So, one of my posts on backyard slaughtering seems to have started a small brushfire of opposition. The usual insults: I’m a moron, a supporter of factory farming, and, as a result, deserve to die a slow, protein-deficit-induced death alongside my fellow vegans. Discourse!

To clarify, my intention in drawing upon published blogs to highlight the dangers of backyard slaughtering is to support my contention that this method of raising animals is rife with potential problems. I have made it clear that I respect people for taking charge of their food supply. But by no means is backyard slaughtering an adequate solution to the horros of factory farming. My own solution could not be more clear: we should not raise animals, say we care for them, and kill them for food. Is this such a radical proposition?

Just today, a response by an urban farmer chastised me (well, she actually threatened to butcher me) for suggesting that the horrors of raising animals for food are hardly unique to factory farming.  I took a moment to read further on this person’s blog and, lo, here’s what I find from June 2011:

Morning report sucks ass today.

From: The York-New Times

http://www.yorknewstimes.com/articles/2011/08/31/editorials/doc4e5d903b0f6cc019154787.txt

Recently, James McWilliams penned a piece in The Atlantic about the psychology of raising animals (especially cattle) for food.

Being The Atlantic it approached the subject from the left and used the terminology of animal rights activists, though McWilliams did not give the impression he was a PETA type.

His assertion is that in modern agriculture, farmers (who he refers to as “factory farmers”) are able to remain happy after raising thousands of animals for the purpose of having them killed and eaten, because they are completely detached from the animals.

No emotional bond develops, so it’s no big deal to have the animals killed for food.

In order for McWilliams’ theory to be correct, the opposite must be true.

As one of thousands of 4-H families in Nebraska and across the nation who raise just a few livestock animals each year, ours like the others, is living proof that his theory is incorrect.

I know many farmers who raise large numbers of cattle who also disprove his theory.

This year our family raised two steers, three heifers, and two lambs.

Our 4-H animals were washed and brushed, well fed, groomed for the fair, taken for walks, talked to, even read to, and had musical instruments played for them (though being exposed to the machinations of pre-teens learning the saxophone and drums might be considered animal cruelty).

Each animal had a name.  Our family worked with them every day, and an emotional attachment did develop to the animals, as it does each year, especially for the kids.

Some of the animals are continuing the cycle of life in cow or sheep herds now, and some are feeding Nebraska families, including ours.  And here’s where the fly lands in McWilliams’ ointment.

We know what our role in life is and we know what purpose the animals serve.

Our family, including my children, understands that each of the animals was put on the Earth for a purpose, and that our charge is to care for them the very best we can while or until that purpose is served.

Being emotionally and worldly aware, aware of life and death, where our food comes from, and of the charge God gave us as people, is what makes us happy.

Emotional attachment or not, whether 5 or 500, because we know our role and the role animals play, we don’t have to “deal” with the psychology of harvesting and eating what we raised.  It’s not an issue.

Our family and so many others disprove his theory.  As do all the farmers who feed all of us.

They care strongly for their animals because they understand it’s their charge to do so and it’s the right thing to do.

They have countless stories of pouring their hearts into an injured cow or sick calf beyond the point of financial loss and emotional grief.

And in the end, whether they raise 50 or 50,000, they don’t avoid dealing with the psychology of killing because they’re emotionally detached as McWilliams suggests.

They don’t have to deal with it because they too understand their role in life and the purpose of the animals they care for.  Emotional attachment or not, it’s not an issue to have to worry over or deal with.

They aren’t happy because they’re detached.  Quite the opposite is true.  They know exactly what’s going on, are quite self-aware, and grasp the concepts of life and death better than most people.

Perhaps McWilliams should have explored the possibility that they’re happy because they are so aware and because they live with the satisfaction of knowing they feed a hungry world.

I’ve written before on this blog about what I call the “marginal hypothesis.” The marginal hypothesis is often put to vegans in order to expose the supposed weakness of our position. For example, we might be asked what stance we would take if–and I’m just making this up–sacrificing 1,000 pigs to science would lead to a cure for a disease afflicting one human child. Would we do it? If so, how do we square that choice with principled veganism?

As I have said before, these are serious questions that deserve to be taken seriously. But they are also, in a way, distractions from the larger vegan tenet that choosing to eat pigs for pleasure is, quite simply, wrong. We have every right to hold firm the latter belief while grappling honestly with the former hypothetical. Those who persistently foist the marginal hypotheses upon us often miss this important point.

A similar thing happens on the “where to draw the line” question. At what point on the evolutionary chain do vegans decide that an animal’s consciousness is complex enough to warrant human compassion? Tough question. Many vegans (controversially, of course) call themselves vegan but eat oysters and sea urchins.  Others, although unable to answer the question with hard facts, err on the side of caution and avoid all animals, no matter how simple they may be.

Again, we cannot avoid this question, even if it can never be satisfactorily answered. I’m the first to admit that, while I avoid eating oysters, I have a hard time convincing an open-mined skeptic why I make this choice (and, naturally, I welcome insight on this). By contrast, I find the oft leveled claim that plants feel pain and have a conscience to be not only grossly ignorant of evolutionary biology, but just plain absurd. When the “plants have feelings too” argument comes my way, I know I’ve won the debate.

