And Now a Word About Food…

Monday, September 26, 2011

Thanks to my friend fivecats for sending me a tip about this weekend’s op-ed by Mark Bittman in the New York Times. I think might agree with it 100% — that doesn’t happen too often around these parts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/is-junk-food-really-cheaper.html

I think I could excerpt every paragraph and say that’s what I’ve been saying for years. Here’s one:

The alternative to soda is water, and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative.

Here’s another:

The smart campaign is not to get McDonald’s to serve better food but to get people to see cooking as a joy rather than a burden, or at least as part of a normal life.

Amen.

(And speaking of food, and amens, here’s an interesting project that’s getting ready to move into the building where The Scrap Exchange lives: Feed My Sheep / Bull City Urban Market. (And they’re in the Pepsi Challenge if anyone wants to go vote for them. It sounds like a great project.)

2 Responses to “And Now a Word About Food…”

  1. Valerie Says:

    What a great project! I loved both their current status and their future goals for the place. Also found the Mark Bittman piece well worth reading. So much of this is about what used to be common sense and practice, which is now not so common. There are so many people, even of my generation, that don’t begin to know their way around a kitchen and find it very burdensome. A few folks I know were discouraged in their early cooking attempts by the response of their family to the food they made, and just gave it up.

    Unfortunately, a lot of folks are finding themselves in economic circumstances they could not foresee, and even Little Caesar’s 5 dollar pizzas are too much for the budget. I’ve been helping out a few with some very basic things to cook, and they are beginning to actually enjoy preparing food that their family seems to enjoy. They are especially enjoying coming home to good food smells in the house, which draw them to the table later on.

    Thanks for sharing this.

    Peace, Valerie


  2. Always happy to contribute to a blog posting. : )

    Tom (and all five six of the cats)


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