GoodEater Quick Reader Survey. . . 07/04/2009
Since the Fall of 2008, the GoodEater team has been working extremely hard to create quality communications on issues of food and sustainability. Please help us learn from this experience, and improve our site, by filling out this quick survey on GoodEater's content and layout: - posted by Kyle  “Beer is food,” said Garrett Oliver, Brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, in a recent Gelf Magazine interiew. “As our food system becomes more real again, and people are more concerned with quality than quantity, craft brewing will become a part of that movement.” At the American Craft Beer Fest this past Friday and Saturday, over 70 small-scale breweries like Sixpoint, which brews in a warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn or The Cambridge Brewing Company, a brewpub in Cambridge, MA that distributes its kegs to about 40 restaurants and bars around the Boston area, hawked free samples of libations. 4,000 beer lovers showed up to kick back brews like “Sexual Chocolate,” “Mama’s Little Yella Pils,” or “Paul’s Day Off” two ounces at a time, despite the hazy Boston rain. The merriment felt raw and carnal for a crowd usually bent on picking out the various hop varieties in the nose of a beer.  Beer-goers at the World Trade Center Like other niche markets with highly diversified products, the craft beer industry is so small—five to ten percent of total domestic beer consumption, by most estimates—and its adherents so passionate that producers have to cater closely to consumption trends to stay in business. This year’s style of choice: Sour “wild,” which edged out the hoppy double IPAs that dominated last year. One long-term concern in many brewers’ minds, though, is whether consumers will start weighing sustainable brewing practices over taste and cost. “The availability and selection of organic greens is pretty slim in comparison to non-organic stuff,” says Jason Alström disagrees, who co-founded BeerAdvocate and the American Craft Brew Fest with his brother Todd. So even though Seth Wyman, a Marketing Manager for Long Trail Brewing, and Jon Cadoux Founder and Owner of Peak Organic Brewing, cite “organic” and “green” as selling points for their beers, the fact remains with a smaller selection of organic barley and hops, organic brewers have less options to work with, often sacrificing flavor in order to keep their beers organic.  Behind the Allagash booth “I think people like the option of having an organic beer and having a beer that doesn’t taste ‘organic,’” says Jason Randles, Marketing Manager of Deschutes Brewery. As an Oregon brewery, organic hops are practically grown in their own backyard. But despite this, I find some of their organic offerings lacking. Deschutes’ Green Lakes Organic Ale, for example, is a pleasant Amber, but lacks pointedness despite being brewed with seven different types of hops. In parallel with trends in the sustainable food movement, many brewers are moving away from organics, instead pushing the local angle, a marketing fight that non-organic breweries like Sixpoint and Cambridge Brewing Company (CBC) are best equipped to win. CBC, whose non-organic Imperial Skibsøl toasted lager was the most memorable beer I tasted at the Fest, still vacillate on their definition of “being green.” “There’s different aspects to sustainability,” said Kevin O’Leary, an assistant brewer at CBC. “Obviously we can’t run our facility off solar power like some of the people on the West Coast can. O'Leary was referring to Sierra Nevada, who generate 92% of their energy through onsite solar panels. “We have one of the largest private solar installations in the country. We use hydrogen fuel cells to power the brewery. Waste water treatment, CO2 recovery,” explained David Strickland, Sierra Nevada’s New England Business Development. Sierra Nevada is the second largest craft brewery behind the Boston Beer Company (which brews Sam Adams), but size can be a double-edged sword in brewing. An international corporation like Sierra Nevada, Strickland insisted, can’t afford to go organic. “We will never claim to be 100% green.”  