sustainability

How rebates and monopolies allow processed foods to dominate school cafeteria menus:

Here in the District of Columbia, children were being fed meals manufactured in a suburban factory until Chartwells in the fall of 2009 introduced something it called "fresh cooked." As I discovered while spending a week in the kitchen at my daughter's elementary school, what that entailed was reheating pre-fabricated meal components such as chicken nuggets and tater tots. For breakfast, children were often consuming up to 15 teaspoons of sugar in the form of processed cereals, flavored milk, cookies and muffins...The manufacturers of those sugar-laden products pay hefty rebates--some call them "kickbacks"--to giant food service companies as an inducement to purchase their highly processed goods. But I have now learned it's not just the lousy food that's fueled by rebates. Just about everything that goes into running a public school cafeteria comes with a rebate check that helps make sure the industrial version of food wins out.

This makes me furious because any nutritionally sane person would abhor these foods. But nutritionally sane people are few and far between. I've seen interviews with dieticians that excuse sugar in kid's food because they say kids wouldn't drink their low-fat milk without it. What's even more scary to me is that all these food service companies, from odious Chartwell to somewhat "sustainable" Bon Appetit Management company are owned by the same "Compass Group." Compass Group serves the world 4 billion meals a year. 

But the list of companies providing rebates is a great resource because if I could engineer a diet to make people sick, these are exactly the foods I'd pick: 

 $ 41,218.07 General Mills: breakfast cereals (mmm sugar flavored sugar)

$ 36,165.78 Kraft General Foods: salad dressings, condiments (mm vegetable oils!)

$ 34,991.20 Country Pure Foods-Ardmore Farms: fruit juices (it has fruit in the name, so it must be healthy right?)

$ 24,561.45 Schwan's: frozen pizza 

$ 21,377.88 Otis Spunkmeyer: muffins

$ 20,717.38 Kellogg's: breakfast cereal

$ 14,324.32 Frito Lay: chips and snacks

$ 13,974.08 JAFCO Foods: breaded chicken

$ 4,388.70 Cargill Meat Solutions: processed beef

The perfect foods to fuel all the fun standardized tests kids get to take:

I’m pissed that my students spend almost a quarter of the year taking tests and that the annual 30 hour test is longer than the Bar Exam, the MCATS, the teacher certification test and pretty much every other test required of adult professionals. And I’m pissed that when a teacher points out the flaws of the test, he or she is accused of “low expectations” and trouble-making.

I’m pissed that the laws are formed by transnational corporations who create curriculum, “advise” on standards, push for accountability and then provide the resources, tutoring and conferences that help people reach a standard that they cannot attain (as long as every question is re-normed for fifty percent). It’s more rigged than a casino and Chuck-E-Cheese combined.
 

I'm glad to see that the government has found a way to make public schools into corporate subsidies. 

There are many reasons I became a vegan, but one of the main reasons was that I didn't want to support the industrial meat system, which is cruel to both animals and people, as well as destructive to communities and the environment. I know this point of mine has been controversial before, but I do believe that conventional meat is more unhealthy, not just because of the fatty acids, but because of other feed additives, hormones, antibiotics, and the continual stress animals are subjected to. I believe science will vindicate this position more and more in the future. The beginning evidence is there, it just needs to be further investigated. 

While I no longer believe that eating animals is immoral and I am no longer vegan, I do believe that animals that share characteristics with us like empathy deserve to be treated with empathy. The industrial meat industry treats neither humans nor animals with empathy. Foragers kill perhaps an animal a day or less, often offering that animals prayers of respect. Slaughterhouse workers kill hundreds of animals a day. It's not acceptable to kill fewer. In fact I know of a slaughterhouse that was shut down because they weren't killing enough animals a day and the USDA said it was inefficient to provide them with an inspector. The consequence is that slaughterhouse workers suffer repetitive stress injuries and there are some that suffer unusual autoimmune conditions as well, though the meat industry has done plenty to cover this up. But another consequence is callousness about life. Some studies have shown that presence of people who kill hundreds of animals a day in a community is associated with higher levels of crime. That doesn't surprise me at all. I've seen the undercover videos of factory farms and the brutality these animals are subject to. Only someone conditioned to accept brutality (or a psychopath) could commit acts like that.

And let's talk about community. As someone with a farm in the family and the desire to live a rural life, I'm loathe to support a system that destroys rural communities, driving small producers out of business (currently the matter of an antitrust investigation) and polluting the land and waters with waste.

Last year Don Mastesz from Primal Wisdom did a paleo on a budget series that I just remembered. The series advocated the consumption of supermarket industrial meat. I remember being rather disappointed, but not saying anything because I don't like getting into political arguments. It was based on a rather callous idea in the first place. He saw a poor family in Food Inc. and didn't believe their claim that they couldn't afford healthy food. He decided to design a low-carb diet based on spending as much money as food stamps provide. 

Some background: When I moved to New York City it was to work in public service. I accepted a salary that placed me below the poverty line. Millions of New Yorkers eat badly. Afford is such a loaded word. Perhaps a lot of these people actually could technically afford decent food if you just looked at their income. But many of them are caught in cycles of debt, not only from perhaps injudicious spending, but from our dysfunctional and uncompassionate health care system. Yes, the government will feed you garbage in public school for free, but when your medical bills come from the diabetes you acquired when you were only 25, it doesn't always pay them. Having gone to the ER when poor before, it's a bit like gambling. You might get your bills dropped when you apply for financial aid and you might get some medicare coverage, but you might not. Then these illnesses also affect many people's ability to work. 

Then there is the area of privilege. Yes, I ate decently when I was poor, but I am also very educated about nutrition and I grew up with a mother who attempted to teach me at least a few cooking skills. Not everyone has these things. 

So the Food Inc people got it wrong. That family doesn't need to eat at fast food joints. They could follow my plan, the whole family would lose body fat, the father would lose his diabetes, they would stop needing dental repairs, and they would then have the money he spent on medications for upgrading the quality of their food.

I wonder if Don would volunteer to come to East New York and actually work with a family on food stamps. The odds are that mom works full time and she was raised by public schools that shovel garbage into children's mouths and teach them the food pyramid without teaching them how to shop or cook. The odds are that there is no dad. The odds are that their apartment does not have the sort of kitchen most of us enjoy nor do they have good access to grocery stores. Given the state of public housing, the odds are that the stove is in disrepair, but maybe they have a microwave. I honestly don't think Don's experiment said much about the state of how the poor could eat, nor did it involve very good food. I really don't think that telling people to eat more factory farmed meat is a good solution to our current food system woes. I honestly believe such people would be very healthy on an affordable no veg oil/sugar diet that includes animal products from good farms in small enough amounts to be affordable. That's how the majority of tradition cultures eat. The truth is that we are going to have to get that into public service food projects (like those that deliver to elderly/homebound people), soup kitchens, and schools. And perhaps a return to home ec in schools would help. 

I try my best to not eat factory-farmed meat and I've been a higher carb advocate for some time now. Eating high-carb allowed me to survive on $10,000 a year while maintaining my commitment to grass-fed meat from small local farms. I also honestly feel better on a higher-carb diet. Meat has important nutrients, but you don't need a lot of it to get these. 

I've also resisted the assimilation of primal/paleo/ancestral with the low-carb community, since I believe they have different ideals and that low-carb has very little to do with the paleolithic or what foragers actually eat, besides the tiny sliver of the paleolithic where humans lived in far north environments and the few foragers of questionable health who eat mainly meat. The stupidity of some of these people is staggering. When I presented extensive evidence that even their beloved Inuit ate plenty of plants, all they could do is say "but vilhjalmur stefansson sayz." Never mind his habit of lying and why are we even talking about this since most foragers and cultures mistakenly cited by "paleo" diet advocates eat large amounts of carbohydrates?

When Don wrote his Farewell to Paleo post, saying he was leaving paleo for a high-carb diet (lol because the evidence that the paleo diet would have been high-carb is pretty damn strong) because of health problems, I didn't connect the dots. But now that I'm remembering his budget diet, it doesn't surprise me that it happened. There are lots of zero carb trolls that claim they are healthy on a supermarket meat diet, but as far as I know, all of those are men. For women, hormonal balance can be a much more tenuous matter. If you don't believe that the hormone-injected animals effect hormone balance, I guess you would also point to the fact they were eating cheaper meats that tend to be higher in omega-6 like chicken and pork. 

Thankfully, Don has come around and posted an update to his posts advocating industrial meat:

7/13/11 update: I decided that I don't want to endorse or appear to endorse the use of any meat produced by conventional methods of feeding the livestock grains, primarily corn and soybeans. Since animals consume 80% of the grain and soy produced by U.S. agriculture, this system drives the ongoing destruction of our topsoil both through crops and through grazing. Animal food production consumes 87% of all freshwater used in the U.S. each year, and thus is the primary driver of depletion of water reserves. This system also produces most of the water pollution occurring in the U.S. Our conventional livestock production system has enormous costs detailed in this article from Cornell University. Since I have known of these costs for more than 20 years, I feel embarrassed and remorseful that I wrote this series and other articles that endorsed the use of conventional animal products.

His wife has also written that she regrets forgetting compassion. This is great news. It's a bit of a shame that Don has gone on to advocate a very low fat diet and Chinese medicine for everyone, but I think it's great that he changed his diet in response to how it made him feel, whereas some low carb advocates would rather dose up with supplements than admit that a good diet probably wouldn't give them constant cramps and other health issues. And I'm glad he's fighting some of the paleo!stupidity, which means the paleo diet made up by people to fit their bias rather than one based on the real data. 

 In The Atlantic, animal rights author James McWilliams takes foodies to task

Although culinary abstinence might sound downright depressing, if not sanctimonious in its own way, it's actually profoundly empowering. The discipline that permanent dietary sacrifice requires removes agency from the producers of our food and places it directly in the hands of the consumer. It is thus, at its core, activism. But foodies want none of it. Sacrifice isn't their dish. They carry forth under the impression that they can consistently have their local grass-fed beef, line-caught tuna, charcuterie cured in a special cave guarded by a troll. And they never—and I mean never—ask the critical Kantian question: what if everyone in the world consumed these supposedly sustainable alternatives to conventional food? What if their supposedly sustainable and socially just diets were universalized? The answer is that, with the exclusive turned universal, there'd be environmental hell to pay.

At paleohacks.com, a user asks "what good is a diet that does not scale?" 

I'd say it's done me a lot of good. It's also done my family a lot of good and a great many others. Maybe not a million people, but for the people who have seen health improvements with this diet, it does matter. 

So where does this kind of thinking come from? The idea that because everyone can't have something, it's no good? Is this some kind of socialist dreck?

I don't know, but I'm just very glad that the inventor of the laptop didn't say "Oh, well I guess not everyone can have one of these right now, so I won't bother making them." If he had, I wouldn't be typing this. I am old enough to remember when a laptop was an expensive luxury and the children in my neighborhood were so impressed that my father gave me a broken one that couldn't even connect to the internet.

Unfortunately, so many people want to reduce the world into an equation, to be able to tell EVERYONE in the entire world what is right and wrong and how we have to solve our problems. Perhaps it's a relic of our tribal past, when "everyone" consisted of less than a hundred people. Perhaps it's an unfortunate side effect of centralized government. I don't know. But there is no getting away from the fact that world is unequal and we need local solutions to local problems.

In some parts of the world population is growing, in others it is shrinking (which The Coming Population Crash points out could cause its own problems). In some parts of the world it's quite possible to grow grain sustainably, in other parts it's more efficient to raise cattle. In many parts of the world, people are making agriculture more efficient, such as Wes Jackson's grain project or this pastured livestock soil renewal program in Africa. 

Many people would be shocked to know that even such low-tech methods of agriculture like composting have come a long way in the past few decades. 

What if someone had just told the African's point-blank that livestock was unsustainable and they should just give it up and grow millet for gruel? I would view that as a gross disrespect of these people's desires, needs, and local environment. I understand that globalization has changed some equations, but while it has made some things more or less efficient, there is no way to make the world flat. 

If you asked me about my desire for public health I would tell you that I'd like to see more decentralization. I'd like to see minimal Federal involvement in school lunches, perhaps just give school districts money to use as they see fit? This would allow states to experiment and see what works. I'd like to see food aid decentralized and focused- no giant shipments of surplus grains to destroy local markets, but instead using that money to invest in local infrastructure (Easterly's Aid Watchis my favorite blog on the topic).

Overall, I'd like to see more respect for people's own choices. Too often this is framed as a bad thing, such as this article criticizing military buffets, but those are false choices. As paleo members of the military can attest, they really are not presented with true choices. 

I didn't get into paleo to save the world. I just wanted to not be sick all the time. I do think there are some broadly applicable health principles at play, but I'm more into small flexible local solutions than trying to get the world paleo. I do think things can get better for the world, but problems will be solved piecemeal. The arrogance of people with centralized solutions has caused more unintended harm than good. 

Don't let people tell you that individual changes and local solutions don't matter. And don't let people tell you that your diet is "unjust" just because everyone in the world can't eat it. Look deeper into their motivations- there is a reason McWilliams isn't interested in the huge environmental impact of California strawberries or the fact that if everyone had a laptop right now it wouldn't be sustainable. That reason is that he's an animal rights activist and like many of his ilk is very much single-minded. 

Edit: wow, a very timely post on Aid Watch. Here is Isaiah Berlin describing the views of Alexander Herzan:

….that no single key, no formula can, in principle, solve the problems of individuals or societies; that general solutions are not solutions, universal ends are never real ends….

…that liberty–of actual individuals, in specific times and places–is an absolute value; that a minimum area of free action is a moral necessity for all men, not to be suppressed in the name of abstractions or general principles so freely bandied about by the great thinkers of this or any age, such as … humanity, or progress…names invoked to justify acts of detestable cruelty and despotism, magic formulas designed to stifle the voices of human feeling and consience.

It's interesting to compare Meat : A Benign Extravagance to the Vegetarian Myth. On the surface both challange animal rights dogma, but Meat is primarily a book about economics and is far more rigorous than the Vegetarian Myth. Unfortunately one thing they have in common is that both authors adhere to philosophies that I would deem somewhat noxious to put it lightly, though Fairlie's in a bit benign.

Behind both of their philosophies is the idea that somehow humans are bad for the planet (some even call us an "invasive species"). Our pleasures are irrelevant, we are a scourge upon the goodness of nature. I first heard about Keith from a lecture given by her good friend Derrick Jensen, a misguided character who would welcome a new Black Death and advocates violence as a way to solve environmental injustice. Her association with that movement is unfortunate. Luckily Fairlie is more an acolyte of a secular form of neo-puritanism advocating the idea that we should live very simply, perhaps similar to 15th century European peasants, spurning "luxuries" and only having a few "extravagances."

But what are luxuries and what is extravagant? One lesson I've learned from studying paleolithic cultures is that humans don't really need very much. Bushmen get along quite well without houses or possessions of any kind. This family in Chad gets by with a tent, a few animals, and meager rations of gruel. Most vegans spurning meat as an arrogant luxury go home to well-lit artificially heated apartments. Why are those OK? I don't know. The whole thing seems arbitrary.

Even a ecoconscious vegan's life in the US seems extravagant compared to this family in Chad. This is their food for an entire WEEK. Their housing and clothing are very simple too.The OED says one of the meanings of extravagant is " 7. Exceeding the bounds of economy or necessity in expenditure, mode of living, etc.; profuse, prodigal, wasteful." The word comes from "medieval Latin extrāvagāt- participial stem of extrāvagārī (or extrā vagārī) to wander, stray outside limits, < extrā outside + vagārī to wander. "

So from the outset, by calling meat extravagant, we establish Fairlie as a complex character. We won't find him at either an animal rights ralley or the local Argentine steakhouse. He's kind of like an old school hippie.

It's funny because in the end people calling things luxuries are often the most arrogant. Last week I had a conversation with a vegan on a blog about The Heifer Project, which provides families in developing countries with livestock. Vegan dude was angry because Heifer sponsored a study that seemed to show that children fed animal products in developing countries did better. According to him "let them eat tofu!" Well, if folks want to chose a bicycle tofu press over a goat, that's find by me. But I suspect they won't. But that's not the point of vegan dude's views. Vegan dude thinks he knows what's best for everyone. I don't know what's best for everyone, though I suspect that goat milk is better for children than tofu. So in the end I think it should be up to people in Sudan to make that choice for themselves. Too bad the world is full of people who want to make choices for other people.

When I was a child my little sister and I sometimes fought bitterly. One day we were fighting over some candy and my mother was so frustrated that she said "Well, if you children can't share it equally, none of you can have it at all!" Besides the obvious lesson here that children who are given candy are liable to behave badly, this reminds me of some common positions in environmental debates. Namely that (insert food or agricultural practice) is bad because it can't feed the world. Sure, feeding the world is an admirable goal, but isn't it a little silly to assume that there is one system that will feed the world perfectly?

And yet,this is taken very seriously in environmental debates. I hear again and again how terrible organic is because it can't feed the world. Or how terrible meat is because of the same. It almost becomes nauseating. Hasn't macroeconmic reductivism caused enough problems in our world?

Meat tries to answer some questions about whether or not meat is inefficient, but in the end you end up with what most of us localists already knew: different production systems are appropriate for different places. There is no one magical system that's going to work everywhere. People should be free to chose the system that works for their own land.

With that, it's still interesting to inject some numbers into the debate. Agricultural production is more complex than people would give it credit for being.

Some animal rights environmentalists would have us think that when you raise livestock you are taking food that humans could eat and wasting it on animals, who convert feed to meat/dairy/eggs inefficiently.

If you've ever had pets, you might notice that animals will eat things that we won't. In the old days of small farms animals served primarily as a way to inedible things into food. Cows can eat fibrous waste products and forage on land impossible to till. Pigs can eat well…pretty much anything (haven't you seen Snatch? *spoiler you can feed humans to pigs!*, wild boars are omnivores). Chickens can eat kitchen scraps.

Some of the waste resources animals can turn into food include
1. spoiled food
2. byproducts from milling, oil pressing, slaughterhouses
3. foods that humans spurn (bruised apples)

Animals turn these things into meat, milk, eggs, and manure. Fairlie calls this level of animal production, that which is a byproduct of plant production rather than as a primary product, "default livestock." I would personally quibble with that, as it reflects an agrocentric view of things that ignores nomadic pastoralism as a potentially ecological livelihood in certain situations.

Vegans sometimes call milk "liquid veal" since veal production is an inevitable part of milk production (though through science this might be eliminated in a future through cheap sex selection). Turns out that with that logic, most vegetable oil is liquid meat! The meal left over from vegetable oil processing is a highly profitable part of that industry because of its value as feed.

One of the things livestock provide is fertilizer from manure. Of course veganic (livestock completely without domestic animals) proponents could argue that some of the waste we are talking about could be composted and turned into fertilizer that way. Fairlie examines some current veganic farms and it turns out some of them do quite well, but others don't. As always, it seems that the ideal system varies from land to land.

The idea that land taken out of production by switching to more efficient food systems would be used as habitat never made sense to me. What are the odds that a farmer who needs less land will let the excess go feral? Odds are that it will be sold and turned into a mall or subdivision, which is what has happened with increased agricultural efficiency in most of the US.

Of course Fairlie and most animal rights folks aren't too concerned with that because they are usually advocates of governmental inventions. Which is ironic since Fairlie discusses quite extensively the havoc created by regulatory capture (when industries lobby for laws that benefit mainly them) and misguided policies. One of the most hilarious is the USDA law that hamburger can't be cut with pork fat. Pigs produce tons of excess fat, whereas grassfed cows don't. Why not make some appetizing burgers using both? The fact it's illegal has created demand for fattier feedlot cattle.

Other more insidious laws are those in response to animal and human diseases. Mismanagement of animal waste has led to several food poisoning outbreaks, such as the spinach e. coli debacle. Laws created in response have discouraged manure as fertilizer and the presence of animals on vegetable farms, which is a shame since properly managed animal manure is an asset.

Without this, one much purchase synthetic fertilizer or set aside large amounts of land to grow green fertilizer.

Some other problematic regulations were created in response to mad cow disease, which banned the feeding of slaughterhouse wastes to livestock. This is unfortunate because slaughterhouse wastes are perfectly appropriate for pigs, who are natural omnivores. Fairlie says this is a result of the "nanny state" but seems to call for regulations when they fit his ideology, which is a shame.

Because of such regulations manure and inedible animal parts have become a liability rather than an asset, though the livestock industry is still remarkably efficient. 

The best parts of this section are those in which he dissects numbers thrown around by various animal rights ideologues. In my opinion those numbers are nothing but veils on a philosophy that's at its core about reworking our system of morals to turn them against humans, but either way most of them are wrong. The most amusing one is the idea that one kg of beef requires 100,000 liters of water to produce. Turns out that number is a bit of accounting gymnastics that would make any product seem inefficient, because it takes into account ever scrap of precipitation that falls upon the area of land a cow might occupy. Hmmm. Guess someone didn't learn about opportunity cost. The rain that falls on grassland isn't going to be collected and sent to people suffering from droughts in Africa in the absence of cattle.

This book is enormously dense and I feel like I haven't done this section enough justice despite having written quite a bit. I'd love to take questions from other readers. Please post in the comments or at our facebook group.

Wil asks "Fairlie talks about default/sustainable production and calculates an individual's "fair share" of total world meat production. Is it unethical to eat more than this "fair share"? Can you justify eating more than your "fair share"? How does population growth play into the equation? Are we obligated to help feed the world? Are we obligated to slow/halt population growth?"

In my opinion population growth is another localized issue. The book The Coming Population Crash is one of the few that treats it rationally and not as if humans are a terrible scourge upon the Earth. The truth is that some countries have more people than is optimal and others have less at this point in our history. Barring total immigration reform, this makes population issues fairly local.

As for the areas that may have optimally high populations, we have a well-accepted model called the demographic transition that posits that during development populations growth increases, but then decreases as having lots of children is increasing dis-incentivized. Women reading this from the comfort of first world countries will understand this quite well. How many of us can afford to have five children?

It also seems odd for an advocate of local food to calculate a fair share based on global factors. Unless you are a radical communist that believes everything should be equally distributed, it makes more sense to focus on valuing externalities properly to make the price of meat reflect its true toll on the environment and then allow people to make purchasing decisions based on their own desires. Let's say Fairlie is in charge of policy and decides to give me a meat quota for the month. I still have the same income. I might make even more unsustainable purchasing decisions in that case, like using the money I used to use to purchase grassfed meat on pretty dresses.

A major problem I just mentioned is improper pricing of meat because of subsidies and other distortions caused by the fact that we assign no value to many natural systems. It shouldn't be free to dump waste in an ocean you don't own. 

Discussion questions from me:
1. What does extravagant mean? What do you think Fairlie means by it? What does it mean to you? What foods do you consider extravagant?
2. Should we use policies and regulations to reduce meat consumption to a default level? Do you agree with Fairlie's definition of default?
3. At what point are regulations part of a "nanny state?"

More blog posts:

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