Yesterday, on her blog Towards Sustainability, Julie wrote about irony. She said her grandmother (who lived on a farm) fried all her meat in lard, ate dozens of eggs per week, yet had super-low cholesterol levels. It irked her father to no end, since he did everything the media told him to do, such as switching from real eggs to fake ones in a carton, and from butter to margarine, but his cholesterol was through the roof. She also mentioned that French Paradox - the fact that they have always refused to have anything to do with products labeled low fat, lite, or diet, and insist on sticking to the old ways of cooking, using real cream, butter, and always choosing real and fresh over boxed, canned or frozen. So why is it that their rate of cardiovascular disease is so much lower than ours here in the U.S.?According to authors Michael Pollen, Nina Planck, Tosca Reno, and Barbara Kingsolver, it boils down to those two words, real and fresh. Turns out Mother Nature was right all along, and perhaps the big food industry and pharmaceutical company propaganda that tried to convince us that fake was better, was just that - propaganda. When you think about it, you realize that their survival depends on our continuing to veg out in front of the TV with our bags of chips and cans of soda, getting less and less healthy, watching their adds for fake foods and magic pills that will cure everything that ails us. Because, well, what on earth would become of them if we all were to suddenly get up off the couch, switch off our TVs, and go out into our gardens instead? Disaster! Collapse!
Don't you know that they just hate this whole real foods/locavore movement? I bet they've got their spin doctors burning the midnight all right now, trying to come up with a campaign that will convince us all that eating real food is actually bad for us, and was probably the cause of this whole recession we are in, or some such thing. Reminds you of that movie Thanks For Smoking, eh?
P.S. Don't you dare use this as an excuse to start frying everything you eat in lard - you know that's not what I'm touting here!
P.P.S. Many thanks to fromthemaas.com and earthfirst.com for the above images.
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4 comments:
I doubt they hate it. In fact, seems to me the spin doctors have already found a fantastic way to profit from it all.
They call it "organic." They call it "green."
Buzzwords meant to make you feel better about eating entire bags of processed food in one sitting. It's nothing more than an elaborate marketing ploy, which is a horrible disservice to otherwise noble ideas and concepts.
So long as people buy it -- and they do, hook, line, and sinker -- I doubt anyone's losing any sleep over it.
=) BUT that is why I eat full fat greek yogurt instead of the fat free! And it tastes so much better!
Check out the Austin Chronicle article on the movie "Food, Inc."
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:795109
http://tinyurl.com/l9jwc9
You'll **never** eat a fast food burger again. Does Wimberley have a weekend farmer's market on the square or out at the market-days-grounds? I'm so glad that the Saturday market at Sunset Valley just keeps growing in popularity.
http://www.sunsetvalleyfarmersmarket.org/
I did a search on your blog for 'farmers market' and was reminded that TBS also carries farm-raised meat. Do y'all enjoy it?
Egret: Good article! Food Inc. is the movie that we premiered at our big TBS Taste of Spring event, but since I was at my son's graduation, I never got to see it. Yes, Wimberley has a smallish farmer's market every Wednesday afternoon, on the parking lot across from where Market Days is held. I also shop one in San Marcos, a couple of farm stands in Blanco, and Drippin' has just started their own FM. But nothing compares to Sunset and the Downtown Austin markets, so I have to go over there periodically, just to get my fix (and to scope out possible producers for TBS). We have poultry, pork and beef producers selling through TBS now, and it all yummy, but no bison, which is what I'd like to use more of because it's heart healthy. So I'm on the hunt for one!
Teri: I know, I LOVE Greek yogurt!
Chris: I agree, several of us who blog about these things have been discussing how having "organic" and "green" picked up by the big guys is going to make things go in reverse for the little ones it was meant to help, and for the causes of eating real and local, and building sustainable food systems.
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