Ignore Your Food's Expiration Dates?

I heard Nadia Arumugan on Talk of the Nation today talking about her piece in Slate on the very thin evidence for the usefulness of food expiration dates.

These dates have no real legal meaning, either. Only last year, 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner reversed the conviction of a wily entrepreneur who'd relabeled 1.6 million bottles of Henri's salad dressing with a new "Best when purchased by" date. Posner decided that the prosecutor had unjustly condemned the dressing as rancid, rotten, and harmful, when in fact there was no evidence to suggest that the mature product posed a safety threat.

In the world of hunger relief work, however, food expiration dates give us quite a bit of pause, mostly because the food supply chain is so long and winding (not to mention unknown in some cases) by the time an item ends up in our hands. If you're curious, here's what the USDA has to say on the issue.

Journal: Food Security

Inaugural issue of the journal Food Security is free online.  Norman Borlaug writes the forward, on this his 96th birthday, so you know a bit of the direction they lean.  Looks interesting.  (via)

Shorts: Planting, Eating, Fighting

1.  In a move that brings climate change right into your own backyard, the USDA is in the process of updating its plant hardiness zone map to reflect the gradual shifting of warmer climates to the north.  In addition to drawing on a much more robust data set than the 1990 version the new map will be much more sophisticated and nuanced:

They also describe the new map as much more sophisticated than the 1990 version, which was based on a data set covering only 13 years (1974 through 1986 for the U.S.). The revised map draws on 30 years of data and uses a complex algorithm to factor in other variables that affect local temperatures, such as altitude and the presence of water bodies.

"All we could really do earlier was draw a straight line between data points, but now we're trying to input a lot of other information," says USDA spokeswoman Kim Kaplan. "We'll pick up more heat islands and cold zones, and the edges of zones will be defined more clearly."

The new map is being developed by Oregon State University's PRISM Group, a team of modelers that also produces climate maps for other state and federal agencies. Unlike past versions, the 2009 map will be GIS-compatible, storing and linking layers of information in a digital version that can be read with widely available GIS (geographic information system) viewing programs. It will have a resolution of 800 square meters, so users will be able to zoom in on their hometowns or zip codes and see where they lie within zones.

This last quote sounds like a t-shirt waiting to be made:  "All gardeners are in zone denial."

2.  From Duncan Green: food prices for the poor aren't coming down.  The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was hearing much the same thing today.

3.  Tyler Cowen dubs Paul Collier's new book, Wars, Guns and Votes, a "must buy" of the year.

James Beard Semifinalists

The James Beard Foundation announced the semifinalists (pdf) for their 2009 Restaurant and Chef Award's a few days ago.  It's a list that seems more useful for the layman and casual eater than the finalists and eventual winners (they rarely seem to be surprises) as, it goes without saying, it is more expansive in both number and locale.  The usual suspects are all there but there are also a lot of chefs and restaurants who won't make it to the final cut because they are a little out of the way (as far as the culinary world is concerned) and under reported - the long list of rising stars is especially nice.  Which is an apt enough description of our home city, which happens to be fairly well represented at this stage of the game and your city might be as well so take a look.

Aside:  Am I right in thinking that they don't, but should, announce semifinalists for the media, journalism, author, and design categories? 

The Old Keeps Getting New

Accompanying article.

Links: Food and Ag Edition

Lots going on around the UN's meeting in Madrid on global food security:

1.  Giving a cow a name increases her annual milk yield by almost 500 pints.  This is pretty cool but my guess would be that dairy farmers who call their cows by name and "treat them as family" are the types of farmers who are also taking greater care in other matters more central to an increase in milk production, if those were controlled for I hazard the increase would disappear.  But I like this bit:

Dr Douglas added: "Our data suggests that on the whole UK dairy farmers regard their cows as intelligent beings capable of experiencing a range of emotions."

2.  The Feeding of the Nine Billion.  A summary post by Alex Evans on the release of his excellent year long study report (pdf) of the same name looking at global food prices and scarcity.  Definitely worth a download and read.  I especially like this bit from the executive summary on the need for a 21st-century Green Revolution (emphasis mine):

Invest in a 21st-century Green Revolution. The 20th-century Green Revolution achieved astonishing yield increases. Now, a 21st-century equivalent is needed – one that not only increases yields, but that also moves from an agricultural model that is input-intensive (in water, fertilizer, pesticide and energy) to one that is knowledge-intensive. Genetically modified crops may have a role, but ecologically integrated approaches – such as integrated pest management, minimum tillage, drip irrigation and integrated soil fertility management – often score higher in terms of resilience and equitability, as they put power in the hands of farmers rather than seed companies. Additional funds for public research and development are also vital: the budget of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has fallen by 50% over the last 15 years, for example.

3.  Getting fat in rural America.  Blog for Rural America points to the release of the Center for Rural Affairs' new report Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity in Rural America (pdf) - also worth a read.

