Cupcakes: A Little Bit of Naughtiness

Can cupcakes possibly be healthy? I think this question is important. To me, this question strikes at the very root of our food culture.

I think cupcakes are adorable little confections. A New York Times article calls them "happy-food." I think of a cupcake and I envision the joy of frosting, the pleasure of licking something sweet, the smile on my little niece's face when I hand her a mini-cupcake.

Of course, I do not eat cupcakes. I am much too fanatical, too wildly opposed to eating a food that lacks any nutritional value whatsoever. And cupcakes, decidedly and obviously, lack nutrition.

Perhaps this is why, as the Times article suggests, cupcakes get such a bad rap.

"Cupcakes," the article states, "have recently been marched to the front lines of the fat wars, banned from a growing number of classroom birthday parties because of their sugar, fat and empty calories, a poster food of the child obesity crisis."

And yet, I have to admit, this trend disturbs me. Have we lost all sense of perspective? Have we so messed up our relationship with food that we now consider even cupcakes utterly unhealthy?

What makes a food healthy after all? Isn't this question at least as much psychological as physiological? When we eat, do we not nourish body and soul?

A cupcake is a small indiscretion. (I love how cupcakes have become sex-symbols for some bakers, how the idea of eating a cupcake in the middle of the afternoon equates so perfectly to the idea of a mid-afternoon quickie...a little bit of naughtiness!)

A little bit of naughtiness...

So is it really so bad to eat a cupcake? (A cupcake, after all, lovingly prepared, is not FoodCrack.)

The time article states the question this way: "can emotional value, on occasion, legitimately outweigh nutritional value?"

I think so, on occasion. (I'm not writing an article in defense of cupcake gluttony. I'm merely saying, Hey a cupcake ain't so bad!) I take my cue from an unlikely source, Paul Pritchford, the author of Healing with Whole Foods.

Pritchford writes:

"Do not be so rigid or self-righteous about your diet as to annoy anyone. A bad relationship is more poisonous than one of Grandma's sugar cookies. If you desire such a treat, it is better to have it than stuff yourself with rice to suppress the desire. This causes mental anguish and arrogance."

This, coming form a guy who suggests, as an optimum practice, eating a small dessert only after a "meal" of a "celery and lettuce-based salad."

The Real Cost of Food

FoodVibe readers might have read Michael Pollan's recent article on food policy in The New York Times magazine. The article was written as a letter to the next “Farmer in Chief,” then unknown. However, in a pre-election interview with Time Magazine Barack Obama cited Pollan’s article:

"I was just reading an article by Michael Pollan,” he said, “about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats...sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and that are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs..."

Obama merely cites the problems Pollan exposes. But Pollan's article also offers an "elegant solution," which involves the following initiatives:

1. Resolarizing the American: returning to the sane roots of agriculture: diversified, sustainable crops, nourished by the energy of the sun.

2. Regionalizing the Food System: emphasizing local foods.

3. Rebuilding America’s Food Culture: early food education; leading by example.

It’s heartening to know that Obama is aware of Pollan’s ideas. Perhaps an Obama administration will attempt to implement its own elegant solution. But Pollan’s article speaks to me not only as a government solution, but a call to action—a call to support sustainable, local food with my wallet.

Of course, many people and organizations have been sounding this call for years. But now, in the face of the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, the call to support sustainable, local food is more important than ever.

Why?

Because sustainable, local food is more expensive than conventional farmed food.

It’s more expensive because it’s rare. It’s more expensive because the farming techniques are laborious and time intensive. It’s more expensive because many small-scale organic farmers do not receive federal subsidies.

Pollan cites a provocative justification for the added expense:

“It will be argued that moving animals off feedlots and back onto farms will raise the price of meat,” Pollan writes. “It probably will — as it should. Paying the real cost of meat, and therefore eating less of it, is a good thing for our health, for the environment, for our dwindling reserves of fresh water and for the welfare of the animals.”

To me, the phrase that sticks out here is “the real cost of meat.”

To my taste a $.99/lb turkey simply sounds suspicious. At Whole Foods Market, this season’s turkeys—free-range and free of antibiotics and hormones—cost $2.49/lb. The difference is significant, especially in these lean times. But what, really, are you getting when you buy a $.99/lb turkey?

