Keep It Simple, Stupid
When I was little, few things made me happier than being outside in the garden. Although I don’t have any photos of it, the absolute best thing (as far as I was concerned, anyway), was picking sweet peas.
Those little pods each spring were absolutely magical, no two ways around it. Sun-warmed and popped open mere seconds after plucking, they popped into my mouth more often than they ended up in my basket, I’m afraid. To this day, no other peas can compare, and it isn’t just because of the sentiment of sepia-toned memories—there’s quite a legitimate case to be made for those peas, and it is very simply this: the less food travels before it’s eaten, the better it is.
But how, exactly, are we qualifying and/or quantifying the value of “better”?
While busily kneading baguette dough at work yesterday, I heard a news story on the radio about the Sunday Times printing an article about a recent study finding that organic food has no additional health benefits over conventionally-grown food. The presenter then went on to discuss how he’d long thought that was the case, and generally made a hash out of presenting everything that this article actually had to say. Not entirely surprising given that his entire purpose in even bringing it up was to spur discussion, as it was a phone-in radio show and as such, he wanted to be as provocative as possible. He did mention that this article was going to be picked up in a national publication here in the US as well. I don’t recall which one, but the first thing I thought upon hearing this was, it’s important to keep in mind that while there are many similarities, the same rules for certification of things labelled “organic” are not necessarily the same between the US and the UK, and therefore it’s difficult to make such a study completely equivalent.
The second and far more pressing concern this raised in my mind was the fact1 that, as far as I can tell, people who actively choose to purchase organic foods generally do so because they’re concerned about more than themselves—a point that this study fails to take into account. The most obvious component of this is of course concern about chemicals and pesticides, which affect not only us as end consumers, but also the people responsible for harvesting our food from wherever it’s grown, no matter whether we choose conventional or organic methods of food growth. Any way you look at it, this argument is a legitimate health concern both on the part of consumers and workers who harvest the food we consume, and it’s an area in great need of further research.
This, of course, leads into the other major reason that I believe most people who purchase organic foodstuffs do so, and that’s ethical and environmental concern—something which admittedly doesn’t fall under the rubric of what this study intended to cover, but is worth noting if we’re considering the problem of organic consumption as a lifestyle choice holistically.
In Michael Pollan’s justifiably acclaimed The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Better for what? If the answer is “for my health” the answer, again, is probably—but not automatically. I happen to believe the organic dinner I served my family is healthier than a meal of the same foods conventionally produced, but I’d be hard-pressed to prove it scientifically. What I could prove, with the help of a mass spectrometer, is that it contained little or no pesticide residue—the traces of the carcinogens, neurotoxins, and endocrine disruptors now routinely found in conventional produce and meat. What I probably can’t prove is that the low levels of these toxins present in these foods will make us sick—give us cancer, say, or interfere with my son’s neurological or sexual development. But that does not mean those poisons are not making us sick: Remarkably little research has been done to assess the effects of regular exposure to the levels of organophosphate pesticide or growth hormone that the government deems “tolerable” in our foods. (One problem with these official tolerances is that they don’t adequately account for children’s exposure to pesticides, which, because of children’s size and eating habits, is much greater than adults’.) Given what we do know about exposure to endocrine disruptors, the biological impact of which depends less on dose than timing, minimizing a child’s exposure to these chemicals seems like a prudent idea. I very much like the fact that the milk in the ice cream I served came from cows that did not receive injections of growth hormone to boost their productivity, or that the corn those cows are fed, like the corn that feeds Rosie [the chicken we ate for dinner], contains no residues of atrazine, the herbicide commonly sprayed on American cornfields. Exposure to vanishingly small amounts (0.1 part per billion) of this herbicide has been shown to turn normal male frogs into hermaphrodites. Frogs are not boys, of course. So I can wait for that science to be done, or for our government to ban atrazine (as European governments have done), or I can act now on the presumption that food from which this chemical is absent is better for my son’s health than food that contains it.
There’s a lot more to this question than can be answered comfortably in a single blog post, or even in a series of blog posts—or in an article like the one above. It’s also a highly personal matter as to what you choose to do with this and any other information that you take in and process, and what lines of enquiry you choose to follow from this informational waypoint forward.
For me, though, it all goes back to those peas—probably the single greatest sense-memory I have regarding food and my childhood. It’s not feasible for me to grow everything I eat myself, but I try to grow as much of it as possible, and to shop locally for the things that I can’t. And by “shop locally,” I don’t just mean going to the store up the street. I try to patronize places like farmer’s markets and purchase things that came from as close-by as possible. Obviously, it’s a battle I’m not always going to win, and obviously, there are always compromises to be made. But Pollan makes a large number of valid points as regards the question of “organic” food in the US, not the least of which is the fact that so-called “industrial organic” foods still follow the same paths to our grocery stores and tables that more conventionally-grown produce does. Therefore, if your chief concern is for the carbon footprint your food is leaving in its wake to get to your table, you’re not much better off purchasing those organically-grown kiwi fruits from Chile than you would be purchasing conventionally-grown ones. If your chief concern is flavor, while the organics may have had an edge over the conventionally-grown produce at the point that they’re grown, that edge disappears in shipment.
Which brings me to a point I’ve believed for a long time: simplicity is best. Just because you can get tomatoes in January doesn’t mean you should. Things are seasonal for a reason; not only are they at their peak of flavor, but they’re also arguably at their peak of nutrition. Nature selects for robustness, and weaker traits die out over generations as species evolve. The less steps that are involved between getting the food from its source to your plate, the better off it (and you) will be.
Drawing back to what I was doing when I first heard about this article, those baguettes are a perfect example. Baguettes are traditionally made from a simple lean dough comprised of just four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast. That’s it. This recipe dates back to at least the mid-19th century, and has continued and will continue into the forseeable future. Since the French are very protective of their national heritage, they’re very strict about the rules of what can go into an official baguette; those of us who bake bread professionally but are not French can merely nod in agreement from abroad. A true baguette is a thing of beauty—light, airy, fluffy, and delicious, with a crispy, delightful crust and a surprising amount of complex flavor within. Warm from the oven, they’re a rhapsody in crisp brown paper, teasing you incessantly with their delicious aroma as you take them home and try hard to resist ripping them open then and there. And why are they so good? Because they’ve kept it simple over the years.
Food for thought, and indeed, thought from food.
- as some commenters on the original article do mention, but as the radio presenter failed to mention [↩]
Janaki
