This was originally published on MedPageToday.com.
On Christmas, I couldn’t eat anything.
No, it wasn’t the flu. And it wasn’t because of some fad diet.
It was a film.
A couple days earlier, I watched Food, Inc., a revealing documentary on big-business agriculture, co-produced by Eric Schlosser author of Fast Food Nation, and starring Michael Pollan, a leading expert on food and food policy from the University of California Berkeley.
It covered a range of the related issues: Cattle crammed together in industrial farms, feeding on fodder made from reprocessed beef. Sick chickens made top-heavy by hormones to enlarge their breasts that can’t even stand up in dark, cramped coops. Crops genetically engineered by one dominant company to be resistant only to that company’s pesticide.
None of these practices shocked me, in theory. I had heard them all before. Here at MedPage Today, I’ve covered several disease outbreaks linked to foods contaminated by deadly strains of E. Coli or Salmonella. Five years ago, after a Mad Cow Disease scare that was traced to farms that fed their cattle reprocessed beef parts, I wrote a feature on a farmer in New Jersey who refused to feed his beef cattle anything but grass — the diet cows and other ruminants are adapted to.
But after the film’s visualization of these issues, it was hard not to see the feces-smeared fur of industrial cattle every time I looked at the steak on the Charlie Brown’s gift certificate I bought a relative for Christmas.
As soon as the movie ended, I resolved to make a greater effort to learn where my food comes from.
And what better time to start than Christmas, when family shoves one baked or processed good after another onto your plate.
Luckily, we follow the tradition of our Italian heritage with the “Seven Fishes” dinner on Christmas Eve, a slightly healthier choice to begin with than meat, right?
Well, one of the sillier scenes in Food, Inc., was on a fish farm where tilapia were routinely fed corn — which was perhaps genetically modified. Or grown in soil full of super-resistant strains of bacteria from industrial cattle manure.
What about pasta — my uncle’s famous spaghetti with garlic and oil. Lots of healthy grain, no antibiotics necessary to grow it.
But there could be a pesticide issue. And any health benefits from grain are likely gone with the grinder — our spaghetti was made from refined grains.
Shrimp? Mercury. Fruits from the chocolate fondue spread? Pesticides. Venetian cookies? Forget about it. I wouldn’t bore myself attempting to read that ingredient list, but I’d bet my Christmas gifts it contained several processed, corn-based products.
So what can the omnivore do? The movie doesn’t answer that, other than by offering some suggestions to eat local. But that raises a whole host of issues in itself.
I doubt local farmers are using fertilizer that doesn’t come from the manure of industrial cattle, with traces of hormones. And they aren’t barred from using pesticides — unless they’re trying to get classified as “organic.”
Still, the organic label is vague. I’ll always remember from my grass-fed beef interviews that the organic label is awarded if the farm has enough space for the cattle to graze. True, it restricts hormone use. But it doesn’t require that the cows be kept outdoors all the time, and doesn’t restrict grain or other fodder that’s not indigenous to a cow’s diet.
Even if local farmers don’t use pesticides on their veggies, and feed their cattle only grass, one still has to take into consideration the farmer’s land — and this is particularly relevant for New Jersey, which is infamous for its amount of Super Fund sites. Contaminated soil and groundwater could easily find their way onto your dinner plate.
And now it’s also fashionable to calculate the carbon footprint of your food. More questions to add to my list next time I go to the local Paterson, N.J. farmers’ market — how much methane do your cattle expel into the atmosphere annually? How many thousands of miles does your topsoil travel before it’s spread on your fields?
After a couple of visits, the farmers would probably start closing up their booths as soon as they see me.
Several family members heard my arguments for eating better, but said attempts to know where food actually came from would be futile.
Rather than feeling resigned to continue the same old diet, I did some research and found a couple helpful resources. Not all of them address every single issue I’ve raised here, but they are a springboard.
The Centers for Science in the Public Interest recently published a book in conjunction with Food, Inc., on improving your diet. The chapter on “Making Change” is particularly helpful. If you’re attached to eating meat and dairy, it recommends eating beef from non-industrial farms, eggs from uncaged hens, milk from cows that graze on grass. Don’t eat foods, of course, from animals that have been given hormones.
Fruits are trickier, since almost all have been exposed to pesticides. Generally, experts say to eat only fruits that are in season. And be wary of fruits grown in other countries, which may not have the same pesticide regulations as the U.S.
I’d never been convinced of a need to stay away from “genetically modified” foods, because in some ways this practice can be beneficial. Golden rice, for example, can reduce vitamin A deficiencies. And flood-resistant rice can prevent hunger in developing nations.
But watching Monsanto bully farmers into growing only soybeans that were genetically altered only to be resistant to a Monsanto pesticide was infuriating.
I’ve always been a disciplined eater, so imposing a few more restrictions shouldn’t be too challenging. Although it’s now approaching lunch time and I’m wondering who, exactly, in the cafeteria I can talk to about where they grow the produce that I’ll be having in my salad.