Likely, it has been frozen and preserved from the prior year. Likely, its been farmed conventionally, meaning it DOES contain antibiotics and hormones. Likely, it has lived in filthy conditions, unsuited for any being, let alone one that we might eat--and where there’s filth there’s disease

Good food costs extra money, yes. But it is food, after all.

This is how the Free On-Line Dictionary defines food:

1. Material, usually of plant or animal origin, that contains or consists of essential body nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals, and is ingested and assimilated by an organism to produce energy, stimulate growth, and maintain life.

According to this definition, a McDonald’s Cheeseburger is not entirely food. Yes, it consists of essential nutrients that might keep one alive. But what does this livelihood look like?

Does a McDonald’s cheeseburger produce energy?

Why don’t we ask Morgan Spurlock, the documentarian who made Super Size Me, in which he demonstrated the health effects of McDonald's food by eating nothing but McDonald's three times a day, every day, for 30 days? Some of Spurlock's claims about McDonald's the company have been challenged, but no one has challenged the depiction of how McDonald's food actually destroyed Spurlock's body: he gained 25 pounds, suffered liver dysfunction and depression and extreme, crippling fatigue.

Does a McDonald’s cheeseburger stimulate growth? Maybe so, but not the type of growth we expect from food. Pollan noted in a recent interview with Terri Gross that the hormones fed to McDonald's cattle before slaughter might have devastating effects on young children and unborn children:

"...even microscopic amounts at a certain moment in the developmental process," he says, "whether in the fetus or the child, can have a dramatic effect."

Does a McDonald’s cheeseburger maintain life?

In a very, very limited sense. Spurlock's physician, after all, compared Spurlock's diet to a severe alcoholic binge.

Does anyone eat McDonald's every day. Of course not. Spurlock's example is exaggerated. But FoodCrack, which is not entirely food, exists everywhere. The majority of American families, for example, eat inexpensive, conventionally raised meat. With this meat, they might also be consuming their fair share of antibiotics, hormones, and filth.

Is this food? And is this food really cheap?

Pollan writes:

"...cheap food is only cheap because of government handouts and regulatory indulgence...not to mention the exploitation of workers, animals and the environment on which its putative “economies” depend. Cheap food is food dishonestly priced — it is in fact unconscionably expensive."

***

In the wake of 9-11, George W. Bush implored Americans to go out and buy things. His implication was that spending was our patriotic duty. Regardless of your political beliefs, I think it’s true: what we buy identities a part of our character.

Our spending decisions matter. When we buy a locally grown apple from a small farm, for example, we are announcing not only the type of produce we prefer—fresh picked, ripe, seasonal—but the type of agriculture we support: small scale, local, with minimal impact to the environment, and maximum impact to our good health.

I buy free-range chicken, for example, because I support the idea of chickens roaming freely. I eat free-range chicken, on the bone, on the other hand, because my lust for deliciousness calls for the best meat, and because, as an anemic and a diabetic, I need a viable, healthful source of iron and protein, without the health-threatening additives--I need real food.

This is not an issue of elitism, as some might argue. As Pollan notes:

"It should not be difficult to deflect the charge of elitism sometimes leveled at the sustainable-food movement. Reforming the food system is not inherently a right-or-left issue: for every Whole Foods shopper with roots in the counterculture you can find a family of evangelicals intent on taking control of its family dinner and diet back from the fast-food industry."

To me, food choices are political choices: when you buy food, whether it be from Whole Foods or McDonald’s, you make a political statement about the type of agriculture you support, the type of world you want to live in.

Perhaps this is an unreasonable assumption. Many families, for example, can only afford to buy foods that support out-dated, oil-based agriculture—who’s to say these families do not support something like Pollan’s notion of sustainability?

I’m certain many low-income households would love to eat better, to eat more healthfully and sanely, to support local and/or organic farming. There are federal programs, too, that support this type of lifestyle. Also, there are, certainly, inexpensive venues for local sustainable foods. As Nina Planck writes:

"Self-appointed populists point out that the mesclun at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City is $32 a pound. Yes, some farmers sell it for that. I don't buy it myself, but that's not the only kind of lettuce available."

Just down the street from where I live, a neighbor imports fresh produce from Lancaster. Recently, I bought about 60 local pears for $2.

To me, it's about effort: taking the time to find good places to buy real food. Whole Foods Market is not the answer--it's merely part of the answer, just as the local farm is part the answer, and the guy down the street.