Nevertheless, it is critical that, as vegans who hope to be secure intellectually in our position, we don’t allow the difficulty of the “draw the line” challenge to undermine the basic and undeniable tenet that the vast majority of animals humans do eat for pleasure, and pleasure alone, are undoubtedly complex enough to be included in our circle of compassion. Just because I cannot fully defend why an oyster deserves my compassion does not mean I cannot tell you in the most convincing terms why a pig does.

Nobody has made this point better than the philosopher Tom Regan, in The Case for Animal Rights: 

Where one draws the line regarding the presence of consciousness is no easy matter, but our honest uncertainty about this should not paralyze our judgment in all cases. We cannot say exactly how old or how tall someone must be, in all cases, to be old or tall, respectively, but it does not follow that we cannot recognize that some people are old or tall. Our ignorance about the shadowy borders of attributions of consciousness is no reason to withhold its attribution to humans and those animals most like us in the relevant respects. 

*A version of this post originally appeared in Freakonomics.com.

The news that In.Gredients, a “package free, zero-waste” grocery store, will debut in my home town of Austin, Texas, is certainly cause for optimism. The store, which will be located on the rapidly gentrifying east side of town, is bound to find an eager market of young, progressive consumers raised on a steady diet of environmental ethics, especially the unmitigated horrors of plastic. In addition to its quest to eliminate waste, the store, according to its press release, also promises to promote local and organic food, thereby achieving a trifecta of green grocer bona fides. It should do well.

That said, I think the brains behind In.Gredients vastly underestimate the environmental implications of their bold idea. The tawdry rhetorical appeal to reduced packing, local production, and organic food might resonate with an audience accustomed to associating these traits with eco-correctness. But the carbon-footprint complex isn’t so simple. Fortunately, in this case (and somewhat coincidentally), it happens to be far more consistent with the store’s purported mission.

Don’t get me wrong. Efforts to reduce waste, buy local, or go organic generally make sense. But their impact, I would suggest, is far more modest than advertised. Packaging can be wasteful, but it also extends the life of perishable food, thus increasing the chances that it’s purchased and consumed before it rots and (as usually happens) is trucked to a landfill (where, unlike plastic, it emits methane).

Local food can shrink a product’s carbon footprint, but again, it rarely makes that dramatic a difference. After all, only about nine to eleven percent of a food’s overall energy profile is used in transportation. And organic, well, this is a hot button, but with organic produce requiring vastly more land to achieve yields similar to conventional produce, it can contribute to agricultural sprawl while threatening natural biodiversity. And for those who think organic produce is pesticide-free, think again.

So the reasons that In.Gredients highlights to justify its eco-correctness are, upon closer inspection, flimsy. Call it grocery store greenwashing. The good news, however, is that the store’s bold plan to revolutionize the way we buy groceries–in particular its heavy emphasis on bulk foods with long shelf lives–strongly orients the store away from extensive meat and meat-based products and toward such low-impact (and non-processed) items as dried legumes, whole grains, and nuts. This factor, more than any other, is why the place might very well earn an ecological gold star.

I’m well aware that conventional wisdom celebrates the environmentally responsible diet as one that’s comprised of local, organic, and package-free food. It’s easy, achievable, and makes for good copy in the foodie press. In point of fact, though, the single most ecologically influential decision a retailer or consumer can make to achieve a lower carbon footprint would be to reduce as much as possible its reliance on meat and meat-based products. With rare exceptions, these products are, no matter how they’re produced, the most energy-hogging foods on the planet. What we buy and eat matters far more than where it comes from, how it’s produced, and whether or not it’s packaged. And it’s on this point, more than any other, that In.Gredients promises to do something genuinely original.

It’s an environmentally responsible choice. Meat production accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation. In the United States, the livestock industry swallows 70 percent of the water in the American west. More than half of all antibiotics produced are fed to healthy cattle. The vast majority of the synthetic fertilizer run-off causing the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is used to grow corn and soy to feed to cows. It requires 2500 gallons of water to generate one pound of beef; it takes 13 to grow a pound of tomatoes.

Alternative systems–free range, grass fed, etc.–come with their own environmental issues. Grass-fed cows emit three times more methane than confined cows. Demand for grass-fed beef is leading to the destruction of rain forests in South America. A prominent study has shown that grass-fed beef has, pound for pound, a higher rate of GHG emission than confined cows. Grazing livestock leads to soil erosion. The land requirements are enormous.

Defenders of the alternatives will inevitably argue that cattle, if properly managed, can improve degraded landscape with their nutrient rich manure. This argument–the agro-ecological argument–has two faults: a) it sounds great on paper but is rarely executed in reality; and b) even if it was effectively carries out in reality, it would only be able to produce a very small amount of meat, thus raising the price of meat and leaving the poorest to eat cake. This would certainly be an environmental improvement; but do we want to seek environmental improvement by limiting access to all to a just diet?

One more point, perhaps the ultimate one, environmentally: no matter how an animal is raised, only 40 percent of it is turned into edible meat. The rest is carcass. And eliminating a carcass–as I will explore in a future post–is an inherently energy intensive process.

All of which is yet another reason to go vegan. Make the leap–it’s not a hard one to make–and you will find it hard to believe that you ever ate the way you once did.

Heritage Farm

Earlier this month four of the Squash Blossoms attended the 36th annual conference and campout of the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.