Sixpoint Double Sweet Action Meanwhile, smaller and up-and-coming breweries like Bear Republic from Healdsburg, Calif., Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project from Holyoke, Mass., and Blue Hills Brewery from Canton, Mass. have had an easier time despite – or even because of – the dreary economic climate because of the local brews movement. “Lots of places I’ve moved into want to push the local guy,” says Andris Veidis, Owner and Brewmaster of Blue Hills. “Shipping those beers out from the West Coast or the Midwest, all of a sudden they’re charging $6.50 a pint at a bar whereas our beers are local, they can charge $3.75 a pint.” As for organics, Veidis claims that buying organic hops would force him to raise the price of a six-pack of his flagship IPA (one of the best new IPAs on the market, in my opinion), to $13. “Everyone forgets that if you drink local, then that’s one of the most green products you can purchase,” Jason Alström says. Morgan Wolaver, owner and President of Otter Creek, says that their limited distribution New England brand, sells more beer than his national Wolaver’s Organic line. Sixpoint, while too modest an operation to buy organic hops, recycles its spent grain like most other craft brewers and has chosen to stay small despite its wild popularity in the Northeast. “We ship 95% of our product within ten miles of the brewery, so we’re super green,” says Jeff Gorlechen, a Promotions, Marketing, and Sales Coordinator. “There’s no packaging, no bottles.” I thought about this as he poured me an auburn taste of Double Sweet Action—an imperial version of the popular blonde ale Sweet Action brewed specially for the Fest. It was sweet, for sure, but not cloyingly so. A creamy, bitter peachiness clung to my tongue, the mouthfeel outrageously round and full for a beer so seemingly featherweight. It seems a sadly necessary shame to limit a beer this good to such a small collection of drinkers, but over the past few decades, small batches of intense beer are the ones people have talked about most—Bear Republic's Racer X, Russian River's Pliny the Younger, Lost Abbey's Angel’s Share, Sam Adams' Utopias, Founders' Kentucky Breakfast Stout, Alesmith Decadance, the list goes on. Increasingly, they make their way over fewer states (at least legally), concentrated in what Ricardo Norgrove of Bear Republic calls “well-educated beer markets.” An industry where producers tailor themselves to ‘well-educated markets’ has to find inventive ways to sustain its production practices. Going local, admittedly, isn’t a new idea, but craft brewers do it with incredible precision (the ones that don’t go out of business, at least). Fests, then, are fantasies, where state boundaries are pierced and breweries you’d never find in your home state are pouring cellared, reserve barleywines. Fests like these don’t make me wish that Foothills Brewery, based in Winston-Salem, N.C., distributed in the Northeast. I’m just glad that, once, I got to taste a beer called Sexual Chocolate.  - posted by Syd Just a few years ago, farmers’ markets offered the best deal, both in terms of quality of produce, and bang for the buck. But these days, you can expect to pay at least as much, if not more for your produce as you would at a regular supermarket. Can people still afford to shop at the pricier seasonal farmers markets and get enough food to feed themselves at a reasonable cost? GoodEater is putting me to task.  Strawberries, potted herbs, and squash at the Allston Farmer's Market  Squash only $2/pound! ALLSTON, MA - Week two, and the weather is still making Canadian summers (as short as they may be) seem pretty darn good. I arrive in the parking lot next to Harvard Stadium that houses this market with umbrella and canvas bag in hand and do a quick trip around the stalls. Whether it’s the weather, or because it’s too early in the season, there are only a few farmers around, along with a handful of bakeries and two stands selling honey. I’m early and people are just beginning to set up, but it seems to me that E. L. Silvia Farms from Dighton, MA are one of the biggest vendors here. The summer squash ($2/pound) catch my eye immediately, I buy a bright yellow one weighing about a half pound. My first dollar spent. Moving down their stall I see some very good-looking, and also very giant bunches of lettuce. Iceberg, green leaf and romaine are all present but knowing Henry (my guinea pig)’s preference for the slightly heartier exterior leaves of romaine I grab a head costing me $2.50 – just slightly more than a conventional head at the supermarket, and less than the organics at Whole Foods.  Lolla rosa, green leaf, and iceberg. Beets are one of those vegetables that are good almost year round, but the small ones with tender greens in early summer are the best. Complete with big tops, they cost only $3.00 a bunch. I love sautéed beet greens more then I enjoy the actual beet but I’m trying to like new things so roasted beets (or perhaps even thinly sliced raw beets?) are in my future this week. Next up: freshly dug potatoes. $2.00 for a box, or $1.00 a pound loose. I grab a pound of loose potatoes and start dreaming about home fries this holiday weekend almost immediately. Handing the smiling farmer my crisp $10.00 bill I realize I’ve spent two thirds of my budget already, I’ll have to ration the last $2.50 if I’m going to make it through the week.  Beets! The next stop I make is at Dragonfly Farms where they’ve got a large variety of potted herbs, as well as some garlic scrapes and pea tendrils. Much as I’d like to, I can’t get both on my budget, so I flip a coin and go with the tendrils. Though depending on the farm and the time of year you’ll see English pea, snap pea, or even fava bean tendrils, these particular ones are the young shoots of snow pea plants. They taste somewhere between spinach and snow peas, and are good both raw, and sauteed. At $2.00 for a good-sized bag my budget has been pretty much decimated - I’ve got $.50 left. But seeing as I was $.25 over last week, I’ll pocket the extra cash and call it even. As I make my way out of the market, I notice some strawberries and even a few apples from Lanni Orchards but it’s their half pints of raspberries that catch my eye. I hopefully approach the farmer and ask for the price but at $5.00 a half pint there was no way they are in my budget. Will I be forced to go all summer with no fruit in my diet?  Market Menu, Week two: Monday - Pea tendril sesame oil stir-fry Tuesday - beet and potato hash Wednesday - Caesar salad with poached eggs Thursday - beet salad with local honey vinaigrette Friday - summer squash and pea tendril pasta Saturday - beet greens with garlic and olive oil Sunday brunch - home fries and eggs (over easy, of course) The Allston Farmers' Market is located at N. Harvard St. & Western Ave. Fridays, 3pm to 7pm, June 19th through October 30th Urban Foraging: Mulberries 06/30/2009
- posted by Kenji   Last week I left my car parked outside my office, and returned 8 hours later to discover that it was completely covered in what appeared from a distance to be bird droppings. But as I got closer, I realized that it wasn't bird droppings. I had, in fact, left my car directly under a mulberry tree, which the wind and rain had kindly shaken for me, loosening the berries and depositing them on my hood, making this an altogether much more pleasant state of affairs than I had anticipated. Mulberries are better than bird droppings in two key ways. Firstly, they are marginally easier to clean off your car. Secondly, you can't make a tart with bird droppings. After weeks of urban foraging limited for the most part to edible weeds, I'd finally got my hands on something a little meatier. Something I could in fact make an entire dessert out of. Mulberries themselves resemble blackberries, in that they are multiple fruits, and dark purple in color when fully ripe. However, they grow on a tree (rather than a bush), and have a unique musky aroma. When you happen upon a fully-ripe mulberry tree (I've so far seen two around Brookline, MA, and two more around Brooklyn, NY, and that was without even trying), you should have no problem collecting about a quart of fruit within ten minutes. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to walk under a mulberry bush without getting hit by falling berries. A quart, and ten minutes is about what you'll need for a mulberry tarte Tatin - just about the easiest fruit pie known to man.  First off, a little berry segregation is in order. Pick out and discard all the white and pink ones (or consume them if you want. They don't taste good, but are mildly hallucinogenic), then carefully wash and dry the dark ones. A salad spinner works well for this. Make sure you pick out the majority of the little green stems that may still be attached to the berries. A little bit won't hurt you, but they won't help the flavor none. I like to make my tartes Tatins in a good, heavy cast-iron skillet. They heat evenly, they can go straight in the oven, and they look pretty to boot. But you can use whatever heavy, oven-proof skillet you've got. The first step is making a caramel. Cover the bottom of your pan with a layer of sugar around an eighth-inch thick. You can use whatever type of sugar you like. Just stay away from the Splenda. It'll make you grow hair on the soles of your feet. Place your pan over medium