It might be cynical to say, but it's true: a great deal of our ability to influence the world is predicated on how we spend our money. In America, we speak loudly with our wallet. Now that our wallets seem to be shrinking we might focus even more acutely on our expenses. We might not have extra money to waste on food that is not entirely food. We might need to buy the most energy-promoting, growth-stimulating, and life-maintaining food the market has to offer. In that case, real food is the only answer.

Let them eat petrol

Last week all over Spain truck drivers went on strike. The reason was simple: Gasoline prices are ballooning; working now actually costs more money than many workers make.

Andrés and I don’t pay much attention to the price of gasoline. We don’t have a car. Hell, he doesn't even have a driving license. We live in a city with a decent public transport system and we really only use it when we don’t feel like walking or biking, which isn’t very often. Of course, though, the current rise in oil prices manifests itself in other places. Our flights home this year were unmentionably expensive. And, of course, the prices of most commodities have gone up.

Last week, the transport sector decided they had had enough. For five days they refused to pick up or deliver anything. They spent that time sitting in the right hand lane of every major highway in Spain, greatly disturbing traffic patterns. This in a country that thinks the number of wheels on the road is directly proportionate to its ranking in the first world.

So, for five days: Nothing picked up, nothing delivered. Not even the mail.

Photos in the local papers showed farmers in Galicia dumping milk into the fields; fruits and vegetables left to rot in warehouses; and tattooed truck drivers sitting stubbornly in the cabs of their great trucks, refusing to budge.

Naturally, people panicked.

By Wednesday every supermarket in Barcelona had been picked clean. I went to the Sant Antoni market and it looked like Sunday. I went to Bon Preu and I was met with an apocalyptic sight. The produce section contained nothing but empty fruit crates, a rotting head of lettuce and, oddly enough, a few organic avocados and tomatoes, which I promptly decided to buy. The meat and poultry section loomed in iridescent whiteness at the back of the store. The shelves containing rice and pasta had been picked bare. There was no bottled water, no cartons of milk. The remaining jarred and tinned goods stood like solitary figures on the desert landscape of the preserves aisle. It looked as though people were preparing for war. (Or at the very least a snowstorm in the North East).

But Andrés and I didn’t panic. In fact, we spent the greater part of last week picking our own cupboards bare, endeavouring to produce good meals without actually purchasing much of anything. And it was fun.

It did become frighteningly clear, though, how inexorably tied we are to oil; how powerless we are in front of our dependence on oil, and how little we have done to protect ourselves from the consequences of that dependence. Oil is inextricably tied to our most basic needs and we've just sat back and watched it happen.

***

Things are back to normal today. Prices have been jacked up three times what they were nine days ago. The businesses are merely trying to make up for the losses they suffered last week.

But the lessons of last week do not forebode well; they linger. One of the most disturbing images of the ‘crisis’ was a police escort for half a dozen oil tankers, provided by the government to make sure the service stations continued working as normal. There were no special trucks employed for food or water. No police escort. As far as sustenance goes it would appear that petrol trumps all.

***

Here are some of our favorite recipes from last week. This section is titled "Scavengers' delight".

Black Bean and Orange Soup
We always have plenty of dried or jarred pulses on hand. The dried are mostly for slow cooking; the jarred to prepare hummus for unexpected guests or whip up a quick lentil soup. This being Spain, there are always oranges. The soup gets thick once it cools. It can be re-heated and served over rice or used as stuffing for a fajita or burrito.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 medium garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon ground clove
2 15 oz. cans black beans
1 teaspoon orange zest (optional)
1 cup orange juice, preferably freshly squeezed
1 bay leaf
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven, over medium heat. Add the onion and salt and saute until soft, 10-12 minutes. Add the garlic, oregano, cumin, and cloves and saute until fragrant, 1 minute.

Add 1 cup beans, orange zest, orange juice, and 1 cup water. Mash the beans with a fork. Simmer, uncovered over medium-high heat, until liquid is reduced and thickened, five minutes.

Add the remaining beans, bay leaf, and 6 cups water. Simmer, uncovered, for 25-30 minutes, until soup is fragrant and somewhat thick.

Serve.


Pumpkin, Red Pepper, and Zuchinni Curry

We had a zucchini and half a red pepper lying around. And the only thing left at the veggie stand on Mistral was a small pumpkin, which I thought was funny.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoons turmeric
1/2 teaspoon clove
1/2 small pumpkin, peeled and cubed (about 1 cup)
1/2 red pepper, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1 can coconut milk
1 zucchini, cubed
Basmati rice

Heat the oil in a large deep frying pan or wok over medium heat. Add the onion and salt and saute until soft, 10-12 minutes. Add cumin, turmeric, and clove and saute until fragrant, 1 minute.

Add pumpkin and saute until browned, 5 minutes. Add red pepper and saute for 2-3 minutes.

Add coconut milk and simmer, partially covered over medium heat, until liquid is reduced and pumpkin is soft, 15-20 minutes.

Serve over rice.


Quick Tomato Sauce

I gave Andrés a pasta maker for Christmas and every Saturday or Sunday we have homemade pasta, which requires nothing but egg and flour. I usually make the sauce. Last Sunday all we had was a large can of whole, peeled tomatoes.

1 can of chopped tomatoes, including juice
4 large cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup red wine
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

In a medium saucepan over medium heat combine tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, red wine, thyme, honey, fresh ground pepper, and salt. Simmer, uncovered, for 20-25 minutes.

Serve over pasta with plenty of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Food is an Attitude

To me, food is an attitude. When I consider food, I take a stance, sometimes political, often metaphorical. I buy free-range chicken, for example, because I support the idea of chickens roaming freely. I eat free-range chicken, on the bone, on the other hand, because my lust for life calls for the juiciest meats (free-range chickens are always more juicy...)

Firmly rooted in my food attitudes, I express who I am, not only as a consumer, but a human being. In this expression, like most humans, I am incredibly stubborn and idiosyncratic. I have my opinions and, quite naturally, I am a firm advocate of my opinions.

For example:

I have never understood people who can't cook. Maybe, I often think, they do not know how to eat. (Actually, come to think of it, I've met many people, including many chefs, who don't know how to eat. But that's neither here nor there…)

But to not cook seems to me to be a terrible shortcoming, a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who does not eat meat. He would quietly become sadder, and, little by little, he would lose his virility. (Trust me, I know this to be true...)

Also, I have never understood the type who refuses to lick his plate. Some people actually say plate-licking is offensive. This is offensive. Really, what type of repressive regime disapproves of something as simple and humble as plate-licking? What's so wrong with slurping up the tastiest juices. To not lick your plate also seems to me to be a terrible shortcoming. The person who does not lick his plate is like the person who refuses to dance. Most often, you find him in the corner, moping, utterly repressed and balding. (I know this to be true too...)

Finally, I have never understood the person who refuses to eat meat from the bone. What, exactly, are these people refusing? Life itself, it seems to me. In bones we discover the root of flavor, the very essence of our animal love for meat. In men, I find this attribute inexcusable. I can only compare the man who does not eat meat from the bone to the castrati, forever doomed to beauty and unmanliness.

We all have our own vehement food attitudes. One person prefers rare meat. The other prefers meat well done. (The latter, to me, is a criminal; eating meat well done is an inexcusable offense.)

I was a vegetarian for eight years. Now I'm half-man, half-carnivorous animal. Here's what Anthony Bourdain has to say about vegetarians:

"Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. it's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold."

I first read this when I was a vegetarian and I have to admit it gave me pause. It's pure vehemence. Back then, I was repulsed by it. Now, as a meat eater, I relish it.

It's healthy to love food vehemently and to express that love with passion. We are human when we compel with love.

So, why don't you compel? Tell us: what are your food attitudes? Please share--the more vehement the better.

Post your attitudes below, as a comment, or e-mail them to me: sethpollins@hotmail.com

We'll post another blog soon listing your food attitudes.

Feel free to send pictures, drawings, or hunks of meat--whatever.

Just please: be vehement and honest! Imagine yourself drinking beer on a plaza, arguing stridently....Get all worked up!

Memorias Criollas

Sunday morning in Buenos Aires. We peel ourselves out of bed at 11. We've landed five hours ago. Drunk. We step out onto Moreno, into the quintessential smell of Sunday – burning wood, warming grills.