4.  When banks manage the food crisis - from the Food First Institute.

5.  Tom Philpott over at Grist has some thoughts on the Gates Foundation's plans to boost food production in Africa as outlined in their annual letter.

6.  Farmers don't use much water.

7.  Reason on agricultural subsidies, a topic that rarely comes up outside of Farm Bill discussion.

8.  Smashed chickpea salad.

Clif Bar Voluntary Recall

Heads up - keep an eye on the peanut news mis amigos, I've had a mild case of a salmonella strain before and it was one of the most unpleasant 24 hour periods of my life.

Global Soil Maps

Global Soil Maps:  of particular interest to those exploring issues relating to agriculture, climate and sustainability but with a wide variety of maps that could be used for more general purposes.  

It comes to my attention as a number of global development heavyweights are investing in a project to more thoroughly map the (often) depleted soils of Africa.  Though I don't quite share this level of optimism:  

"The digital soil map has brought soil science to the 21st century," he said. "At the push of a button, you have answers on soil erosion, where to farm and what crops to grow on what type of soils."

it should prove useful.  Any farmer worth their salt, or 6'th grade science student for that matter, will tell you it does little good to plant crops in soils that don't have the fertility necessary to bring them to maturity, but then again, any farmer worth their salt won't need a digital soil map to tell them where and what to plant.  It's certainly good information to have, especially on the meta level, but I've never spoken to a farmer on any continent who didn't already know what and where to plant.  Which isn't to say that there aren't new technologies which might help increase yields, there almost always are, but it is to acknowledge that most farmers on the African continent farm the way they do out of necessity, i.e. they want to feed their family today and tomorrow will worry about itself.  

(via)

A 50 Year Farm Bill

Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry have a short op-ed in the NY Times today (logins if needed):

Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological “solutions” for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods.

Clearly, our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities.

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billons of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

Not unrelated, Salon has a review of Mark Bittman's new book, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, which is described as "applied Pollan."

Food Security as a 59-Page Report

The USDA just released its annual report on household food security.  The U.S. Food Policy blog has some thoughts.  Good analysis and key points from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  The Washington Post points out that the USDA has turned away from naming the condition formerly known as hunger: 

The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."

Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.

Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have a measure of that condition."

From the previously mentioned New Yorker food issue, James Surowiecki on food security:  

The old emphasis on food security was undoubtedly costly, and often wasteful. But the redundancies it created also had tremendous value when things went wrong. And one sure thing about a system as complex as agriculture is that things will go wrong, often with devastating consequences. If the just-in-time system for producing cars runs into a hitch and the supply of cars shrinks for a while, people can easily adapt. When the same happens with food, people go hungry or even starve. That doesn’t mean that we need to embrace price controls or collective farms, and there are sensible market reforms, like doing away with import tariffs, that would make developing-country consumers better off. But a few weeks ago Bill Clinton, no enemy of market reform, got it right when he said that we should help countries achieve “maximum agricultural self-sufficiency.” Instead of a more efficient system, we should be trying to build a more reliable one.

The also previously mentioned Japanese take on food security.

New Yorker Food Issue

Most of The New Yorker's food issue seems to be online now.  

Food Security as Bento

Like seemingly everything the Japanese produce, this PSA on food security by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries comes out concise, compact, well designed, and colorful.  In a short four minutes of information packed visual design they touch on issues of food security, country of origin labeling, rural redevelopment, environmental concerns, and global connectivity, just to name a few.  As Waxy mentioned, it would be great to see a similar PSA adapted to the US context.

 

High resolution version here at the Ministry website.

Greensgrow

Nice little article on Greensgrow in the NYT.

An Open Letter to the Farmer in Chief

I haven't even finished wading through the whole thing yet but Michael Pollan's centerpiece essay to the NYT Magazine's Food Issue out this weekend is already too good not to pass on.  No one gathers in seemingly disparate chords and ties them into beautiful intelligible little bows on complicated food related issues like Pollan and this essay doesn't disappoint.  I'll try to post a few excerpts later on but seriously, its worth your time.  In fact the whole issue looks really good, with a focus on actual food policy rather than the usual food porn that ends up in high profile mags like the NYT. Highly recommended.

Sheeran Letterman Video

Here's the video of WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran on Letterman last night for those who missed it.

Josette Sheeran on Letterman Tonight

Josette Sheeran, the Executive Director of the UN's World Food Program, will apparently be a guest on Letterman tonight.  Tomorrow kicks off the WFP's annual World Hunger Relief push so kudos to Dave for giving the issue of global hunger some airtime - in the midst of everything else that is going on at the moment such openings will probably be woefully few and far between.  I'll keep my eyes open for online video of the segment for those of you can't make it up that late.

Note to Sheeran:  Don't cancel last minute. 

(Hat-tip to my sister-in-law via the emails)

Slow Food Nation Video: Wendell Berry

Video from the recent Slow Food Nation gathering is up (you can also download both video and audio) and it looks like there is a lot of good stuff, most of which I haven't seen yet but this bit from Wendell Berry has been running around in my head all day.  Jump ahead to about the 8:00 minute mark if you want (or click the tools icon and go to Ch. 2) and then listen for at least the next five minutes (the rest is good as well).  It's a far better description of my own personal educational, vocational, spiritual, and physical journey over the last four or five years than I could ever piece together.



"Once we identify something that is good and we begin to understand how that goodness ramifies a longer chain of causes, it really ultimately involves everything.  Then we begin to glimpse the possibility of entering an age in which things that have fallen apart come back together."  

And all the people said . . . . 

Links

1.  This is a pretty good article on the evolving symbiotic relationship between Botswana and DeBeers, including this, which I had forgotten about:

Practically from the start, it entered into a 50-50 joint venture with the government; about a decade ago, it also sold the government a 15 percent stake in the company. (De Beers has only two other shareholders: the South African-based Oppenheimer family, which has controlled the company for over 100 years, and the publicly traded Anglo-American Corporation.)

2.  The latest research in the debate over the nutritional value of organic vs. conventional food seems to point to a draw.  Just glance down the "related stories" column to see the give and take in this one over the years.  I'm not sure that this sentence at the beginning of the article is true however, "Many people pay more than a third more for organic food in the belief that it has more nutritional content than food grown with pesticides and chemicals."  There are undoubtedly a subset of consumers who purchase organic foods for that reason but I think the current market for organic products is driven more by "life-style consumers" who are leery of pesticides and chemicals for a plethora of reasons - ethical, moral, environmental and yes nutritional.

3.  Related:  I've had a post sitting in my draft box for about four months now on the rising cost of fertilizer inputs and the consequences of those costs in the midst of the global food crisis and proposed solutions relating to it, but it looks to be sitting there for a while longer.  So, I was glad to see this post at Global Dashboard pointing to a briefing (pdf) on the rise in select food and fertilizer prices.  Here are some figures:

Cotton - up 29%

Beverages - up 41%

Wheat - up 61%

Maize - up 108%

Rice - up 185%

Urea (a key nitrogen fertiliser) - up 160%

DAP (a major phosphate fertiliser) - up 318%    

And here is the closing paragraph that tracks with things we've said here before:

In the longer term, the paper suggests, the focus needs to be on more integrated soil fertility management with greater use of organic materials [i.e. compost and manure] together with smarter use of inorganic fertilisers - an area of work that the big agricultural research institutes like CIMMYT are already focusing on heavily. Moving towards more integrated soil fertility management already makes sense for reasons of environmental sustainability. If fertiliser prices fail to fall in the longer term, these areas of research are also going to be one of the critical front lines in feeding 10 billion of us.

4.  Related:  Will the economic bust stifle organic food?  More thoughts on a food movement not just food choices.

5.  Related:  Does it cost too much to eat healthy?

6.  Related:  Freedom Gardens.

7.  The Center for Global Development reviews Reinventing Foreign Aid.

This Lawn is Your Lawn

(via)

Fast Food Moratorium

It will be interesting to see if Los Angeles's moratorium on new fast food restaurants in South L.A. starts a trend similar to that of the trans-fat ban.  

I'm in favor of the intent behind the ban but I'm more inclined to side with the skeptics on what the outcomes will actually be.  The problems seem more systemic than a simple scarcity of healthy restaurants.  If there truly was a market demand for healthier eating options I'm inclined to think that they would be there, what better incentive is there than open your doors and make a lot of money.  This is from my Bananas reading last night:

. . . . Articles appeared in the press saying how consumers preferred it but consumers took what they got.  Long before their time, Keith and Preston had an instinctive grasp of the forces involved.  The world of business and economics believed, and for many years yet would continue to do so, that consumer demand somehow just arose.  But, wrote Samuel Crowther admiringly, looking back nearly twenty years later on these early days of United Fruit in his book The Romance and Rise of the American Tropics, what was being discovered was that 'demand is a thing which must be created.'

Do fast food restaurants force healthier restaurants out or do they emerge once the healthier options leave?  And what is a healthier restaurant?  The ban defines 'fast food restaurant' as follows: 

any establishment which dispenses food for consumption on or off the premises, and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders and food served in disposable wrapping or containers.

But an absence of those characteristics and the presence of waiters certainly doesn't mean eating there is going to improve your health.  I'd be more interested in seeing some initiatives that encouraged people to eat at home, that created real incentives for grocery stores that sold "real" food to move back in, that worked with schools, churches and civic organizations to create a demand for healthier life styles.  And I would throw in some community gardens to boot.