This was our second pilgrimage to SSE’s Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, the primary seed source of our garden, and we stuffed ourselves not only with locally produced food and beverages but also with valuable information and new ideas.

One of the more compelling keynote speakers at the conference was Woody Tasch. Author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing As If Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered, Tasch shared his vision for the potential of Slow Money, an organization he founded (and named after the Slow Food movement) that is bringing people together to talk about money that is too fast, finance that is disconnected from people and place, and methods that can fix the economy from the ground up—starting with food.

According to Tasch, a former venture capitalist, the trouble with today’s style of investing is that the flashing numbers on a stock ticker do not necessarily correlate to anything of tangible value in an investor’s local community. Billions of dollars zip through the world markets every day, bundled into intensely complex financial products, with the result that few investors really understand where their money goes or how it is used.

Speed is the issue, says Tasch. “There is such a thing as money that is too fast, companies that are too big, finance that is too complex. We must slow our money down—not all of it, of course, but enough to matter.” And what matters, he says, is investing as if food, farms, and fertility were a means to restore the economy and our food systems.

Big companies, and particularly big agriculture, cannot keep growing exponentially forever. Such a construct is not sustainable because too many resources are required and diversity is lacking. What we need, he says, is to “promote real diversity for long-term wealth and health.”

How to do that? Foster a “nurture capital industry,” says Tasch. “There is a new generation of entrepreneurs starting to rebuild local food systems, and the capital available to them is insufficient.” Slow Money’s goal is to have 1 million people investing 1% of their money in local food enterprises within a decade.

“If we want the capital to start flowing today, this year, this decade, if we share the belief that we don’t have another generation to wait for ‘them’ to figure it out or be pushed in this direction by disruption or collapse,” he says, “then we have to roll up our sleeves, sink our hands into the soil, and start planting.”

One way to get going, says Tasch, is to read his book and then form a discussion group surrounding the movement’s six principles (he advocates that members sign them), which propose to “enhance food security, food safety, and food access; improve nutrition and health; promote cultural, ecological, and economic diversity; and accelerate the transition from an economy based on extraction and consumption to an economy based on preservation and restoration.”

If joining a book group or signing a list of principles does not appeal, you can also visit the Slow Money website to find opportunities for local investing. If you’re looking for professionally managed funds, Slow Money offers a list of intermediaries and investment products (though they are not necessarily geographically targeted or solely focused on food). For those who want to make a charitable contribution, Slow Money recommends giving to the Soil Trust, which will invest your money alongside other Slow Money investors nationwide, “leav[ing] the financial returns in the trust to be reinvested for the benefit of future generations.”

Although the concept of Slow Money is appealing to many, some argue it is one born of utopian ideas that don’t translate into a viable retirement fund—with returns averaging 3–6% as compared to a potential of 11% with traditional investments. Even some farmers themselves aren’t eager to jump on the Slow Money bandwagon, saying that they don’t want to be bothered by investors with deep pockets wanting special treatment or, worse yet, a say in management decisions. And then there’s historian James McWilliams, author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, who argues, “We have to be wary of thinking small scale is the answer.” According to McWilliams, movements like Slow Food and Slow Money romanticize the locavore lifestyle as a simple fix to a very complicated issue.

But Tasch’s take is that we’re headed for a biological collapse if we don’t switch tracks soon, positing that genetically modified plants and organisms (GMOs) are like financial derivatives: “GMOs are like finance scientists trying to trick the yield on a piece of land. Sure, people will say I don’t know what I’m talking about, that these new GMO varieties of plants are crossbred for less risk because every wheat stalk planted is exactly the same genetically. But I don’t know. I’m not alone when I say that we’re headed for a biological correction similar to the financial correction we just had. Why? You can’t trick risk. The only way to mitigate risk is with diversity. Biological, cultural and economic diversity is the only answer for risk—meaning lots of small-scale, diversified things of all kinds coexisting in a healthy relationship. We’re talking percolation versus circulation; diversity versus monocultures, fertility versus profitability, and relationships versus transactions.”

As Ari Derfel, the executive director of Slow Money, put it: “You have to ask yourself, what kind of world do I want to live in?”

When humans and non-human animals are part of a continuum, rather than qualitatively distinct forms of life, human meat-eaters confront a serious quandary. It becomes incumbent upon us to forge a contemporary justification for carnivorous behavior. Aristotle and Genesis will no longer do. By undermining the long-held basis of inherent human superiority over non-human animals, the science of evolution obliterated the framework within which thoughtful carnivores long justified their behavior. As it now stands, human meat-eaters, unless they reject modern science, support the killing of non-human animals without the slightest intellectual or ethical grounding.

I can’t say I’m a fan of foodie-ism as it pertains to real solutions for the problem of food production, distribution and sustainability. It rankles just a little bit to see people turning food into an expensive hobby when you know that over a billion humans worldwide are starving, to say less of the 45 billion nonhumans being murdered every year for a nutritional need that does not exist. I’m glad that there seems to be a consciousness shift away from CAFOs and industrial monocultures, but sometimes well-meaning people can be frustratingly blind to matters of class or species privilege. Food is not a toy. We live and die by it. Or, as Josh Harper put it: “reading a Michael Pollan book doesn’t excuse you (or him) from having to consider the lives you are taking and the suffering you contribute to.”