We walk five blocks past the lightly curled smoke floating up from concrete backyards, balconies and empty lots and take the subway up to Dorrego. We catch the 176 at Chacarita, pass the tombs of Juan D. Peron and Carlos Gardel, roll through the endless Pampas of the residential neighborhoods that almost seamlessly join capital to the province. It’s been an hour since we left home. We are now in provincial San Martín, with its low houses and endless horizon. The occasional tethered horse looks up from the chopped up sidewalk at the bus rumbling down the pockmarked streets. Evita looks on from murals.

We get off the bus on the corner by the gas station. A ring of the doorbell quickly wraps us up in the bustle of preparations for the Sunday afternoon feast. This fire, like other fires all over the country, has been going since 11. It’s now one o’clock and the meat still hasn’t been laid on the grill. But salads are being prepared and an aperitif is being shared in the quincho as we keep the asador company and wait for the fire. A bit of cheese, a finger or two of whiskey, a fernet with Coke and glass of red wine clear the haze from our heads. Occasionally, we're interrupted by the bell. The ringing of the bell is always met with frantic excitement.

Who’s got the keys? It’s Mauro! Let him in. Where are the keys? ¡Hola tío! ¿Qué tomás?

We watch the fire. There will be no five minute steak this afternoon; no three minute cheeseburger. The centerpiece of the hedonistic ritual we share is Argentine beef, which stakes claim to being the best in the world. The cattle in Argentina are not factory raised. They are raised as cattle should be. They walk free, feed on grass, mature at nature’s pace, not man’s. There are no hormones; no anti-biotics. This is not “free-range”; not “organic”. It is just the way it is. Argentinian cattle represent a way of life, a way of living and eating and drinking, that, in America, seems to have been sacrificed to the bottom line and molded to fit our busy schedules. Here, quality still takes preference over quantity.

A life of gauchos and fire pits; lonely guitars and shared mates. This is food that nourishes a country. Argentina consumes more beef per capita than any other country in the world. This meat is the Argentine feeding off the land; Borges connecting with the gaucho.

The fire is ready. Glowing embers fall from its ripe flame. Now the meat can be placed on the grill. It is to be slow cooked, over the red hot embers. It will take a long time. Cuts are placed and moved along the length the grill according to cooking time, taken off as they are ready to eat. Achuras first. Now on my third glass of wine, I am handed a choripan. I open it and paint the chorizo with chimichurri. I apply the chimichurri with a paintbrush. It is the lead in to what is about to take place. We all take our seats and the feasting begins.

Chorizo and morcilla lead the way. Chinchulines and molleja. The asador (he who grills) dashes to and from the large grill. He eats standing over the smoking embers, cutting his meat directly on the heated iron. This entire ritual stems from him and his dance is too important for him to cease. As he moves between the grill and the table, he eyes our plates. For the next hour, they will never be empty. He knows how each one likes his meat.

Andrés likes it rare and is served first.

Gogui prefers it medium and waits a bit longer.

He knows who starts with morcilla and who ends with it; who smears it on bread and who prefers it alone.

The asador at work

The meat is eaten from wooden plates, unadorned. No marinades, no sauces, no side dishes. A bit of salt before it is placed on the grill. The salads are served on glass plates, though the truly meat-minded eat only from wood. The wine pours into glass after glass and the corks are saved. We eat our meat. We raise our wine and spill our glasses, dabbing it on our foreheads for good luck. ¡Un aplauso para el asador! There’s a round of applause. We all clap and lift our wine. A toast is made. Then another.

Atahualpa Yupanqui accompanies us on his guitar. Ana’s father used to love him. Ana’s father, who played with his trio of tango on Uruguayan radio. Live, like they used to. Everyone said he sang better than Gardel.

Atahualpa Yupanqui sang too. And with purpose. He sang of poverty and freedom; the gaucho and revolution. The perfect accompaniment to the small revolution that we all take part in each Sunday. We defy the gods and stop time. Today the sacrifice is not ours to make; it is ours for the taking. For us to grill and smother in chimichurri, to be washed down with red wine and laughter and the occasional milonga.

Chimichurri

½ cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup white onion, finely minced
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 cup fresh parsley leaves, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 ¼ teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper

Mix all ingredients and let stand at room temperature until the flavors meld, about 30 minutes, and up to 8 hours. The sauce can be refrigerated in a tight container for two weeks.

Apply with a clean (preferably unused) paintbrush to meat, chicken, baked potatoes or grilled vegetables.

