There's a lot to take into consideration when you eat—what you just feel like having, the cost, the ethics, the season, the nutritional content, the environmental impact. You know this. And as a desire to know what's in our food has converged with an inability to know that very information, the number of factors to keep in mind while decision-making has reached a new peak. A fever pitch.
But recent guides have promised to calm us down, to sing through the din.
Following New York Magazine's July cover story, "The Neurotic Eater's Grocery List," comes Wired's August "How to Eat Now" issue: "Your Scientific Guide to Eating Like a Good Human in 2016."
Was Wired upset to have been "scooped"? How different is a neurotic eater from a scientific one, anyway? And what story can we expect next month?
Where NY Mag owned its fear-mongering, practically parodying it, Wired includes more seemingly utilitarian articles: easy rules for cooking in a drought; a mock-up of food labels that would prioritize actually useful information; one-bowl meals that pack a nutrient punch (developed by Bon Appétit and Buzzfeed alum Alison Roman); and a list of our modern food crops' wild ancestors and their genetic advantages (wild tomatoes are heartier than conventional ones, for example).
But it promises a lot more than these (or any amount of) articles can cover. The opening sentence of the intro blurb is ominous—"Eating today is almost impossibly complicated"—yet then, just a few sentences later, the graf concludes, "So relax, pick up your fork, and chow down."
Wait a minute: How did we get to the point of relaxing? How did we go from acknowledging the complexity to relaxing and "chowing down"? These articles certainly don't work to put my mind at ease.
While the issue presents a few serious problems facing the food system like droughts, big agriculture, and foggy labeling (but almost completely ignores others: waste, welfare, climate change), the solutions are superficial at best. The "Power Bowls" section, for example, opens with the line, "You are depriving yourself of the vitamins and minerals you need" and the statistic that 90% of Americans don't get enough potassium. Sounds scary, right?
But the recipes that follow are not altogether practical for a real person with limited cooking knowledge who wants to make them at home. The "Blood Booster" instructs you to pile warm buckwheat soba into a bowl with steamed broccoli, then pour hot dashi broth over top. But how do you cook the soba? And what is dashi? The "Bone Builder" has you add a piece of seared rainbow trout to a bowl with wilted kale. Wilted how? Seared how?
And the "easy rules for drought-friendly cooking"? One advises you to "Grow your own [leafy greens] to cut the impact of a nice salad even more." But how? And where and when? Another recommends seeking out dry-farmed produce: But is it more expensive? Is it available everywhere? What about the carbon footprint of having it shipped? Chicken is recommended over beef—you'll use 15% of the water needed to grow a steak in a pound-per-pound comparison—which seems like an easy enough change. But refer back to NY Mag, where Nick Tabor and James D. Walsh have told us that, "Chickens are pumped up with more drugs than an ’80s Soviet Olympian." Okay, so no chicken or beef.
What's left? Where does all this information leave us? How many people have the space and energy to grow their own salad greens? How many people know how to sear rainbow trout (or how to source it) without any guidance? How many people will even do as much as give up avocados because they're terrible for the environment and tied into cartel lordship? Why are we still writing to a utopian audience that has the time, money, and resources to make these changes?
This issue, and NY Mag's, too, asks you to either devote an incredible amount of time and research to every food decision or to sit with the guilt of knowing you're not eating "like a good human." I'd argue that that's not productive, and that they're a bit misguided in who they're trying to reach: Maybe these two publications already know that their readership (largely educated and fairly affluent, I'd guess) will pick up a copy that promises health-based shock value. But if their real priority is to make an impact, rather than sell issues, I'd say that they need to develop some practical advice that will make its way to a more mainstream audience—that can be adopted by people who struggle to find 30 minutes to cook dinner, let alone dry-farmed tomatoes at the local supermarket.
And maybe that means putting more onus on industry, too. So that it's not only about all of the decisions we make at the store (though I understand that consumer behavior determines what companies produces, yes), but also about holding our businesses responsible. They should feel the pressure, too. As should our politicians.
