The rising costs of food

I have a long running entirely one sided (in the sense that he is unaware of it) argument with Ezra Klein about his "locavorist" policy prescriptions (which, in short, amount to changing government policy to raise the cost of meat). His theory is that if you raise the cost of meat, people will eat less of it, and the environment will be better off. The issue has come back again because of Anthony Bourdain's recent tart comments about Alice Waters, the high priestess of American market driven cuisine. Waters's occasional high-handedness reminds me a lot of Klein's, and it is equally annoying. But in any case, we are in the middle of a great natural experiment in seeing what happens when the price of meat rises in relation to the average person's income (through the unfortunate mechanism of dropping incomes). I am confident that no less meat is being consumed. I realize I don't have the empirics to back me up, but I can at least start my analysis with the observation that the reaction of burger chains (some of the keenest observers of food trends anywhere) has been to provide cheaper rather than less meat. Mcdonald's has surveyed the landscape, and the McDouble is their inimitable answer.

Underlying all this, though, is that the fact that the good food lobby is riven with contradictory and competing interest groups. While they all think they're allied, in reality they are not, and tensions caused by people like Waters are a sympton of the fact that there are many things one may mean by "good food". Consider the below preliminary taxonomy - if pushed, I would put myself in between the taste and localist groups, but with an intense historical sympathy for the advocates of the poor. In terms of practicality, though, the only answer is a humble, incrementalist approach, somewhat akin to Mark Bittman's "less meat-ism". The food situation in so many places in our country is so bad that almost any improvement, whether providing vegetables to those who don't have them, or providing somewhat dubious "naturally raised" meat, is a measurable, valuable improvement to the lives of real people. I disdain the zealots who refuse to consider these modest steps.

1. The environmentalist crowd - The focus here is to limit the harm caused by food production on the global environment. This means less meat and less fishing. To be clear, this doesn't mean "better/natural practices in raising livestock". Indeed, raising chickens or pigs or cows in a humane manner would only exacerbate the environmental impact of meat, because organic, healthy, animals need land and resources. What these people want, ideally, is vat grown, artificial meat.

2. The taste crowd - Their goal is to bring back flavors that have been lost due to the growth of the food industry, from vegetables to meat to fish. They might care about organics because they taste better, but they do not necessarily care about environmentalism. Indeed, if one thinks about it, better tasting meat might mean that more meat is consumed, eventually.

3. The localist crowd - Local food might or might not taste better, but the point is to live within your area, to experience New York, or Virginia, or Lyon, as New York or Virginia or Lyon. Of course, while this is all well and good, true localism condemns millions to wretched food for much of the year (unless, I suppose, one really loves tubers) and rolls back gains made over centuries of economic development (forsooth, our medieval ancestors stabbed localism in the back when they started importing sugar). As such, localism is highly susceptible to hypocrisy (e.g., a "localist" food event staffed by chefs and food flown in from around the country). Local for thee, but not for me.

4. The cruelty crowd - The puritanical allies of the localist and taste groups, the anti-cruelty advocates care not so much about how the meat tastes or where it comes from, but whether it was raised in a way that respects the animal's life. They may think it a nice side effect that humanely raised meat tastes better, but the point is emphatically not flavor. The fissure between these lobbies is illustrated by foie gras, which scandalizes the cruelty crowd, but is positively encouraged by the taste/localist groups.

5. The improving the food of the lower middle class and poor crowd - Another interest group with less glamor under the broad umbrella of the good food movement are those advocates interesting in raising the eating standard of the poor and lower middle class, of persuading people whose food is so often based in restaurant junk food (bad) or on very bad food made at home (a little better) to try something new. The problems here are the lack of availability of decent food in many of the places these people live, and money. Of course, these problems would be made much, much worse by the success of any of the lobbies above. While we, the affluent, might do well to put aside our industrially raised vegetables, the problem for these people is the lack of exactly those things which we're so happy to sneer at.

No knead pizza bianca this morning

2666, again

I finally finished 2666.  The last book is masterful, as Archimboldi floats back and forth before the reader, slipping out of our vision while offering no satisfaction.  The first three books are mostly masterful.   Book 4 is, simply, a pornographic nightmare of death and terror, and I would never read a word of it again.    How would I react were a beautiful meal to include one course of rotten meat? Of course, I would be disgusted by everything.  Should not the same be true here?

Gout

I too am surprised that people still get gout. I hope that Mr. Ozersky isn't serious about the below:

I just want you, Feedbag readers, to know that I won’t be altering my lifestyle at all, and that you can continue to expect the up-to-the-minute coverage of the city’s dining scene that only total bodily dedication can bring.

EDIT: I should note that one of my heroes, Pitt the Elder/Lord Chatham, was afflicted with gout, and I was always touched reading about his efforts to govern despite it. 

Swirling thoughts

Best wishes to Obama. Wow.  But the press coverage is so irritatingly fawning.  He's got a lot of problems to fix - hope he does that.  But a lot of them are problems he has nothing to do with. Well, he can regulate, can't he? But some of the problems were the government's fault.  Not the worst things, surely, those were business's fault.  But stimulus is really not going to work.  Krugman is mocking economists who think stimulus isn't going to work - it's simple math.  But it'll end in tears.  Yeah, probably.

Thought I never tire of working around in my head until I start grinding my teeth

I could take all our wedding guests to some place like Corton and drown them in tasting menus and wine until the cows came home for the same price as some of the "estimates" I'm getting from caterers. 

More to the point, for half of these "estimates" I could drown all those guests plus all sorts of other people in kebabs and falafels, if only there were proper arabic caterers around.

BONUS: Phrases I am tired of repeating to said wedding caterers after looking at yet another inappropriate menu they can't possibly execute:

"You know, if I really wanted to take everyone to Per Se, I'd, like, do that".

A couple of quick notes

Some quick notes while I work on some longer writing projects: 

Candle 79: We visited this vegan restaurant (recipient of 1 star from Bruni) last week.  I very much enjoyed my seitan with butternut squash and pomegranate seeds, while our shared dessert of key lime pie was quite good (the crust held together without butter somehow grew on us, as did the various incarnations of cashew milk/cream).  Above all, it is an extremely comfortable restaurant, and I would return. 

Sweet Leaf Coffee: I visited this new coffee shop on a tip that they brew the apparently iconic Stumptown Coffee.   The coffee was good, the people friendly, and my apple pie comforting (though I do not believe they make it themselves, despite what the signage in the store says about baking on premises.  I could be wrong).  I brought home some ethiopian wondo at the same price as on Stumptown's website, which is quite generous of Sweet Leaf.   They're clearly still working out kinks, though, because I overheard someone who seemed to be in charge explaining things to people who weren't in charge, and also I got the last dregs of drip coffee from the pot (which I should have said something about).   The main downside?  The store is *very* small.  Not really the kind of place people can snuggle up for a while.