RunningAHEAD - Topic: Define: food (page 2)

perfesserr

Imminent Catastrophe

posted: 10/21/2008 at 6:44 PM

I'm doing just fine on my diet of Fritos and Pixy Stix, thank you.

"Able to function despite imminent catastrophe"

"To obtain the air that angels breathe you must come to Tahoe"--Mark Twain

"The most common question from potential entrants is 'I do not know if I can do this' to which I usually answer, 'that's the whole point'.--Paul Charteris, Tarawera Ultramarathon RD.

√ Javelina Jundred Jalloween 2015

Cruel Jewel 50 mile May 2016

Western States 100 June 2016

mamaofthree

Best Present Ever

posted: 10/21/2008 at 8:02 PM

Quote from TJoseph on 10/21/2008 at 3:49 PM:

Subsidize wealthy grocery store chains with tax payer dollars to build more stores in urban neighborhoods?

Have you ever tried to buy fresh food in a poor inner city neighborhood? I'm not talking about a gentrified, upscale neighborhood here. There are few actual grocery stores accessible to poor urban dwellers in many citiies. The grocery stores that do exist in urban areas tend to be small and have a terrible selection of fresh food. This is a widespread, national problem that's been well-documented. (Not surprisingly, it was a big issue in Baltimore where I lived for several years, but more surprisingly, is a problem here in Charlottesville Virginia, which is scarcely a blighted urban wasteland).

TJoseph

posted: 10/21/2008 at 8:07 PM

Quote from Trent on 10/21/2008 at 3:53 PM:

Fair enough. On what is your opinion based? What do you propose we do?

My opinion is based on my own personal beliefs and experience just like yours is. What do I propose we do about what? "Global warming"? I am not sure there is a real problem here. Our dependence on foreign oil? Build more nuclear power plants, work on other technologies to replace the combustion engine. Encourage the use of electric, hybrid, and CNG cars. Overweight Americans? Promote excercise and active lifestyles. Encourage people to eat healthier without requiring them or paying them to do so. In the end, people should be responsible for themselves.

Quote from Jeff on 10/21/2008 at 3:50 PM:

More expensive for whom? And how are you adding up the social costs? Do health costs fit into your analysis? I don't think anyone knows the answer, but I do think it's important that we have more experimentation with different models of food production.

More expensive for the person buying the product. I am not adding in the social costs and you would have to show there is a social cost to produce grown on large farms vs produce grown on small farms first.

Quote from Jeff on 10/21/2008 at 3:50 PM:

I have a similar sort of question about you claim that mass produced food helps "our quality of life." Who is included in this "our"? Surely not animals. Not small farmers. Not the campesinos in Paraguay who were booted off their land by big agro. Not the city-dwellers who were inundated by the landless peasants. Not the millions of obese children sucking corn syrup. Not future generations who depend upon our ethical choices for sustainability. The quality of life question has to be decided differentially, according to the various affected groups.

You are misquoting me and building a strawman argument around it. What I said was "Without mass production of goods, our quality of life would not be nearly as good." That includes your running shoes, the car you drive, and 99% of the products you use in everyday life.

Quote from Jeff on 10/21/2008 at 3:50 PM:

You're trying to fit this problem back in the same old box: government vs. free market. liberal vs. conservative. You want to transform this problem into an ideological debate where the answers are already known, and sides are already drawn. These categories are old and outdated. No one knows the answers in advance. We need intelligent experiments with a multitude of solutions to know how to grow food more intelligently: some governmental, some market based, some based on gumption and personal responsibility.

No, I am not. If I had to pick a philosophy I would like to see applied to this situation, it would be libertarian and not liberal or conservative.

Quote from Jeff on 10/21/2008 at 3:50 PM:

The problem of food never goes away, but its conditions and possiblities are transformed. The tendency to fall back on vague concepts like "free market" or "government" to "solve" the problem is a way of avoiding the issue entirely--and worse, polarizing the possibility of intelligent exchange between interested parties. Pollan's analysis is just the sort we need because he identifies the new conditions of the problem of food and hypothetically suggests a few provisional and practical ways to perhaps begin working on these conditions. It's not about ideology. It's about practice.

We don't really have a problem with food in the US. Or we have an overabundance that we abuse. Americans simply eat too much and don't excercise enough. There are countries with food problems. They do not have enough food and their citizens die of starvation. Making less but higher quality food on our farms doesn't do much to solve that problem.

Trent

Good Bad & The Monkey

posted: 10/21/2008 at 10:10 PM
modified: 10/21/2008 at 10:11 PM

Quote from TJoseph on 10/21/2008 at 8:07 PM:

We don't really have a problem with food in the US. Or we have an overabundance that we abuse. Americans simply eat too much and don't excercise enough.