Part of the problem is that this paranoid, scientific approach removes us from food. Just think: How convoluted, how indecipherable, has our food system become that we need a scientific guide (or a neurotic one) to fulfill a basic human need? I couldn't help but remember the skepticism of Joan Gussow—the woman who is responsible for much of food movement maven Michael Pollan's core philosophy—in regards to the intersection of food and tech:
What we need is a more direct contact between people and the earth. Computers can't move physical things. [...] Food is a material object that needs to be moved around by people so it can get to your mouth.
I think food technology is the future—an inevitable one, at that—but I still want to know that there are tangible tweaks I can make in my own life, if not to cleanse myself of guilt, then to know I'm making a better decision, even if it's not a perfect one.
Here's what I'd like to see more of, and what I think food media should be working hard to provide: Real, manageable tips that can be applied to daily cooking, to weekly shopping, that are better choices. I want to know about the big problems, of course, but I'd also like to see solutions, fixes, options that are both big and small. So that it's easier to take action and harder to write these issues off as too big, too scary, too inaccessible to do anything about.
What kind of information would YOU find helpful? Tell us in the comments below, and we'll do our best to provide it.
On Black & Highly Flavored, co-hosts Derek Kirk and Tamara Celeste shine a light on the need-to-know movers and shakers of our food & beverage industry.
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Written by: Sarah Jampel
Popular on Food52
33 Comments
For your information, it is possible to raise salad greens in a container in a window (as long as you don't have a brown thumb). It is simple and doesn't take a lot of energy. I am quite lazy and I am able to do this. If you have a deck or small outdoor space (you don't even need a ton of sun for salad greens) you can use a bigger container. It certainly is no more difficult than raising a houseplant. This summer I raised enough lettuce in a container to give me a salad every day. Salad greens also can be grown indoors in a cool house during the winter without needing a great deal of extra light other than what you can get through a window. With the abundance of basic gardening information online (including how to grow veggies in pots), most people should be able to do this if they have the urge. If you don't have the urge to do it you won't. But this is not utopian and is quite basic.
I am living on a limited income and the last time I was in at the local food bank, they were giving vegetable seeds away. In addition, SNAP benefits also pay for both vegetable plants and seeds. Dirt is generally free if you are willing to dig it up, but if not, then fairly inexpensive potting soil is available in a lot of places. Cheap pots are also available (heck, most people are struggling to recycle the black pots they get plants in). They may not look ornamental but will do the job.
The people who don't take 15 minutes to put some soil in a pot are not couch potatoes, as you may suggest. They are the single parents in inner city Baltimore with no access to a grocery store, much less a seed source. They work 60 hours a week. They may have a chronic illness or a child with a chronic illness. They make minimum wage and struggle to pay bills. Their idea of lettuce is the pale shredded stuff in a bag, because their parents also lacked a grocery store or the know-how to cook asparagus. I implore you to scrutinize food media, and the food system as a whole, from a perspective other than your own.
As for what information I'd find helpful . . . . I'm not entirely sure what you have in mind when you use the word "helpful," but one question that seems overlooked is, could enough food be produced to feed everyone on the planet were all currently arable land farmed using "sustainable" practices? I realize that this inquiry may be beyond the expertise/capabilities of the Food52 staff and likely contributors. I raised it during a live chat Food52 hosted a few years ago, and although one person on the hosting team promised to get an answer, no one did. (I wasn't surprised.) If I remember correctly, Tim Lang at University College London has done research on this over the years. ;o)
How much information people need varies on the person. Does Michael Pollan need more information on where a tomato came from than some mom putting tomato on her kid's plate at a picnic table in a park?
People come to Food52 for different reasons. Some people are definitely here for recipes, inspiration, instructional tips, etc. Others are here for specific columnists or features. For sure, there is a substantial amount of people who sign up to ask one question on the Hotline, then never ever post again.
It's really Food52's editorial team to decide what they want to be. It's up to us as reader to decide how much of it we actually read and agree with. For sure, Food52 has a lot of competition out there, at least on the editorial content side, it's their call what sort of readership they want, the type of content that gets published here, and a general philosophy of what they are trying to accomplish using what type of methodology.
1. Better process photography of the dish being made (mentioned previously) - Most recipes are terrible with this, just showing a bunch of beauty shots of the final product. Here's one recipe with decent process photography:
https://food52.com/recipes/53929-smoked-trout-and-avocado-salad-toasts
Unfortunately, article clipping services like Evernote do not gracefully handle photo slideshows, so you only see the beauty shot in the clipped recipe article. But, when you press the "Print" icon on the Food52 page, it *DELETES* all the photos and just turns it into text. That's worse than using the web browser's native "print page" function.
2. Better headnotes - I touch on this in one of my comments below, giving some context about the dish.
3. Mass-based measurements - alongside conventional measurements (typically volumetric Imperial units). If possible, mass-based measurements in metric. One can purchase a cheap metric/Imperial kitchen scale for $15-20 at Amazon.com.
4. Nutritional information - yeah, I know this is a reach, but would it be helpful? For some who have dietary restrictions, for sure.
That's fine, I was young once. That's just the way life goes.
Another example is the "make this dish and eat it all week" articles. That is specifically instructing someone to make an excessive amount of something and then suggesting various ways to eat that some item for an entire week.
Utopian audience? Food52? I dunno about that.
Clearly, a significant part of Food52's target audience is Americans with a certain amount of disposable income to be able to purchase the items in the Food52 store. I'm sure they like it when readers from outside the USA visit (and hopefully contribute some comments), but seeing as how the store can't ship to these people right now, they aren't the primary focus.
I've certainly seen some atrociously written recipes (ingredients not presented in order which they are used, weird combinations of metric mass measurements, Imperial volumetric measurements, Imperial mass measurements, weird temperatures/timing). Sometimes user-contributed recipes languish here for years before someone comments that an ingredient or preparation step is missing. I guess there are a lot of sleep-deprived recipe writers out there.
Like many sites, this site will freely criticize other sites, write critical cookbook reviews, then wail when someone criticizes them. Certain staffers here react very poorly to criticism, even when constructive and/or SOLICITED. They claim to welcome reader feedback then refuse to view negative comments as an opportunity for improvement.
This happened multiple times during the last Piglet contest; I abandoned following those proceedings because of extremely poor reactions from certain Food52 staffers.
If you publish something online -- food article, Instagram selfie, revolutionary manifesto, a joke, whatever -- you are open for comments, both positive and negative.
A lot of American food media is hyper focused on presentation and sourcing.
Gone are the days of the old Cook's Illustrated magazine.
*WHY* something is done.
What shortcuts are available and their implications.
What doesn't work.
The history of this dish/technique/etc.
Variations, both local and around the world
Changes to the ingredients/process over time
Over at Serious Eats, they publish these sort of articles regularly. Kenji is particularly good at this, he is a bonafide food scientist, employs scientific methodology and presents data well, including photos of the analysis process.
Video. You can write two pages on how to roll out puff dough or you can demonstrate it in a one-minute video. Watch this Japanese YouTube video on gift wrapping:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qi8ZXUH_wY
Imagine it was an audio podcast in Japanese.
Then imagine if it were an article written in Japanese with five beauty shots of the wrapped gift.
How wider is the audience for the video? How much more helpful is it?
Editing video is laborious, a video like that one probably had about 40 shots, cropped/sped up, and stitched together with a few informational interstitial screens thrown in.
http://www.sunset.com/food-wine/kitchen-assistant/chicken-sandwich-recipe
Here's the written recipe:
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/grilled-chicken-sandwiches-creamy-jalapeno-sauce-potato-chips
A neat collaboration between Serious Eats and Sunset, wonder if this portends to a future change for Kenji.
See what other Food52 readers are saying.