Just Food: Where the locavores go wrong and how we can eat responsibly – James E. McWilliams

It’s so easily to romanticize local food and believe that buying local is your personal way of saying “I love you” to nature. McWilliams reminds us that simplistic dichotomies like “organic vs conventional” and “local vs industrially farmed” aren’t very practical because and villainizing the industrial and romanticizing the local ignore the complex realities of both and the important middle ground between the two poles. One of McWilliams more interesting points is about the current debate about “food miles,” This debate often starts (and regrettably ends) with the question: “Did you know most food travels 1500 miles from farm to fork?” Yet food miles, McWilliams argues, are such a buzzword these days not because they are the one true measure of sustainability, but rather because they are easy to understand. More importantly, they offer a romantically simple vision of the solution to our food system: shop local! The reality, of course, is much more complicated than biking to the farmers market and buying some Kale. McWilliams most interesting stat was as follows. In terms of the energy taken to grow food and get it to market, production and processing takes up 45.6 percent of fossil fuel usage, restaurant preparation 15.8 percent, home preparation 25 percent, while transportation is the lowest in energy use at 11 percent. Thus the recent focus on food miles, while well-intentioned, has drastically oversimplified the food system into the friendly farmers market and the evil corporate farm. What I got out of reading this book, and many of the food books I have been reading lately, is that no matter how passionate you are about sustainable healthy food, you shouldn’t assume that the solution will be simple, easy, and romantic. In McWilliams own words: “We should probably also come to terms with the fact that there’s nothing sexy or fashionable about feeding the world on an environmentally sustainable diet. It requires work, thought, and sacrifice.”

The Omnnivore’s Dilemma- Michael Pollan

This was the only book I had with me the last time I was traveling in Mexico, so I ended up reading it three or four times. My friend Stephanie once asked if it was my bible. Not a bad book to be stranded with, I have to say. I have a soft spot for Michael Pollan. Maybe it’s because I used to play Ultimate Frisbee with his son. Maybe it’s because he is a fellow Berkeleyan. More likely it’s because he writes very articulately about things I care greatly about. This is an essential read if you want to understand the dilemmas facing the US food system today: What buying organic really means (or doesn’t mean), why high fructose corn syrup is everything, what it takes to support our national diet of red meat, why the US is so fat, and why fad diets are so big these days. Along the road to exploring the complex and at times frustrating road from field to table, Pollan offers some real insight and thoughtful reflections. Please read this book if you have not already.

In Defense of Food- Michael Pollan

A great manifesto preaching against the simplistic, flawed, and unenjoyable doctrine of nutritionism. As a passionate opponent of fad diets I really connected with Pollan’s arguments from the start. This book provides convincing evidence that eating according to nutritional science is just as bad as eating mostly packaged foods, and most importantly that we must reconnect with the ingrained wisdom of food culture if we wish to enjoy healthy food again. For the list-inclined people out there (myself included) Pollan has an awesome run down of “eaters rules” at the end of the book. These guidelines proved so popular and accessible that Pollan boiled them down into his latest book, Food Rules.

Kitchen Confidential- Anthony Bourdain

If you have ever wanted to know what it is like to be a chef or what goes on behind closed kitchen doors, this one is for you. Kitchen confidential is an unflinching account of Bourdain’s life in professional kitchens. His tale makes the world of the chef considerably less romantic, but considerably more real. Bourdain is a very provocative writer, at one point calling vegans the “Hezbollah-like” splinter faction of vegetarians, who stand against everything he loves about food. My personal favorite section was the “Cook like the pros” chapter, where Bourdain outlines some things that home cooks can do to make their food taste and look better. (Step one, use more butter… ) Kitchen confidential is a great look into the world of professional cooks told in Bourdain’s unique mix of cynical humor and genuine insight. It’s a fast and fun read for hard-core foodies and casual reaers alike.

The Gospel of Food- Barry Glassner

“Everything you know about food is wrong,” or so says the cover of sociology professor Barry Glassner’s treatise on food. This sentiment colors most of Glassners findings. If people believe something about food, he doesn’t. Thus his goal writing this book seems to be aggressively disproving any commonly held belief by any means possible, while presenting very few of his own beliefs or facts to support them. He begins this 200 page long rant with a topic I was inclined from the start to agree with: enjoying food. I totally agreed with Glassner’s statement that the “doctrine of naught,” which makes people judge food by what it doesn’t have (fat, carbs, preservatives) is a useless and depressing way to view food. Food should be enjoyed, Glassner argues. Great. I’m with you so far. He then starts to tear down more “gospels” of food and started to lose me. Glassner is an annoying contrarian, claiming, among other things, that obesity isn’t a health problem, that off-the-beaten-path ethnic restaurants generally suck, and that fast food should not be criticized. This was the first food book I’ve read where I found myself shaking my head more than nodding it. Glassner set out to discredit the contemporary gospel of food, which ends up being a rambling and angry undertaking (What happened to your own advice: enjoy food?). Barry Glassner offers many arguments that refute current beliefs but his analysis is crippled throughout by the fact that his beliefs fail to form any persuasive or even coherent argument of their own.

The UVa Food Collaborative presents “What’s On Your Plate: A Public Forum on Local Food and the Media”, on Thursday, October 7th, from 4 to 6pm at the new LEED-certified Jefferson Scholars Foundation building at 112 Clarke Court.

This free panel will feature three of today’s pre-eminent food writers and thinkers: Marian Burros, food columnist, New York Times;
Tom Philpott, food editor, Grist.org;
and James McWilliams, author, Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.

The panel will be moderated by Benjamin Cohen, historian, agrarian studies scholar, and Food Collaborative coordinator. Be a part of the discussion on alternative agriculture and the media forces that are shaping our perceptions of the sustainable food movement.

A locally sourced reception, highlighting produce from Charlottesville area farms, will immediately follow the forum. The UTS Blue Route and Trolley route both stop directly in front of the building. These are the recommended access points for the event as parking is extremely limited at the Foundation building.

For directions to the Jefferson Scholars Foundation building, visit http://www.jeffersonscholars.org/contact-us/.
For other information, visit http://www.virginia.edu/foodcollaborative.

-Elizabeth Farrell

[...] But it’s worth asking: what are we really talking about when we talk about biodiversity? On the surface, the word signifies the entirety of biological life. [...] But not unlike the terms “environmentalism” and “sustainability,” biodiversity has a turbulent side, one with hidden implications that complicate its value as a precise gauge for land conservation.

Entirety of biological life? Hm, not sure if I agree.

The heroic efforts of ecologists notwithstanding—biodiversity remains an impossible concept to quantify in absolute terms. [...] But critical questions remain: Is this erosion anything new in absolute terms? Is the decline in diversity that we’ve diligently documented and rightfully scorned reflective of genetic erosion as a whole? From the perspective of global biodiversity, does [for example] a salamander really matter?

A wise man once pointed out to me that much of human development and economic growth has relied on replacing ecosystems with monocultures (think clearing a forest to sow grains); a development impossible without loss of biodiverstiy. Notwithstanding:

One school of ecological thought rests on the premise that “biodiversity often peaks” in ecosystems that have been moderately disturbed by human development.

A final concern:

A final concern deals with the fact that, as we expand the built environment, some species will suffer the consequences while others will thrive, or at least suffer less. All of which raises a thorny philosophical question: who are we to decide which species deserve to flourish or suffer more than other species? Given that any sort of development, however aggressive, has the potential to influence an innumerable range of species in innumerable ways, we’re stuck with the task of somehow assigning comparative worth to plants and animals that have far outdated our own existence on the planet [...]

Preserving and fostering biodiversity is a profoundly important environmental challenge, one that will only intensify throughout the century. But because the concept is so difficult to pin down and quantify, preserving it may require doing so through less expansive standards. More general, and policy-applicable, standards such as density of production, extent of open space, public health concerns, and the integration of built and natural environment might serve environmental concerns more efficiently than a concept that, theoretically speaking, has as much sympathy for a landfill as it does a rain forest.

Is a McDonald’s Big Mac better for you than a Chipotle Burrito?  So claims James McWilliams in yesterday’s Atlantic.

His straight nutritional comparison of the above mentioned menu items leads him to this conclusion: Despite Chipotle’s sustainable and natural image, they are actually selling food that is worse than what we find in the most vilified of fast food chains.  What’s more, he continues, this calls into question the credibility of all food movements (sustainable/local/organic) which also claim to be better for our health.  In fact, the virtuous origins of certain victuals are a veil: they are actually just shielding foods that are really bad for you.  Foods that are “attacking” your body, in fact!

McWilliams writes:

How an organization known for promoting responsible food choices can get away with serving a signature meal that exceeds our daily sodium allowance—while the avatar of industrial food actually offers a counterpart that’s not quite as bad for you—is a situation that makes me wonder: could the rhetoric of food sustainability be distracting us a darker reality? Put differently, does Chipotle’s admirable decisions to support small farms when feasible, source all its pork locally from welfare-approved operations, and buy half of its beef hormone-free exonerate their barbell of a burrito from attacking our bodies with obscene levels of cholesterol, saturated fat, and salt?

Given McWilliam’s freely incendiary prose, it’s unsurprising that his article elicits a strong reaction from those of us who don’t think that a meal that contains real, recognizable food items, (including a good deal of fresh vegetables, legumes, and meat that is sustainably produced) is comparable to the industrial creation that is the Big Mac, which, when broken down, looks a lot like the Twinkie.  McWilliams’ first mistake is the same as that of the nutritionists:  He evaluates the nutritional merits of these foods based on their “stats” alone rather than on the big picture.

But I actually do find the premise of this article interesting, so I’ll put my visceral reaction aside in order to examine some of his other methodological flaws.

McWilliams’ verdict (that the Big Mac is better for you than the burrito) is based on the following nutritional comparison:

• The burrito has 31 grams of fat, 11 grams of which are saturated. The Big Mac has 30 grams of fat, 10 of which are saturated (and 1.5 of which are trans-fat).
• The burrito has 105 milligrams of cholesterol; the Big Mac has 80 milligrams.
• The burrito has 2600 mg of sodium (108 percent of your daily allowance!); the Big Mac has 1010 mg (47 percent).
• The burrito has 102 grams of carbs; the Big Mac has 47 grams.

A couple of factors lean in the burrito’s direction:

• The burrito has 54 grams of protein while the Big Mac has 25 grams.
• The burrito totally flushes the Big Mac when it comes to fiber: 68 percent of a person’s recommended daily allowance to 12 percent.