Actually, that is the problem. We have obese people who are starving for nutrition and have various chronic illnesses as a result. Simply saying that folks need to exercise more does not solve the problem. We have substantial problems, and I am not sure abundance of commodity and processed food is much better than starvation; the morbidity and mortality are about as high. I agree, mass-produced broccoli likely is cheaper than locally grown small-scale broccoli. Is there a nutritional difference? Hard to know. Is there a difference in social and environmental cost? Given current common large-scale farming methods, probably. The cost at the grocer is different; the deferred costs that we pay through tax-supported subsidies, healthcare dollars, gas hikes, etc, probably switch the balance in favor of the local stuff. We are currently so very incented by infrastructure to use petroleum-based energy, why would we ever pursue alternative sources? Who is going to push us that way? Small business? Perhaps. Big business? Unlikely. The government? Well, perhaps. Yes. Libertarian. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the well-thought-out responses (rather than the usual party-line rhetoric). But government does have a role. Somebody needs to ensure civility, infrastructure, population-based health, education, etc. That all said, the science is pretty clear that global climate change (i.e., the correct term, not "global warming") does exist and is at least partially stimulated by human activities. And now folks on both sides of the aisle are buying into this. But I digress.

I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.

Poor baby

TJoseph

posted: 10/21/2008 at 10:25 PM

Thanks for the response Trent. I would love to get into the global warming / global climate change issue, but I don't have time tonight. I have a last minute business trip. I have to run and catch a red eye to Indianapolis tonight.

Trent

Good Bad & The Monkey

posted: 10/21/2008 at 10:40 PM

Perfect. Let's not hijack this thread. While in Indy, go run in the parks around Lawrence. I just did on Saturday, some fine runnin!

I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.

Poor baby

r2farm

flatland mountaineer

posted: 10/21/2008 at 10:53 PM

Quote from Trent on 10/21/2008 at 10:16 AM:

Pollan's latest. I apologize if you find it controversial. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html

He is quite the writer wish I had time to discuss his whole article point by point.

The whole world said I shoulda used red but it looked good to Charlene in John Deere Green!!

Support Ethanol, drink the best, burn the rest.

Run for fun? What the hell kind of recreation is that? quote from Back to the Fut III

Trent

Good Bad & The Monkey

posted: 10/21/2008 at 11:19 PM

Quote from r2farm on 10/21/2008 at 10:53 PM:

He is quite the writer wish I had time to discuss his whole article point by point.

I am honestly interested in your thoughts, when/if you find the time or inclination.

I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.

Poor baby

r2farm

flatland mountaineer

posted: 10/21/2008 at 11:34 PM

Quote from TJoseph on 10/21/2008 at 3:28 PM:

I agree with ending all farm subsidies. It is nothing but corporate welfare.

I'm a farmer and I have a corporation am I a corporate farmer? Except for a few seasonal truck drivers its a ma and pa operation. Sure seem to put in alot of hours for that "welfare". As for free markets sure bring it on but be prepared for the volatility.

The whole world said I shoulda used red but it looked good to Charlene in John Deere Green!!

Support Ethanol, drink the best, burn the rest.

Run for fun? What the hell kind of recreation is that? quote from Back to the Fut III

beef

Ostrich runner

posted: 10/21/2008 at 11:39 PM

Quote from Trent on 10/21/2008 at 10:40 PM:

Perfect. Let's not hijack this thread. While in Indy, go run in the parks around Lawrence. I just did on Saturday, some fine runnin!

Good times. The parks you were in are my daily runs--surprisingly good trail running if you know how to link them together. I'm optimistic about some of the problems Pollan talks about. Large, sprawled, Midwestern cities like Indy are well suited to the urban farming movement. Progress is slow, but its existence is significant. Farm subsidies aren't necessarily a bad thing. Our farm subsidies are.

http://www.runningahead.com/groups/Indy/forum

r2farm

flatland mountaineer

posted: 10/21/2008 at 11:52 PM
modified: 10/22/2008 at 12:20 AM

Quote from mamaofthree on 10/21/2008 at 10:59 AM:

I'd prefer to see a complete revamping of what foods are subsidized so that soy oil and HFCS aren't the cheapest calories and some policy incentives to be sure that fresh, whole foods are easily available in all neighborhoods to fight the grocery store red-lining and fast food proliferation that exists in urban areas. (and in rural areas, weirdly, though that's discussed less.)

Soy traditionally was not a subsidized crop, recently there were some oilseed tie-ins but soys are not favored over canola, sunflower oil etc.. as far as base payments. Payments are decoupled from actual acres of each particular crop grown in other words a percentage of payments might have been tied to history of a particular crop but has no particular effect on which crop you grow. HFCS is largely a product of research from checkoff dollars, commodity groups, etc, and would have quite an economic advantage without any corn subsidy. The amount of corn subsidy dollars in HFCS is totally insignificant. I could research this if I had more time but would hazard to guess that the value of the corn plus any government subsidy is less than 10% of the cost of manufacture of the product. Keep in mind it competes with subsidized sucrose.

The whole world said I shoulda used red but it looked good to Charlene in John Deere Green!!

Support Ethanol, drink the best, burn the rest.

Run for fun? What the hell kind of recreation is that? quote from Back to the Fut III

Bonkin

posted: 10/22/2008 at 2:54 AM

Loved the article, Trent. Thanks for posting it. I recently gave the Omnivore's Dilemma a re-read and am about to start In Defense of Food. I really like how Pollan's argument goes about fixing our food problem and massively reducing the use of fossil fuels in the food production and transportation processes at the same time. Awesome. I will save my disagreement with the climate change bits for another thread and will just say that I think his argument is just as strong without it - or even better focus on "pollution" terminology. It would be less polarizing and more "politically palatable" that way.

When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?

TJoseph

posted: 10/22/2008 at 9:50 AM

Quote from Trent on 10/21/2008 at 10:40 PM: