Ezra Klein says that meat ought to be more expensive. By which he means, presumably, that the country should move toward more humane husbandry. When pushed on the obvious problem (well, what are people who don't have a ton of money supposed to eat?), his answer is that they ought to eat more vegetables.
Obviously, everyone should eat more vegetables. But for one thing, the post entirely ignores the fact that the wide availability of (admittedly) inferior meat is one of the great advances of the last century. Meat used to all be organic, and free range, and humane, and so on. And it was available to a sliver of mankind, who were physically bigger, stronger, and better developed than the rest. Providing meat to the masses was actually a terrific equalizing accomplishment, and it is surprising that a self-described "progressive" would miss this point in an effort to be au courant with currently trendy food localism.
But let's say Klein and people who agree succeed, and somehow, humane husbandry is imposed across the board, and meat prices soar. Klein says that "other things would be cheaper". How does he know this? And how does he know that the newly deprived will make the choices he'd like them to make about food? While Klein may know that tofu is cheaper than chicken (depends on the tofu, and on the chicken, actually, as with most things, and in any case, is it really obvious that cheap genetically modified, pesticidey, tofu is better than cheap chicken?), chips are cheaper than both. As George Orwell observed in his wonderful "Road to Wigan Pier",
"Would it not be better if they [the poor] spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and whole-meal bread . . . ? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. . . .When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. You want something a little bit tasty. . . . White bread and margarine and sugared tea don't nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread and dripping and cold water."
And in any case, while humane beef is all well and good, that movement is all part and parcel with establishing proper agriculture. For someone posturing from Klein's position, all food is too cheap. So under a proper food regime, stripped of subsidies, not only would the grains the poor people are supposed to eat be more expensive (assuming they even knew how to cook them in a tasty way, which I understand from friends who work with food charities in poorer areas is actually a ludicrous supposition) but everything else would too. Milk, cheese, butter, all manner of leaves (Would Klein be cooking "asian asparagus" in February in DC if people ate properly? Umm, no) vegetables, cooking oil.
Now, it might be that the simpler world of less, expensive, food is a better one. We might well be healthier from a fat perspective. Our animals would be happier, and we'd all ingest less pesticides. But it is a much different world than the one we inhabit today, and I suspect it is one people like Klein would not like very much at all.
3/24/2008
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3 comments:
Is the tendency of low-income people to eat particularly crappy, bad-for-you food just a Western one? I.e., perhaps in a food culture that idealizes the steak, vegetables are perceived as inherently inferior even if they are cheaper. I don't think this is so much of a problem in much of Asia and Africa, where poor people seem quite happy to eat lots of vegetables, lentils and grains. (Although long grain white rice ought to be a staple only for rickshaw runners and other people who are burning carbs like mad. But most poor people in the developing world are.)
Orwell was speaking of the Brits, who have horrible native food and in my opinion were the most successful colonizers because the food always was better where they were invading than it was back home.
While certain grains such as wheat and corn are heavily subsidized, many others such as couscous are not, and my understanding is that leaves, fruits and vegetables receive a relative pittance. (California grows a huge amount of fruits and veggies, but only a tenth of the state's farmers -- mostly rice and cotton guys -- get subsidies.)
I think when you are talking about a "much different world" in which poor people happily eat lentils, vegetables and grains, you actually mean a "much different Western hemisphere." (I would say "much different First World," but low-income Japanese don't seem to feel compelled to live on crappy food.)
hi PG - good to see you. Just an initial comment first, which is that I think couscous is just wheat, but I take your point if we just sub in spelt or something.
So yes, I meant different first world, or even more specifically, different United States and UK (world as "state of play" rather than globe). Clearly, there are big non-meating eating populations who do fine, but they also have milennia long traditions of cooking those foods in a way that people will eat them. That's not going to happen here, to my mind, so just making meat more expensive is likely to be deeply problematic.
Oops, you're right about couscous being made from wheat -- I was thinking more about the distinction between relatively high-nutrient types of wheat (such as semolina, which is huge in Asia, Africa and the Middle East) versus the fine flour used in the unemployed man's white bread.
I wonder if food culture can be changed somewhat, though. I understand that the percentage of the British population that is vegetarian went up substantially (by two or three points) due to the mad-cow scare, and curry seems to have become almost as commonplace in the UK as white bread and margarine. Certainly foreign foods become changed to local tastes -- usually adding fat, salt and sugar and tamping down the spiciness or bitterness -- and probably become less healthy in the process. But I would think even the heinous chicken tikka masala is an improvement on white bread with margarine in terms of delivering nutrition along with calories.
(The most embarrassing moment in my recent culinary experiences probably was in line at Whole Foods while there was a sale on Ethnic Gourmet meals and I had the chicken korma, basmati etc. in my basket. The woman behind me asked if they were "authentic," and I told her they tasted reasonably like restaurant Indian food and nothing like my mother's. I would feel like I was shaming my maternal line, except that a good bargain usually beats out "authenticity" for us.)
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