heat, and cook without disturbing until your sugar starts to melt. This is the only tricky bit in the recipe. Here's the deal: as the caramel cooks, it'll darken, becoming more and more complex, and better and better tasting. It'll keep doing this until it doesn't. The trick is to figure out that delicate spot where you've maxed-out flavor and complexity, but haven't yet started to burn it. bear in mind that if your pan is not quite thick enough or has dark spots on the bottom, it may heat unevenly, and you'll have to start gently swirling it once the sugar liquefies. If you are at all unsure of how dark your sugar should be, err on the side of too light. For point of reference, Adults: you're aiming for around color swatch #2155-10 (Desert Sunset) in the Benjamin Moore family of paints. Children: compare it to your "mango tango" Crayola crayon. Once your sugar has reached the appropriate stage, the hard part is over. Now just dump your berries into the pan, sprinkle them with around a half cup of sugar, give the whole thing a good shake ore two to mix/even it out, the top it with whatever kind of pastry you like. A classic tarte Tatin would be made with apples and a pâte brisée, but you can use regular American pie crust, cookie crust, or even store-bough puff pastry if that's the way you want to go with it (nobody will judge you - promise!). Just spread a circle of it out over the top of the pan, shove the whole thing in a hot oven, and bake it until the top is golden brown and the berries are bubbling away.  Here comes the funnest part. Once it's out of the oven, let it cool for a couple minute, then place a large plate upside down over the top. Using a folded kitchen towel in each hand (unless you want to burn your hands or drop hot mulberries all over your favorite pet), quickly, carefully, and decisively flip the whole thing over so that the crust is now on the bottom, and the sweet, saucy, gooey berries are on top. Call your friends, eat with ice cream, a glass of port, and plenty of ardent fervor.  - by Lingbo Li  Stirring the pot, a cooked crayfish, and mutton kabobs.  Lamb skewers on the grill getting seasoned. June 22, SHANGHAI – Walk down any street in the Pudong district, and you’ll be tempted by a veriety of snack shops that specialize in single offerings year round. Come June, xiao longxia, "tiny lobsters," start making their seasonal appearances. While Shouning Lu, a street across the river in the Puxi district is the one most famous for its spicy preparation of the diminutive crustaceans known to English speakers as crayfish, there is no shortage of them in Pudong either. I happened to run into a small shop near my apartment which sells them by the kilogram (26 RMB/kg, or about $3.80 USD). It’s owned by Mr. Ma, who runs the "Maji Fresh, Instantly Boiled Lamb Meat" – a restaurant entirely run by members of the Hui ethnic minority, who practice Islam. As a result, the restaurant does not serve pork, and there's a heavy focus on mutton - mutton hotpot, mutton kebabs, and though they're not on the menu, sometimes you'll see them making mutton dumplings for dinner. The kebabs come crispy, fresh off the grill, and bursting with fat. I can’t resist ordering a few skewers along with my seasonal half kilo of crayfish, which come piled into a silver tray with a bowl of chile oil and vinegar for dipping.  Plastic gloves required. The first trick to eating the crayfish, I soon discovered, is to make judicious use of the plastic gloves they provide you with. Most of the meat is in the tail and to get at it, you need to break it in half, peel off the shell, give it a quick dip in the chile oil and vinegar that comes served on the side, then suck out the spicy, aromatic white meat underneath. After eating my fill, I moved outside and sat down on plastic stools and a folding table with Big Liang, the chef, as he recounted the process involved in their cooking.  Big Liang The crayfish themselves come from the waters of Jiangsu, a coastal province that borders the North of Shanghai, famed for its crayfish fisheries. But the cooking method that Big Liang employs is from further North in Beijing, where he trained as a cook. There are two basic components to cooking them: the oil for frying, and a vat of intensely spiced water that the cooked crayfish are bathed in until they emerge fragrant and spicy.  