Fair Trade or No Trade?

If there is one thing that is imperative in the operation of this country it is coffee. Many Americans drink the stuff like water, and there are over 500 billion cups of coffee served worldwide. In addition to the "going green" craze that has hit this country in the form of alternative energy, the 3 R's (reduce, reuse, recycle), and many others, there has also been a huge boom of fair trade coffee. Wikipedia defines fair trade as "coffee that is produced by small coffee producers who belong to cooperatives; that guarantees these cooperatives a minimum price." In a nutshell, it means that the coffee growers in coffee exporting countries are beginning to get more bang for their buck.

In his book Stuffed and Starved, Raj Patel discusses coffee growers in Uganda. Coffee growers in Uganda, at the time the book was written (2007) were able to sell at 14 cents per kilo. The price needed to live a comfortable life is at least 34 cents/kilo, and it used to sell at 69 cents/kilo. At the other end in the US, the price of coffee is $26.40 per kilo. How is it possible that these coffee growers are selling their coffee for almost 200 times less than it is purchased for in the United States? There is definitely a middle man profit in play here. This, of course is where fair trade comes in. Many coffee houses across the country are promoting fair trade including Starbucks, although according to an article I read, only 6% of their coffee to date is certified Fair Trade.

So purchasing fair trade coffee, that's all well and good. Go America, we rock, and all that. But here's my question. What happens to those coffee growers that for some reason are unable to play into the fair trade market? As Patel points out in his book, there is little else they can do to make a living (or somewhat of a living). When we buy fair trade coffee, are we putting these less fortunate coffee growers out of business completely? I understand that they are getting the short end of the stick in the first place, but not enough income is always better than none at all. So keep going to Peet's, keep purchasing your fair trade coffee, but remember that there might be more problems that the fair trade solution doesn't cover.

Mmm Mmm Good

Everyone has a guilty pleasure. Some are more common like Sex & the City or Gossip Girl, others are stranger and less heard about, keeping the definition of the word intact. Guilty pleasures can come in a plethora of categories, from trashy TV shows, to silly hobbies, to Harry Potter. My food guilty pleasure would have to be Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. Everyone to whom I confess my love for this canned wonder has the same immediate response: the real thing is so much better! It's true, I can appreciate the homemade kind, with the stock created from the chicken carcass and the vegetables slowly cooked and softened over a period of several hours, but the good stuff ultimately can't stand up to the 7 line ingredient list of Campbells. I know, here I am, writing a blog about the ethics of eating and I'm confessing that one of the things I love most in the world isn't organic or local, and is so processed it should have a different category other than food. But I'm allowed.

Why do I like it? This was something we tried to figure out in class today when we had an activity in which we slowly and thoughtfully sampled top ramen and diet coke. We had a free write about what it tasted like, our reactions to it, and so on. There were a few grimaces at the sight of the coke and a lot more with the ramen, so I felt a little out of place when I had to pay attention to keep my mouth from watering. Who could blame me? Here we go again, the whole food connected to memory thing. How can I not love ramen, when it is the first warm thing that is introduced to my body after hours of freezing my butt off at the start of a ski race? Anyways, the taste of the coke surprised me, because in drinking it slowly I realized that all I was tasting was corn syrup. Count me out. And the ramen, although liquid based, did make me more thirsty after tasting it than I was before, but I've got a soft spot for the sucker. The Campbell's has the same way of creating a warm oily film over my mouth, keeping the fatty taste lingering and leaving me wanting more.

I'm not usually one to advocate severely processed food, especially after this class, and in most cases I try to stick to the shorter ingredient lists. Alison Leitch talked about the importance in reconstructing the palate to appreciate "slow cooking" in her article Slow Food and the Politics of Pork Fat, because in our society we have become so used to recognizing fatty and salty flavors as tasty. At the same time, because of our fast food nation we have developed a fear of any fat, even good fat, such as lardo, which in Italy is used as "an essential daily source of calorific energy in the quarry worker's diet." The problem in the United States is our fast food is made with fat to taste good and not for nutritional value. It's definitely important for us as a society to attempt to connect what tastes good to what feels good and is good for us. But, remember. Everything in moderation. I can still have my guilty pleasure over the real thing every once in a while.

Three Cheers for Madeleine

Marcel Proust redefined the meaning of a Madeleine in his short writing The Madeleine. This tasty treat is a small cake in the shape of a shell, made from flour, eggs, butter, and sugar. Essentially, all things delicious. At least that is the first definition. Proust has created the Madeleine to have a completely separate definition, creating a symbol for something that triggers a memory. He paints a beautiful picture of a powerful flashback that is catalyzed by this tasty complex treat. It is astounding to me how many connections can be made between food and memory, and how powerful it can be. Whenever I smell a salty chicken broth smell, I will always be reminded of the rainy passover week in April when I eat Matzo Ball Soup, no matter where I am. Even when I eat soups that have that similar saltiness, I get an overwhelmingly familiar sensation, and it takes me a while to realize what it is.

Everyone has at least one food that triggers memory, many have more than one. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes the Chicken McNugget as "a madeleine in the making." He describes going to McDonalds with his family, and how the McNugget is his son's taste of childhood. It is very generous even to say that the Chicken McNugget resembles chicken, with its bland flavor and 38 ingredients, 13 of which, according to Pollan, are derived from corn. How is it that something as beautifully constructed as a Madeleine can even be put in the same sentence as a piece of fried "chicken"?Products like the Chicken McNugget have diminished any possibility to persuade kids to eat healthy. Burger King is trying, with their new apple fries, which are slices of apples shaped like french fries. Really? Has it really become necessary to shape something into a completely unnatural form for it to appeal to kids? And where did those apples come from anyway? Were they in the same refrigerated truck as the nuggets, getting cozy on the several thousand mile trek to make it to the consumers plate? Let's do the Madeleine some justice and create memories of fresh, homemade foods, not corn fried corn!