But does it even make sense to compare a McDonalds’ Big Mac and a Chipotle burrito, even solely on their stats?   I don’t think so.

For starters, while a Chipotle burrito is a meal in and of itself, a Big Mac isn’t.  A Chipotle burrito is over three times the size of a BigMac. (The burrito weighs 25.6 oz, compared to the burger’s 7.6 oz.) Obviously, the burrito is a lot more food.  So much so that I rarely find a dining partner that finishes a whole burrito in one sitting.  It’s very common to cut the thing in half and make two meals out of it (I do this myself).  So there’s a logical problem with this comparison: people aren’t eating the entire burrito at once.

The Big Mac, on the other hand, is unlikely to fill you up on its own.  You’ll eat the whole burger while munching on some large fries and sipping on a large soda.  And maybe you’ll grab a McFlurry or an Apple Pie to wash it down.

Secondly, Chipotle allows customers to completely customize its offering of burrito fillings in order to suit their tastes and preferences.  The burrito that McWilliams chose to examine was the “loaded” version: carnitas (pork) with rice, veggies, cheese, guacamole, and salsa.

But there are plenty of ways to make your Chipotle meal much healthier than that.  A burrito bol, for example (which omits the flour tortilla wrap), made up of the carnitas, rice, black beans, grilled peppers and onions, corn salsa, tomato salsa, cheese, and extra lettuce is 665 calories, with 23 grams of fat. That’s pretty respectable for a meal.

If you go the vegetarian route and also leave off the cheese (as I usually do), the same burrito bol is only 375 calories with 6 grams of fat. This dish still contains rice, black beans, grilled peppers and onions, corn and tomato salsa and lettuce.  Plenty of proteins and grains to make up a whole, filling meal, and lots and lots of vegetables.

This is real food.  This is food that doesn’t make you feel sick after eating it.  This is food that actually fills you up and doesn’t produce a sugar spike which will make you crave more in a few hours.  I don’t think there’s any way you can say the same for the BigMac.

One last point, which I didn’t realize but find particularly illuminating:  Pound-for-pound, a Chipotle burrito is actually cheaper.  Commenter revchico points out that while the Big Mac is 45 cents per ounce ($3.39), the burrito costs 30 cents per ounce ($7.75).  And that burrito’s price includes $1.65 extra charge for the guacamole — without guac it is an even better value.  This is really promising given the (usually correct) perception that junk food is cheaper than real, “healthy” food.

I get that news outlets like the Atlantic like to offer contrarian viewpoints.  I usually love to read them.  But in this case, McWilliams’ argument uses some pretty misleading logic simply to make an incendiary point, which discredits an organization that I think is actually doing pretty well, nutritionally-speaking, compared to its competitors.

Are there unhealthy options available at Chipotle?  Yes.  Are there unhealthy options at sustainable, locally-run restaurants?  Yes, of course.  But to say that this “proves” that they are no better than those companies that are working with artificial and industrially produced “food” is both disingenuous and a textbook example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I say to both James McWilliams and to the Atlantic: Come on, guys!  You can do better than that.  Let’s not add to the overly abundant misinformation about food.  People are confused enough about what to eat as it is.

UPDATE: Several commenters have pointed out that I was remiss not to address the issue of portion size.  The Chipotle burrito IS huge.  And, though some people leave theirs unfinished (or make more than one meal out of it), plenty are eating it all in one sitting.  For most of us, that’s too much food — and yes, that’s something that contributes to our collective expanding waistlines.  Eating too much of anything (even when that anything is “healthy”) will lead to weight gain.  And excessive portion sizes are a big problem in most restaurants (yes, even the local and sustainable ones).  That’s a difficult issue to address and one that goes beyond the scope of this post.

And yet: This may get me into trouble, but if you are going to over eat, I’d rather you have one thousand calories of real food than one thousand calories of processed food.  So in the end, I’d say that Chipotle is still offering us a better choice than McDonalds.

Note: For the Chipotle calorie counts, I used the nutrition calculator at chipotlefan.com, the same source that McWilliams used for his article.

Related: The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer responds to this post, and I respond to his response.

McDonald’s vs. Chipotle: Does the Big Mac Win? [The Atlantic]

This post was featured in Fooducate.

Part of Wanderfood Wednesday

Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way into our food get killed off by the strong acids in our stomachs, since they evolved to live in the neutral pH, environment of the rumen. But the rumen of a corn-fed feedlot steer is nearly as acidic as our own, and in this new, man-made environment new acid-resistant strains of E. coli, of which 0157:H7 is one, have evolved – yet another creature recruited by nature to absorb the excess biomass coming off the Farm Belt. The problem with these bugs is that they shake off the acid bath in our stomachs – and then go on to kill us. By acidifying the rumen with corn we’ve broken down one of our food chain’s most important barriers to infection. Yet another solution turned into a problem.

We’ve recently discovered that this process of acidification can be reversed, and that doing so can greatly diminish the threat from E. coli 0157:H7. Jim Russell, a USDA microbiologist on the faculty at Cornell, has found that switching a cow’s diet from corn to grass or hay for a few days prior to slaughter reduces the population of E. coli 0157:H7 in the animal’s gut by as much as 80 percent. But such a solution (Grass?!) is considered wildly impractical by the cattle industry and (therefore) by the USDA. (82)

Even before looking at the literature, I wasn’t convinced that this would be much of a solution. Impressive as an 80 percent reduction may sound, if, as Pollan has told us (in the paragraph before the ones I’ve quoted), ten of these bacteria can kill us, how much good would killing 80 percent of the bacteria do? Cutting a bacterial population of millions by 80 percent would leave many more than the ten required to cause a lethal infection. One wouldn’t expect all of the bacteria in a cow to be ingested by an unsuspecting beef-eater, but substantial risk would remain.

