles of light.

I want only this, I want to live
I want to live a simple life.

GMOs: Missing the point

With all this talk about gm crops underperforming, I think people forget that the common GM crops were not modified to increase yields. This is also something the right forgets when it trumpets GM crops as some great solution for this food crisis.

Fundamentally, GM crops are easier to manage. Last week in one of my classes, some of the students from farms were talking about how they used to have the arduous job of "walking the beans": meandering out in the soybean fields in the hot summer sun, looking for weeds to spray. Now they just douse the entire field every once in awhile. They brag about how nice their fields look.

To contrast, managing an intercropped organic field requires intense labor and finely honed knowledge.

Priorities

Parents push for organic school lunches

"There needs to be a reality check," said Diane Duncan-Goldsmith, director of food services for the Iowa City school district. "Is this something schools can do? Maybe if we want to have $4 or $5 lunches."

Not to sound cavalier, but that sounds cheap to me. I spend most of my income on food these days, but given that it has helped me cure my illnesses, I don't think it's a bad deal. No $12 a week Prilosec or $30 a month asthma medication. People discount health too much. An extra dollar or two for a child's lunch might mean thousands of dollars saved if that child can avoid the health problems that plague typical Americans.

It does leave less money for other things though. I'm sitting here typing wearing a skirt from my freshman year of high school and a shirt from last year's dorm lost and found "abandoned and free" box. I spent spring break working on a farm instead of in Cancun.

If I didn't live in a "slave cell" AKA graduate student housing, I could spent a lot less though. I know a couple that spent less than their usual budget on food when they ate 100% local because they had to stop eating out and going to bars. Keep your own garden and it goes down even more.

Paleo Rules

Michael Pollan's rules about eating from In Defense of Food are a good framework, but ultimately don't take a stand for what humans evolved to eat.

The article by Cordain in Implications of Plio-Pleistocene Hominin Diets for Modern Humans in the anthology Evolution of the Human Diet: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable is academic, but also provides a good "rules" framework.

According to Cordain, the diet we are most evolved to eat is:

1. Omnivorous (typically, high vegetable content by weight, and high meat content by caloric contribution)
   
2. Low in sugar
3. Proper omega-3: omega-6 ratio... 1:3 is optimal
4. High in protein
5. High in micronutrients, mostly from diverse plant foods
   
6. Low net acid load...most hunter-gatherer diets are net-base yielding
7. High potassium to sodium ratio
8. High in fiber

Unfortunately, this is a diet that is difficult to follow these days. Feedlot meat has an unfavorable fatty acid composition, fish stocks are poisoned, and domestic varieties of plant crops are higher in sugar and lower in fiber. Thankfully, if the need arises, these basic rules allow me some flexibility to adjust my diet with the inclusion of some agrarian foods without sacrificing the major benefits.