The Upside of ORT

The summer I turned ten years old, I packed my bags and headed off to Camp Merrowvista, in New Hampshire. I was thrilled by the thought of a new place to explore, but less so about the matching bright yellow raincoat and pants I was forced to wear in the downpour on the first day. Can you say quack quack? Nevertheless, at the end of the two weeks when I returned to Boise, I was eager to tell my parents all about what I'd learned and the experiences I'd had.

That first year of camp was very valuable to me. I learned how to live and work together with other people, cope with homesickness, and I even became more environmentally aware. At camp they not only taught us the joy of composting, but we became conscious of the waste we generated. We called it ORT, short for Our Remaining Tidbits. This included all the food items that we couldn't compost, like meat and dairy. We became aware of how much food to take at meals, learning to take less and come back for seconds. The ORT that was generated at every meal was collected into a bucket to be weighed after the meal. If the ORT for the entire dining hall was under 1 pound, the counselors would perform a song for us. We would each strive to be ORT free, because those who were got to identify themselves by slapping their hands over their heads and yelling "ORT! ORT! ORT!" like a seal, similar to the way my father used to cheer us on at soccer games.

Until last week, the experience at camp pretty much defined my perception of garbage, simply waste as little as possible. Over bread, juice, and chocolate salvaged from a DUMPSTER, our guest speaker spoke to us about the beauty of dumpster diving. Yes, that is collecting food from the waste stream and eating it. Of course, there are boundaries on this concept. Dairy would probably not be the best bet to consume because it is extremely perishable without a refrigerator. But when executed reasonably, dumpster diving can actually be a viable food source!

During our discussion, we defined trash as being at the end of its social life. That is, trash is something that nobody wants, needs, or for which has any use. Taking this definition into consideration, a surprisingly significant percent of what gets put in a dumpster can not be defined as trash. Bakeries constantly throw out perfectly good bread, because they have to keep up with the promise of nothing but fresh products, so the day old stuff gets kicked to the curb. The same thing goes with juice. Supermarkets must discard expired juice, even if it is only minutes past the expiration date printed on the container. Sometimes the juice isn't even expired, it is simply older than the other products that need room on the shelf. Some precautions must be taken, of course, such as ensuring the seal is intact, washing the food thoroughly, and doing a small taste test before consuming large amounts of the product. It is this concept that makes the phrase "One man's trash is another man's treasure" so literal!

The entire concept of eating waste was inspired by what is called punk cuisine. Dylan Clark explains it beautifully in his article The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine, when he talks about how the ethics of eating processed food change when it goes into the trash. Food is put into three categories: raw, cooked and rotten. Punk cuisine is composed of mostly raw foods, because many cooked foods are thoroughly processed. The exception to this is the rotten foods, because "by bathing corporate food in a dumpster...punk food is, in a sense, decommodified."

Whatever the reason for dumpster diving; whether it be for principle like the punks, or simply to reduce waste , what a perfect solution to the ORT problem! Of course, people are still going to generate inedible waste, yes, but a lot of it is edible. By combining this concept of reducing waste and rescuing what is still good, we can kill two birds with one stone. Instead of falsely stimulating the economies of supermarkets by buying them out of canned food for food drives, why not feed the homeless a day-old but yet perfectly safe dumpster meal? We can turn the burden of trash and hunger into a blessing with a bit of resourcefulness!

Through Thick and Thin

One of the greatest things about food is that it brings people together. The classic example, of course is the holidays, namely Thanksgiving. It has always been particularly important in my family, since I am Jewish and we always have sort of a Hannukah/Christmas medley. Every year for Thanksgiving, however, we travel to the home of a different family member to celebrate. Thanksgiving is the time when all my family is together from all over the country, to share and eat even if it is only for a couple days.

It's always mayhem in the kitchen, everyone running around doing various things to prepare for the meal. Jess usually takes charge, directing me towards chopping while she prepares the turkey (or as it was in New Orleans 2005, deep fried turducken). We cook, laugh, and eat, and after the meal suffer together from the food coma.

Another tradition that at first doesn't seem to have much in common with the Thanksgiving is the making of the Obento, a traditional Japanese style lunchbox for preschool children prepared by their mothers. Anne Allison had a lot to say about the importance of the Obento in Japanese culture in her article. The concept of this meticulously created lunch creating a bond between mother and child is a foreign one to American society, but at the same time it is another means by which food brings people together. Allison explains that "Both mother and child are being watched, judged, and constructed; and it is only through their joint effort that the goal can be accomplished." So although the actual eating of the meal doesn't bring the two together because the child is off at school, there is a deeper connection involving the mother's duty in preparing a meal that the child will eat in its entirity.

A lot of what there is to learn about food has to do with it bringing groups of people and even cultures together, but this week I've learned that it doesn't have to be good food to unite people. In fact, strange and even downright bad food does the trick just as well. In class on Wednesday we made Obentos. A lot of the food was strange, like the candied fish that are to be eaten whole and all the variations of pickled vegetables. The neat thing about it was that even though the food was not what we were used to, it got us talking together because we had something in common. I even ran into a few of my classmates after class that I normally wouldn't have talked to had it not been for the strange food. The same thing goes for eating the sometimes underwhelming food in the dorms. Yes, my spaghetti slightly resembled plastic, but at least I got a laugh out of it with the people around me. Whether it's gourmet and delicious, foreign, or just downright bad, the truth is everybody eats and has something to say about it.