Then, there’s the question of what the literature actually says on the matter. As James McWilliams and Bill Marler have pointed out, a 1998 study by Russell and others has been widely misinterpreted to support claims like the one Pollan makes here. This study found that feeding cattle grass for a few days did indeed decrease the total E. coli populations in the cattles’ rumen and colon and also decreased the acid resistance of the E. coli. However, they did not detect any of the E. coli O157:H7 in the samples isolated from their cattle, even before feeding them grass for a few days. Instead, they did a lab experiment which showed that high concentrations of glucose, like those found in a grain-fed cow’s digestive system, induced acid-resistance in commercially available E. coli O157:H7. From this, the researchers expected that grass-feeding cows for a few days prior to slaughter would decrease the risk of O157:H7 infection.

However, Pollan doesn’t cite that study. Instead, his list of sources cites a book that Russell self-published in 2002, titled Rumen Microbiology and Its Role in Ruminant Nutrition. That book has since gone out-of-print, I don’t have access to a library copy, and I wasn’t able to find any peer-reviewed literature in Russell’s name that directly supported Pollan’s claim.

Even if Russell’s elusive book says exactly what Pollan claims here, a reader might do well to know a bit more. If somebody is trying to decide what to have for dinner and is concerned about E. coli, it isn’t so important what Jim Russell in particular has found. Such a reader is likely to want a more balanced view of the literature, rather than the opinion of one scientist. Russell is far from the only scientist who has conducted studies on the effect of diet on O157:H7 populations in cattle, and numerous studies have cast doubt on the conclusion that grass-feeding cattle reduces the risk of E. coli O157:H7 infection. Dale Hancock and Tom Besser, of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University compiled a review of available evidence and found that the conclusions of the 1998 paper (which were very similar to Pollan’s claim) “have not been corroborated by numerous scientific papers from research groups around the world.”

The review of Hancock and Besser (as well as the popular works by McWilliams and Marler) will give you plenty of evidence that grass-fed beef isn’t immune to the deadly E. coli, and I don’t think it would be useful for me to restate all of that information. Instead, I’ll quote what I think is some of the more compelling evidence from Hancock and Besser:

First, consider that a substantial number of papers by researchers around the world have documented that cattle on pasture or rangeland (i.e., eating grass) have E. coli O157:H7 in their feces at prevalences roughly similar to those of confined, grain-fed cattle of a similar age (Sargeant et al, 2000; Fegan et al, 2004b; Renter et al, 2004; Laegreid et al, 1999) .

They also point out,

Several groups have demonstrated that E. coli O157:H7 has a unique predilection for colonization of the recto-anal junction, different from most other E. coli that colonize cows (Naylor et al, 2003; Sheng et al, 2004; Low et al, 2005; Greenquist et al, 2005).

Thus, even if a few days of grass-feeding reduced E. coli populations in the rumen and colon, that wouldn’t necessarily be reason to expect it to decrease O157:H7 populations. For the most part, O157:H7 lives elsewhere in the cow.

While it’s possible that Russell’s self-published, out-of-print book says something in support of feeding cows grass for a few days to reduce the risk of infection, it’s far from clear that this is the solution to the E. coli problem that Pollan might lead us to believe.

Incidentally, the 1998 study of Russell and others happens to contradict an important point that Pollan makes in the excerpt that I’ve quoted above. Pollan claims that “the rumen of a corn-fed feedlot steer is nearly as acidic as our own.” I found this more than a bit perplexing, because we humans are not ruminants, and we do not have rumens. In the context, my best guess is that Pollan means to say that the rumens of corn-fed cattle are almost as acidic as human stomachs.  However, the 1998 study reported that as the proportion of grain in the bovine diet increased, “ruminal pH remained essentially constant.” Even among cattle on a diet of ninety-percent grain, ruminal pH was above 6, considerably less acidic than the human stomach, which has a pH of less than 4. (The study did report that grain-feeding made bovine colons significantly more acidic.)

As part of the amazing Texas Book Festival, I was invited to be on a panel moderated by the effusive and lovely Corby Kummer. My fellow panelists were Jimmy McWilliams, a professor and author of Just Food. He argues that local food isn’t all that good and that GM crops might be a boon for our society. He also thinks meat eating should cease. Effective immediately. Jonathan Safran Foer is the stellar novelist who recently published a book about his emotional and philosophical issues with meat eating. Finally, there was Jason Sheehan. A total card/character/really great columnist for Westword in Denver. He actually said, “if my customers like meat that was fed eagle eggs, then I’m serving it.” Even the wild west of Austin grew silent at this, then they laughed. Appropriate response.

Then there was me. Like ham in a man sandwich. In the end, I decided the JSF and I have more in common than most vegetarians and carnivores. The whole idea for me, is animal welfare. I want them to have a good life and then they will be more tasty. JSF maybe wants them to stop being tortured on factory farms. It’s not rocket science, he is right. If vegetarians and supporters of good meat could come together, things might just change.