Crayfish in their seasoned bath. First, the oil. He cooks a mixture of whole chilis, garlic, and chili paste in soybean oil over low heat for three hours. After straining, the crayfish get cooked in this seasoned oil for for two to three minutes at 185 degree Fahrenheit – an extremely gentle heat, which helps the crayfish completely avoid the problem of rubberiness that can plague shellfish. He then drops the cooked crayfish into a vat of water which has been boiled with a hefty does of spices.  Piled high on the street. Though I couldn’t exactly translate all of the Chinese spices (and some of them he was being plain secretive about), the water was more or less flavored with the following: over ten Chinese medicinal herbs, Sichuan peppercorn, ginger, parsley, star anise, black pepper, hot chiles, cloves, and cardamom. After emerging from their bath, the result is a supremely tender, highly seasoned morsel of meat that combines the sweet, brininess of the ocean with the pungent heat of the spices, all cut with a sharp acid bite from the vinegar dip. The juices from the crayfish inevitably drip down your arms and splash your dining companions as you rip the tails open. It's a messy meal, but somebody's gotta eat it. "Maji Fresh, Instantly Boiled Lamb Meat" restaurant 341 Mudan Road, Pudong New Area, Shanghai  - Posted by Kenji If you've been following GoodEater since the beginning, you may remember the little post that started it all. Well, some folks over at the Vegan Forum certainly noticed it! For context, look back at the original post, which documents the process of taking a duck from live and quacking to the table. After debating over whether or not it made me a "better" meat eater or not to take responsibility for the death of the animal I'm consuming, one of the more militant of the group finished the conversation with this gem: "He is a nasty, sick, b@stard that hopefully will have the same done to him. THEN and only THEN will he be able to FEEL what the poor duck felt. He can then blog to his hearts content about it...oh sorry he'll be dead." I certainly expected a bit of flack for my quack attack, but death threats? - Posted by Kenji This past weekend, both Joshua and myself had the pleasure of attending the wedding of Clayton Martin and Katie Wirtz, two very dear friends of ours. It was held on the shore of Lake Michigan in Traverse City, MI. Featured at the wedding was another thing dear to my heart: hog. This particular pig was a 300 pound Tam from a small (as in four pigs, a dozen cows) farm Elk Rapids, the next town over. For more photos, join our facebook page! Ok - less talk, more drool.   (top) The 300 lb. hog was a little too big for the grill, so we had to saw his hind quarters off to get him ready for his 16 hour stay. (left) Here's one of his live brother's, still rooting around in sh*t on the farm   (top) Father of the bride and a local restaurant owner removing any extra hairs with propane torches. (right) This thing gives off buckets of fat as it cooks. The drain on the grill was at a steady trickle all night.   (top) 16 hours later, he's ready for carving. The stone in his mouth keeps it open during cooking so that you can shove an apple in there afterwards. (left) The groom, his blushing bride, and their best man. (below) Delciousness and deliciousity combined.  Hint: Go for the cheeks. "Bliss Points" and Packaged Foods 06/25/2009
- posted by Joshua Dr. David A Kessler served as head of the FDA under two presidents and is famous for taking on giant tobacco companies. Kessler's new book, “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite”, targets "Bliss Points", or the artful layering of of fat, salt, and sugar, in order to make packaged and fast foods "Super Palatable".  Kessler gives us new vocabulary for understanding America's food addictions and the food industry. In this week's NYTimes review, the journalist Tara Parker-Pope paraphrases his thesis by saying: “food scientists [employed by food companies] work hard to reach the precise point at which we derive the greatest pleasure from fat, sugar and salt.” Kessler describes a Snickers bar, for example, as: "'extraordinarily well engineered.' As we chew it, the sugar dissolves, the fat melts and the caramel traps the peanuts so the entire combination of flavors is blissfully experienced in the mouth at the same time." While cooking, I've personally thought about the idea of "super-palatability" in terms of the ability for super sweet, rich, and salty flavors to become masked through balance, until the food tastes normal, but your body is loving it. For example, in Coca-Cola or in Pad Thai, the high levels of acid hide the quantities