Eat Your Revolution

We’re not the people we used to be. Ask anyone. When bible thumpers, politicians, social scientists, and public intellectuals rail on about the ills of our present-day American society, they invariably point to few hot button items: the collapse of our civic institutions, the dissolution of the family, a loss of faith, or a loss of some nostalgic innocence.

Yet, the truth is not so complicated. Simply put, we have lost any connection to the land. We have also lost the secrets that came with living close to the earth. We no longer know what was once so essential to us. As a result, we have lost the ability to live artfully. And, axiomatically, we have lost the abiltity to truly eat.

There is something so Orwellian about riding the New York City subways these days. On every car is the same sight: throngs of people hooked into their blue tooth mobile phones and I-Pods. It’s chilling. When we allow ourselves to become defined by our relationship to technology as opposed to our relationship with food, the source of nourishment, we are lost as a people.

When I see people walking through the city on their lunch breaks, I often ask myself, "Would this person know how to survive in the woods if they had to? Would they know how to find or catch food? If removed from this ultra-modern urban setting, would they know how to live?" So many of us are starved for any real, spritual connection to the land and its food.

As I walk through the East Village's Thompkins Square Park, Allen Ginsburg speaks to me from the ether: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by fast food and internet pornography.

Our food habits are what sustain us and are ultimately one of the true reflections of who we are as people. The cultures that are able to survive into longevity are those that understand and respect the secrets that food reveals to us, whether it is the art of curing medicinal herbs, or the knowledge of how to plant by the zodiac. We are no longer in touch with the natural cycles all around us. The damage has been irreparable. You can see it in our schools and communities. You can see it even more so in our super-markets.

We need to know the feeling of how to pull vegetables out of the ground, how to gently massage them until they spring forth from the earth. We need to know how to make a camp fire and how to roast meat over a flame, so that it cooks just right, searing the flesh and capturing the juices inside. Who out there knows the feeling of dirt under your fingernails after you've just planted the vegetables that will feed your family weeks from now? What have we lost as a result of microwaves and hot-pockets? We need to learn how to cook all over again.

There is no separation between food and politics. We are a nation born out of the spirit of revolution, yet we have lost that sense too. In many ways, New York City is as segregated as it ever was. Just look at the difference between what kinds of food options are available in a predominately white neighborhood as opposed to a black or Latino one.

When the revolution comes, it will demand all of these things. It will come barreling out of the ghettoes and low income housing projects. It will smash the window of every McDonald’s and Pop-Eye’s joint from Watts to the south Bronx. It will also streaming forth from countless bland, suburban sub-divisions, burning every strip-mall, T.G.I. Friday’s, and Olive Garden to the ground. It will demand good food.

We need to rediscover our connection to the land, its food, and our sense of who we are. Our hope lies there.

Eat your revolution.

Microwave Popcorn: FoodCrack

This New York Times article will disturb you. The article focuses on the artificial compound diacetyl which lends microwave popcorn its massively overpowering buttery smell. When heated, apparently, it "becomes a vapor and, when inhaled over a long period of time, seems to lead the small airways in the lungs to become swollen and scarred." Naturally, microwave popcorn plant workers are highly susceptible: Exposure to the chemical has been linked to hundreds of cases of lung-damage. This is called "popcorn workers' lung."

Anyone who has ever walked into a collegiate dormitory knows the smell of diacetyl all to well--It is the anti-scent of the healthful, the purest example of the addictive power of manufactured foods. Quite frankly, the smell is sublime and awful. And now consumers are getting sick.

I suppose this is what happens when two of humanities worst atrocities, artificial flavorings and microwaves, fuse together to create a third, more evil, atrocity: FoodCrack.

FoodCrack is the terror of the American diet. FoodCrack, like crack-cocaine, is cheap, addictive, shockingly unhealthy, and easily accessible. Think McDonalds. Think Suzy Q's. Think Sno Balls.

FoodCrack is clearly not food. Unfortunately, many Americans are FoodCrack Pookies.

The man whom the title of this article refers too was clearly addicted to FoodCrack. Apparently, he ate at least two bags a day, every day, for 10 years. The man’s doctor says: “When he broke open the bags, after the steam came out, he would often inhale the fragrance because he liked it so much.” Unfortunately, his lungs looked much the same of those who suffer from popcorn workers' lung.

Poor fat guy. He quit eating the popcorn and lost 50 pounds in 6 months. Unfortunately, his lungs seem to be irrevocably damaged.