The best part of the whole thing? We got to take over the House Chambers, a giant room where laws get made. I wondered out loud why the public and people like me were allowed to take over the Capitol for Book Fest every year. Turns out the Texas legislature only meets every other year. “If they met more often, they’d just make too many laws,” a young buck explained to me. Ha ha.

It is time for Blog Action Day again. This year’s topic is an easy one for a vegan: Climate Change.

A couple years ago I read “With Speed And Violence” by Fred Pearce, a book that did a great job explaining what “global climate” means. It explained what wasn’t known, various theories about what the linchpin of the global climate actually is, and why no one knows yet which theory might be right. It explained the significance, in terms of carbon and the impact on climate, the melting of the ice caps and the razing of the rain forest. A lot more than this list besides. It was exactly the kind of detailed but not-overwhelmingly-technical look at this huge phenomenon known as “climate” that I wish everyone (especially journalists and politicians) would read.

That book might be a couple years out of date already, but I think the majority of the information it contains has not changed, and it remains the best resource I can point people to who have an interest in understanding how dust storms in Chad add to the fertility of the North American Breadbasket, and why shifting weather patterns could eliminate that source of fertility that we unknowingly depend on. These are the types of things that can’t be explained in soundbites, and which illuminate in garish neon why talking about “global warming” is destructively simplistic. Because let’s get real: we’re not talking about “global warming”, we are talking about “climate change”. That’s a lot bigger, and a lot badder, and whether or not you think that humans are a contributor, it is something that should make you sit up and pay attention, because it is happening whether or not you want your political opponents to score points.

My own education in Biology helped me make other connections. I understand rain forest ecology on a high level; enough to know that the rain forest resources are held in the canopy, not in the topsoil, and what that means when rainforests are cleared for farming. (i.e., a big fail) And the rainforests are being cleared at an alarming rate. For cattle ranching, for palm oil plantations, for coffee.

Maybe the doubters are right, and the shifting climate is within normal for the history of the earth, and isn’t accelerated by human-added pollutants and human-caused alterations. What the doubters should try to understand is that the majority of human history has occurred in a period of remarkable climate stability, and signs are pointing to that stability ending. We all need to understand that sustainability and survival are going to require us to change, and that in the end it probably doesn’t matter what caused it or whether there has been an acceleration. If the author of “With Speed And Violence” is right about there being a tipping point, I think it is hugely unlikely that we, humans, will change our behavior quickly or significantly enough to not sail right past that tipping point.

We still need to protect what we have. Protect the water, air and soil quality from our human-added poisons. We face enough environmental pressures without self-destructing in such a direct way. We need to think about sustainability, not just in so-called “third world” countries, but everywhere. We need Food Not Lawns, we need to think about the Story of Stuff before we consume ourselves to death.

It is clear that climate change is happening:

• Pacific Island Villagers Become Climate Change Refugees
• Polar Ice Caps are melting (even faster than previously thought)
• Observed Temperature and Greenhouse Gas Trends

That’s just the start.

And if you’d like a peek at what we have to look forward to, there is a list of 100 effects of global warming.

There are so many changes we can all make. Reduce the paper products we consume: get cloth napkins, cloth handkerchiefs, cloth utility towels instead of rolls of paper towels. Reduce the disposable plastic products we consume: get To-Go Ware or similar solutions, carry real silverware with you so you’re never caught without, use your non-disposable refillable water bottle instead of purchasing water in plastic bottles. Shop in your closet or from second hand stores instead of purchasing new. Bike or walk if you can; otherwise try public transportation or ride-sharing, and if all else fails with those options, figure out how you can minimize your driving by planning out your errands.

And the big one: go vegan.

I was listening to some Animal Voices podcasts this past weekend as I drove up to Vermont, bringing some former fighting roosters up to Eastern Shore Chicken Sanctuary to be rehabilitated. One of the shows was an interview with the author of “Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly”, which challenges some of the assumptions of the locavore movement. He had a lot of great information to share, some perspectives I hadn’t thought of before, but one of the most powerful moments to me was when he explained that in his research for the book, he came to understand that the most powerful action you could take was to go vegetarian. His pithy statement:

“If you want to make a statement, ride your bike to the farmers market. If you want to make a difference, go vegetarian.”

I’m going to assume he means vegan, because I don’t see how dairy and egg farms aren’t contributing as much if not more to the entire issue as the beef and broiler farms are.

It was his own research that caused him to decide to change his consumption habits. He started writing the book as an omni. That’s a pretty powerful statement to me. We have heard from many sources about the impact of animal agriculture on the environment, but I know that many if not most omnis assume that vegans have an agenda and therefore dismiss anything we might have to say, facts be damned. But here is someone who did not start out writing his book as a veg. His transformation came about because his research showed him what we’ve been saying all along: meat consumption is hell on the environment.

The Animal Voices radio show is an hour long, but it is definitely worth making the time to listen. It might just change the way you think about the impact of your food choices on the environment.

Going vegan is a positive step from every direction. Less harm to the environment. Less harm to the animals. Less harm to ourselves. And it opens up a whole new world of food brimming with deliciousness and fun.

• In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
• Just Food, by James McWilliams
• Worldwatch

Listen right now:

or download an mp3 of the interview.