of sugar or fat. Pad Thai in American restaurants has as much oil, sugar, and carbs as eating a huge slice of cake! The addition of vinegar/citrus juice and salt, however, turns it into a seemingly savory food. Meanwhile, your hunter-gatherer brain thinks you just hit the jackpot. The review (and perhaps the book?) does not capture, however, the role of brands and marketing to children - critical components of this complex. Packaged food companies and fast-food chains rely on developing positive associations for their brands by unloading these Bliss Points on a young demographic. (I would like to cite my trip to Burger King last weekend; the store was saturated with Transformers posters, free kids toys, and a Decepticon-endorsed picture for the "Quadicon" - a quadruple Whopper!) Were it not for this youth-targeted brand-building, you and I would unlikely be craving Oreos, Coke ("Open Happiness"), Snickers, and Whoppers as adults, now that our health-awareness and palates are more sophisticated.  NYTimes The architects and pushers of this food, and the work we face in battling this industry, parallels the showdown Kessler experienced with Big Tobacco. Yet food is a more insidious target. Junk foods, eaten occasionally, are far less problematic than cigarettes. The addiction is more psychological than chemical. And comfort foods are part of normal eating since time immemorial. This is why developing the vocabulary and the discourse is so critical. One can criticize food corporations until the cows come home, but you will never regulate away "Bliss Points". So I ask two questions: 1. How are Bliss Points in junk and comfort foods different from the balances targeting by a quality chef? (There is a discussion happening right now on this topic on a separate NYTimes blog post, and commentators seem to feel the real difference is only in the use of natural vs. artificial ingredients.) 2. What types of awareness or mindset is required in order to maintain the pursuit of these super-palatable Bliss Points at healthy levels. Eating Summer for $10 a Week; Week One 06/24/2009
- Posted by Syd Just a few years ago, farmers’ markets offered the best deal, both in terms of quality of produce, and bang for the buck. But these days, you can expect to pay at least as much, if not more for your produce as you would at a regular supermarket. Can people still afford to shop at the pricier seasonal farmers markets and get enough food to feed themselves for a reasonable price? GoodEater is putting me to task.  My challenge for the growing season: Shop at the farmer’s markets around Boston for my household produce (enough to feed seven meals to two adults) all for a budget of $10 a week. And I mean real vegetables – not just 7 meals worth of kale.  Week one: the Central Square Farmer’s Market in Cambridge. It’s summer in Massachusetts so no surprise – it was pouring rain. I did a quick spin around the market, to weigh my options. Strawberries are pretty much the only fruit in season and are offered at several stands, but are unfortunately priced out of my budget at $3.50 a pint. I’ll have to make do with a few free samples. After asking the farmers from Parker Farm and CSA for recommendations, I made my first purchase – a bunch of carrots ($2 – with their tops, of course), and a massive head of Napa cabbage ($2), which they suggested for coleslaw, sautéed with garlic and ginger, or the base for a hearty veggie soup. The carrots were lovely (if a tad small) and what’s more, the tops happen to be Henry (my guinea pig)’s favorite.  Next stop: at Dick’s Market Garden, where I bought some broccoli at $2 a pound, and spent $1.30. Buying produce by the pound as opposed to the head is great if you want just enough broccoli for a single meal. Broccoli is also one of those vegetables that really benefits from eating as close as possible to harvest, before it’s natural sugars have had a chance to convert into starches. Radishes came in at $2 a bunch, with nice big tops, and this time Henry’s not getting any. Buying root vegetables with edible tops makes sense. You get two completely different meals for the cost of one. I like to eat my radishes as Fergus Henderson recommends: plain, with a pot of soft butter, and a dish of Maldon sea salt. With radishes this good, you don’t need anything else. Tossed with a simple vinaigrette, the leaves will make a quick peppery salad later in the week.  