Combustible Summer

Some summers are generic - borderline forgettable. Five years down the road you can't remember one from the other. This isn't one of those summers. 2013 is combustible.

I can't put my finger on what came first; I can't put it all in order. We're only half way through this season and it's already a fiery blur. The supreme court's landmark decisions, the bombs in Boston and the surprising verdict in Trayvon Martin's case have  been punctuated by the most constant steam of extreme weather Atlanta has endured in my lifetime. At this point, to say "emotions are running high" would be an insulting cliche. 

On Facebook I avoid drama. I block feeds from friends whose opinions upset me. When offered the bait of extremes I look away. Even in my studio, where I've worked for over four years, I make an effort to stop politically charged conversations before they start.

Dear reader - do you know I'm liberal? Can you tell from my lifestyle? Does it matter to you? If so, do I care that it matters to you? Is it something I try to hide? Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Socialist, Communist - all of them aside - this is what I want you to know I stand for: EQUALITY. 

I stand for equality.  In the last decade I've had the conversation over and over again but in innumerable contexts. 

Moving back to the South (after undergrad in Rhode Island) I was shaken by the belles and gents who vehemently did NOT identify as "feminist". To hear these people tell it, feminists were to men as white supremacists were to minorities. That premise is so far off base it became confusing; were these people joking? Had they not heard ANY of Steinem's message? Feminism is (quite simply) the complete social and economic equality between men and women. If you have a problem with that - please stop reading my blog.

This argument of equality resurges in every social and economic opportunity: rich vs poor, minority vs white, gay vs straight, those with health insurance vs those without, obese vs healthy, immigrant vs citizen, Florida vs the continental United States. IT DOES NOT END. 

And because it does not end I have chosen to remove myself from the Facebook conversation because I want to continue to respect everyone's right to their own opinion. Until today - when I remembered I don't have to fight on Facebook. I can publish my personal opinion here.

Tonight the rush hour storm was worse then normal. The apocalyptic lightening flashed around me so nonstop that it became surreally beautiful while simultaneously terrifying. I even drove through a flooded tunnel (that I still think was probably a really bad idea). But after the storm - it was gorgeous. The clouds, the sunset, the breeze, the illuminated skyline of Atlanta. I hope I can I always hold on those mental images. In that moment of pure beauty Macklemore's new song "I can't change" came on the radio. 

I was paying attention to the lyrics; feeling thankful that this pop station summer hit so thoroughly represents how I feel when something occurred to me. It hit me that while this song represents how I feel most of the people I want to hear it - never will. Those people being my deaf lesbian sister-in-law and my baby boomer parents (who don't listen to pop radio stations).

So many very important people in my life are same-sex oriented. I want all of them to know: I accept and support you just the way you are. Your lifestyle is no big deal to me. I'm sorry for the difficulties our society is imposing on you. Your daily bravery impresses me. And to that end, the lyrics to Macklemore's "I can't change".

When I was in the third grade I thought that I was gay,
'Cause I could draw, my uncle was, and I kept my room straight.
I told my mom, tears rushing down my face
She's like "Ben you've loved girls since before pre-k, trippin' "
Yeah, I guess she had a point, didn't she?
Bunch of stereotypes all in my head.
I remember doing the math like, "Yeah, I'm good at little league"
A preconceived idea of what it all meant
For those that liked the same sex
Had the characteristics
The right wing conservatives think it's a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
Man-made rewiring of a predisposition
Playing God, aw nah here we go
America the brave still fears what we don't know
And God loves all his children, is somehow forgotten
But we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago
I don't know

And I can't change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
And I can't change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
My love
My love
My love
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm

If I was gay, I would think hip-hop hates me
Have you read the YouTube comments lately?
"Man, that's gay" gets dropped on the daily
We become so numb to what we're saying
A culture founded from oppression
Yet we don't have acceptance for 'em
Call each other faggots behind the keys of a message board
A word rooted in hate, yet our genre still ignores it
Gay is synonymous with the lesser
It's the same hate that's caused wars from religion
Gender to skin color, the complexion of your pigment
The same fight that led people to walk outs and sit ins
It's human rights for everybody, there is no difference!
Live on and be yourself
When I was at church they taught me something else
If you preach hate at the service those words aren't anointed
That holy water that you soak in has been poisoned
When everyone else is more comfortable remaining voiceless
Rather than fighting for humans that have had their rights stolen
I might not be the same, but that's not important
No freedom till we're equal, damn right I support it

(repeat chorus)

We press play, don't press pause
Progress, march on
With the veil over our eyes
We turn our back on the cause
Till the day that my uncles can be united by law
When kids are walking 'round the hallway plagued by pain in their heart
A world so hateful some would rather die than be who they are
And a certificate on paper isn't gonna solve it all
But it's a damn good place to start
No law is gonna change us
We have to change us
Whatever God you believe in
We come from the same one
Strip away the fear
Underneath it's all the same love
About time that we raised up

(repeat chorus)

Sugar Salt Fat: Food Addiction

As a rule, I stay away from the comment section on any opinion page or editorial. The insanity that ensues as strangers hurl their hateful opinions is too overwhelming. But today, as I sat at my desk eating my black beans during my lunch break, I somehow ended up just in the place I try to avoid. The opinion piece was posted on CNN and it was about the American Medical Association's decision to label obese people "diseased" and, as expected, it was the fury of hateful comments that caught my attention. Specifically, the arguments that "there is no such thing a food addiction; cut the crap" and "lack of self control is of course the root to obesity." I am astounded by both the hatefulness and lack of understanding.

A few posts back I mentioned my concern that people are unaware that many of the foods they eat are intentionally engineered to be addictive. The readers’ comments above surprise me because they’re evidence of people who are aware of the idea that food can be addictive but firmly believe it’s not true. In February, the New York Times Magazine published an exert of Michael Moss's book, Sugar Sat Fat: How the food giants hooked us. The book details specific addictive traits food manufacturers work to capture in their products. Traits that intentionally trick both your mind and stomach into thinking you’re not full and you really want MORE. There are records of experiments, focus groups and memos – none of that is up for debate; it’s just true. I’m left to hope that people denying the addictive qualities of modern America’s diet are simply uninformed on the matter.

Personally, having spent the last four years working hard to overcome my own food addictions (starting with Lean Cuisines in 2009), I empathize with anyone who is trying to change their lifestyle but finding it nearly impossible. To look at the issue as an addiction may change the approach used when trying to break the habit. Assuming, shareholders will  continue to win over what's best for the common good, I do not look to lawmakers to solve this issue. This is a personal responsibility that each person must address for themselves. Doing so requires a bit of self-eduction.

In the case of children, it is the responsibility of both parents to work towards prevention of food addictions. But where does prevention of food addiction start? The womb? Formula? Baby food? Teething snacks? Five years ago I'd have given a toddler a box of Goldfish crackers without a second thought. Today I'd be unlikely to hand them a Cheerio. In fact, when O&I have children I anticipate the family looking at me as "that crazy hippy Mom" after I explain I'd prefer them to not offer my child processed snacks and sweets. You want to give my kid a squished grape or some smushed avocado - go right ahead!

The reality of this is a struggle, I know. My best friend from college, an amazingly successful and very cool art director, has a toddler in daycare. She has told me of the frustrations around limiting the amount of sugar her son is offered everyday. The only friend I have who seems to have no trouble raising a child on natural foods is a work-at-home Mom who has the ability to supervise (almost) everything that goes into her son's mouth. 

I'm not suggesting I have the answers to Food Addiction and Prevention. But I am saying it is time for EVERYONE to take ten minutes and realistically consider how it effects both their lives and the lives of people they love.=

*The NY Times article (exerted from the book) is very long but also fascinating and definitely worth the time it takes to read it. Link to full article here. Credit to MICHAEL MOSS.  Highlights: 
In the process of product optimization, food engineers alter a litany of variables with the sole intent of finding the most perfect version (or versions) of a product. Ordinary consumers are paid to spend hours sitting in rooms where they touch, feel, sip, smell, swirl and taste whatever product is in question. Their opinions are dumped into a computer, and the data are sifted and sorted through a statistical method called conjoint analysis, which determines what features will be most attractive to consumers...

*******

The public and the food companies have known for decades now — or at the very least since this meeting — that sugary, salty, fatty foods are not good for us in the quantities that we consume them. So why are the diabetes and obesity and hypertension numbers still spiraling out of control? It’s not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.

*******
...“Sensory-specific satiety.” In lay terms, it is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more. Sensory-specific satiety also became a guiding principle for the processed-food industry. The biggest hits — be they Coca-Cola or Doritos — owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating...

******
One of the company’s responses to criticism is that kids don’t eat the Lunchables every day — on top of which, when it came to trying to feed them more healthful foods, kids themselves were unreliable. When their parents packed fresh carrots, apples and water, they couldn’t be trusted to eat them. Once in school, they often trashed the healthful stuff in their brown bags to get right to the sweets.

This idea — that kids are in control — would become a key concept in the evolving marketing campaigns for the trays. In what would prove to be their greatest achievement of all, the Lunchables team would delve into adolescent psychology to discover that it wasn’t the food in the trays that excited the kids; it was the feeling of power it brought to their lives. As Bob Eckert, then the C.E.O. of Kraft, put it in 1999: “Lunchables aren’t about lunch. It’s about kids being able to put together what they want to eat, anytime, anywhere.”

Kraft’s early Lunchables campaign targeted mothers. They might be too distracted by work to make a lunch, but they loved their kids enough to offer them this prepackaged gift. But as the focus swung toward kids, Saturday-morning cartoons started carrying an ad that offered a different message: “All day, you gotta do what they say,” the ads said. “But lunchtime is all yours.”

*********
Frito-Lay had a formidable research complex near Dallas, where nearly 500 chemists, psychologists and technicians conducted research that cost up to $30 million a year, and the science corps focused intense amounts of resources on questions of crunch, mouth feel and aroma for each of these items. Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.

To get a better feel for their work, I called on Steven Witherly, a food scientist who wrote a fascinating guide for industry insiders titled, “Why Humans Like Junk Food.” I brought him two shopping bags filled with a variety of chips to taste. He zeroed right in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it . . . you can just keep eating it forever.”

******
Carey’s quote reminded me of something I read in the early stages of my reporting, a 24-page report prepared for Frito-Lay in 1957 by a psychologist named Ernest Dichter. The company’s chips, he wrote, were not selling as well as they could for one simple reason: “While people like and enjoy potato chips, they feel guilty about liking them. . . . Unconsciously, people expect to be punished for ‘letting themselves go’ and enjoying them.” Dichter listed seven “fears and resistances” to the chips: “You can’t stop eating them; they’re fattening; they’re not good for you; they’re greasy and messy to eat; they’re too expensive; it’s hard to store the leftovers; and they’re bad for children.” He spent the rest of his memo laying out his prescriptions, which in time would become widely used not just by Frito-Lay but also by the entire industry. Dichter suggested that Frito-Lay avoid using the word “fried” in referring to its chips and adopt instead the more healthful-sounding term “toasted.” To counteract the “fear of letting oneself go,” he suggested repacking the chips into smaller bags. “The more-anxious consumers, the ones who have the deepest fears about their capacity to control their appetite, will tend to sense the function of the new pack and select it,” he said.

Dichter advised Frito-Lay to move its chips out of the realm of between-meals snacking and turn them into an ever-present item in the American diet. “The increased use of potato chips and other Lay’s products as a part of the regular fare served by restaurants and sandwich bars should be encouraged in a concentrated way,” Dichter said, citing a string of examples: “potato chips with soup, with fruit or vegetable juice appetizers; potato chips served as a vegetable on the main dish; potato chips with salad; potato chips with egg dishes for breakfast; potato chips with sandwich orders.”

“Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us,” published by Random House. Michael Moss won a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for his reporting on the meat industry.

McDonalds triumphs again

In the wake of Congress' "pizza is a vegetable" debacle I was happy to see San Francisco's politicians make a move in the right direction. Unfortunately their final rule has such a large loop hole that it leaves me to question the sincerity of their intentions. If you haven't heard the law it goes like this: As part of a Healthy Food Incentives Ordinance, San Francisco legislators passed a law that restaurants are longer allowed to give away toys with kids’ meals that do not meet defined nutritional standards. The meals must have fewer than 600 calories, less than 640 milligrams of sodium, and contain a minimum of a half-cup of fruit and three-quarters of a cup of vegetables in non-breakfast meals. Drinks must obtain less than 10 percent of their calories from added sugars.


Did you catch the loop hole there? They can't "give away" the toys. Never fear! Ever clever Ronald McDonald was ready and waiting with a work-around. San Fran McD's will now sell the toys for an additional (read: measley) 10 cents when you buy a Happy Meal. Burger King is following suit. However Jack-in-the-Box has kindly agreed to comply. (Three cheers for Jack-in-the-Box)!


I appreciate the sentiment of the San Fransisco politicians but they may have been preaching to the choir. People who don't feed their children fast food have already resisted the lure* of the Happy Meal toy. People who do feed their children fast food (for whatever reason) are not going to be diswayed by a tenth of a dollar.


Thanks San Fransisco but better luck next time. Read more about the American Psychological Association's opinion on the issue here.


*I cannot deny the power of those toys. I'm 33 years old and I still have four of my FAVORITE Happy Meal toys (Muppet Babies on bikes and skateboards) on my bookshelf in my living room. In my opinion kids are better off never developing at taste for, and ultimately an addiction too, such high sodium foods - even at the expense of fabulous pop culture knick knacks.

Pizza in not a vegetable. Vegetables are vegetables.

Tuesday the United States Congress announced frozen pizza counts as vegetable when served to children in school lunches. While the USDA fought for increasing the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in school cafeterias the US Congress instead declared that the tomato paste on frozen pizza qualified it as a vegetable. If you're already a reader of my blog then I hope we both agree that the statement "frozen tomato paste is vegetable" is deceitful. If you need convincing then please read the actual ingredients in the tomato paste: water, tomato paste (31 percent Natural Tomato Soluble Solids*), pizza seasoning (salt, sugar, spices, dehydrated onion, guar and xanthan gum, garlic powder, potassium sorbate, citric acid, tricalcium phophate and soybean oil (prevent caking)), modified food starch). 


What I gather from that ingredient list is the tomato paste is mostly water, 31% tomato and a lot of seasoning. Does 31% of a tomato make up for the amount of over-processed, carb-loaded crust and cheese that the kids also eat while trying to get to the tomato? We're a nation of land!!! A nation of ambitious people who are looking for jobs. We should be growing fresh fruits and vegetables locally for children to eat it schools. A vegetable should be an actual vegetable. That is doable and within reason.


Hey, I am NOT saying that we should stop serving pizza to kids at school. I know how much I looked forward to my 4x6 rectangle of pizza every Friday at Austin Elementary. Far be it from me to deprive school kids of Pizza Friday. But I also do not want to teach children that pizza counts as a vegetable. American children need to learn how to eat healthy real foods and they need to be led by example. The example this law sets is a decietful embarrassment. 


To read  more about the pizza debate check out Kristin Wartman's article in the Huffington Post. She goes into why Congress would make such a ridiculous decision and explains who is really benefiting (Big Ag). To get involved and tell Congress they're wrong there are a number of petitions that need your signature now:
Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution - click here to sign
Food Democracy Now - click here to sign 
Slow Food USA - it's too late to sign this petition but you can still sign up for email updates - click here


*Referred to as "NTSS" - The commercial packers crush ripened red tomatoes; strain out skins, seeds, and other non-soluble solids. The evaporators are used to reduce moisture under vacuum. Under vacuum, the liquids boil at 135 to 145º F. This helps to preserve the tomato flavors.  At home, if one would reduce the liquids, they would boil, and then simmer for a long time. Both the high boiling temperature (212º F) and long cooking time contribute to loss of flavor.

Another great reason to learn to feed yourself...*

*and by "feed yourself" I mean "produce your own food".


On my drive home from work this evening I listened to an NPR All things considered segment that both worried and energized me. "Facing Planetary Enemy Number One: Agriculture" highlighted the vexing  reality that: 1."Farming accounts for a third of all the emissions of greenhouse gases that humans release into the environment." 2. Demand for food is expected to double over the next forty years due to population increase. 

Damage done to the environment by big agriculture is a topic that comes up in the news at least twice a week. (But at the moment I can't remember where I've read the most recent articles. New York Times? NPR? If YOU, my attractive and intellectual reader, if you remember please post it as a comment.) The answer to the inevitable head-butt seems consistent: we cannot feed the world with an agricultural system based on petroleum and mass deforestation. The solution lies in local food systems based on time tested crop rotations and a diet dominated by plants.

This is as good a time as any to start living by the Boyscout's motto: be prepared. All you have to do is learn how to grow and eat some plants. If I can do it, you can do it too!