It’s a little early in the season for sugar snap peas, and the actual peas within the pods are on the small side, but the pods are sweet and crisp, so I bought a third of a pound for $1.95 at the Kimball Fruit Farm stand, leaving me $.75 left to spend – just enough for a bulb of kohlrabi from Hutchins Farm (full disclosure: it cost $1.00), a vegetable I’m totally unfamiliar with. Fortunately, the nice ladies at the stand suggested peeling the bulb and grating it raw into a salad, and sautéing the tops in a stir-fry. Fruit is still a little outside of my budget, but hopefully as the season wears on, the larger variety of fruit available will bring prices down.  Market Menu, Week One: Monday- Broccoli and sugar snap pea stir fry Tuesday- Kohlrabi leaves sauteed with garlic Wednesday- Shaved kohlrabi and napa cabbage “kohl”-slaw Thursday- Radish top salad w/ mustard vinaigrette Friday- Quick pickled carrot sticks (tops for Henry) Saturday- Radishes with butter and sea salt. Sunday brunch- Broccoli and Parmesan omelet The Cambridge/ Central Square Farmers Market is located in Parking Lot #5, Bishop Allen Dr. & Norfolk Street02139 Monday 11:30am to 6:00pm 6/1/2009 through 11/23/2009 - posted by Kenji. All images courtesy of CIW.   On June 15th, over a dozen activists involved in the sustainable food movement, including Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and Rob Kenner, director of the recently debuted “Food, Inc.,” penned a letter to Steve Ellis, the CEO of Chipotle, the fastest growing fast-food chain in the country. On the surface, Chipotle sells itself as an ethical restaurant that carefully sources all its ingredients “so that when people go to Chipotle, they can rest assured that they are getting the very best food.”  But do they really live up to the claims of their public relations department? According to the writers of the letter, “naturally raised meat – important as it is – does not trump decently treated human beings.” The problem they have is with the treatment of the tomato pickers in Immokolee, Florida, where the fast food chain sources its tomatoes, who work under grueling conditions for little pay to provide our winter tomatoes. I must admit that proper treatment of the land and animals are first and foremost what matter to me – those are the physical factors involved with ensuring that our food supply is sustainable. But can one in good conscience still buy “organic” tomatoes if the pickers are made to endure slave-like conditions? Follow the link for the full letter written on behalf of the the Coalition of Immokolee Workers. Dear Mr. Ells, We write with admiration for your efforts to create a socially just and environmentally responsible restaurant chain. We applaud your goal of sourcing "food with integrity," food that's "unprocessed, seasonal, family-farmed, sustainable, nutritious, naturally raised, added hormone free, organic, and artisanal." Chipotle points the way to a new business model for national-scale restaurant chains: rather than scouring the globe for the cheapest commodities, restaurants should source in a region-appropriate way – bolstering and not undercutting regional food production networks. Yet for us, naturally raised meat – important as it is – does not trump decently treated human beings. We are outraged by the working and living conditions we have seen in the Immokalee area of Florida, source of some 90 percent of the winter tomatoes consumed in the United States. Many of us have visited Immokalee, and see it as a stark example of the vast power discrepancies in our food system. In the winter-tomato market, a small number of very large buyers dictate terms to the seven or eight entities that control land in tomato country; those growers, in turn, squeeze the workers in brutal fashion. Real wages have fallen dramatically in Immokalee over the decades and now hover well below poverty level; housing conditions would not be out of place in apartheid-era South Africa. These are the normal conditions, experienced by thousands of workers in south Florida. No one can be surprised that in some extreme cases, right now, some of the people who pick our tomatoes are living in what can only be called modern-day slavery: held against their will and forced to harvest tomatoes without pay. In this context, Chipotle cannot claim the same integrity for the tomatoes it serves as it does for its meat, much less guarantee its customers that the tomatoes in its burritos were not picked by slaves. Continue Reading… | The hub for information and conversation on sustainable food.
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