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I am european and moved almost 2 years ago to California.I have to say,i grow up with excellent,natural products,we have our own vegetable gardens,orchards,our animals (grew up with food from our private fields)everything absolutely natural,no chemical,great taste..
so..i came to usa and i was very disapointed about food generally..even organic food,does not taste the same...i have big difficulties finding the right food in usa..finding the natural taste from home..i have diffciulties with breads,meat and meat poducts,vegetables,fruits...
what do you think about this movie and food generall in usa?
i was talking the other day with an american lady..she told me,she has never left his town (only for short trips around),she has never been to europe,she grow up with this taste...and if you never have the occasion,to taste the difference,you will never know it...
but still...in a country with 2/3 people overweight,i would be concerned and worried...
American food sucks arse thanks to agrobiz & food processing industry and CA is not indicative of how much American food sucks, actually, it's one of the best places food wise. If the best sucks arse think about Kansas or Montana No, American food would not kill you immediately, but over the time it will get ya. They say corpses no longer rot at the same rate as in the past because dead bodies are overloaded with food preservatives.
Economy of scale drives prices down by destroying small scale local farms, but crappy, tasteless, dubiously nutritious, overloaded with chemicals food is the price to pay. What sickens me the most is a collusion of government and agro corporations pushing GMO, hormones, irradiation and all kind of crap on us.
BTW, many or most Americans would disagree about the food they eat, they are hooked from childhood on that crap, it's addictive, they know and don't want to know anything else. American styled fast food is conquering the world, thanks to NJ artificial flavor industry. Overwhelming majority of Americans never tasted a fresh, local, tasty, non commercially grown vegetable or fruit (not speaking of milk, meats, butter etc. sales of which by small farmers is effectively outlawed in most of the states).
Last edited by RememberMee; 03-08-2010 at 01:03 PM..
Where in California do you live? Most places have WONDERFUL farmers markets, and near the coast you can grow stuff basically year round (at least we can ). We have a great organic farm just down the street from where I live and I get a lot of food from them, and we have a local university that also has a rather large organic farm. People can talk a lot of crap about California...but there's nowhere I'd rather be
California food is better than most of the USA, as most of the US gets it's produce from California, so count yourself lucky as you get riper veggies than most of the USA.
Yes, US fruits, vegetables, meats, etc. are terrible. Tasteless, bland, picked when unripe, chemically ripened. Most processed foods are made with the millions of tons of feedstock corn grown in the midwest and rendered down into sugar substitute in massive factories. There are two in my town, I think of them as "fat plants" or "poison factories."
However, where the US does well is in prepared foods heavy on cheese, meat, and grease. While terrible for your body, things like American Pizza, Monte Cristo's, Stromboli sandwiches, cheese steak melts, etc. are the best in the world in the US.
If we to divide the area of CA where local fresh produce is available by the entire area of CA, your statement is not true. CA is a huge state, relatively small % of CA is suitable for the irrigated agriculture. There is something deeply disturbing about cyclopic as an eye can see fields and orchards of Central valley though. Unlike E. States, small family farms never had a foothold in CA, it's all agrobiz land sprinkled with "hippies" here and there. What the topic starter is hinting on (my guess) is that commercial fruits&vegies, organic or not, are not quite the same as non commercial ones grown for personal use without regards to returns on investments etc. I guess the only way to get those is to grow your own veggies.
Here is how irrigated CA field look like. Not a single weed can survive scientific agriculture.
And here is a recipe of an American wonder bread (it's not the cheapest kind, only hardcore aboriginals can eat the cheapest brands of American bread it's so stuffed with chemistry).
More and more $ is being spent on the marketing of the food junk compared with actual costs of growing that junk. Food growers share of sale' price is steadily shrinking. No wonder mega agrobiz is taking over.
Abandoned silos and small farms are scattered all across E. half of the US. Some small farmers survive by converting to "specialty" farming like this tree farm in MD panhandle.
Famous Idaho potatoes (or WA apples) are grown in desert and distributed thousands miles away across the country. It's absolute madness energy wise. Just by outlawing ID potatoes and WA apples USA could drastically decrease its dependence on foreign oil.
Grain basket states of KS, E. CO, IL, IA, W. OK ... are thoroughly cleansed of small farms, it takes huge investments and fields to grow grain these days.
Small beef (and goat) hobby farms like this in OH survive if "farmers" have a wage job elsewhere.
Not so with chicken, turkey, and pigs. A few corporations took over meat processing (thanks to US government) and they exclusively use indentured contract growers (modern sharecroppers) to grow virtually all the poultry and pork in this country. Independent (from corporations) growers have no market for their animals. Most of American pork is grown in confinement facilities like this one in MN. Pigs don't see the Sun, they locked up in tiny cages and sleep on concrete grated floor for excrements to fall through in a huge holding pit. If electricity powering huge ventilation fans is out (unnoticed) for a few hours most pigs will be suffocated by ammonia etc. coming from excrement pit underneath. If you wondered why American beacon has a consistency of rubber, wonder no more, it takes darned hardy thick skinned animal to survive miserable life on wet concrete floor.
Last edited by RememberMee; 03-08-2010 at 02:40 PM..
I thought it was good and well worth a watch (although not quite as enthusiastic about it as when I first saw it). But at least it gets people thinking about these things, which is a BIG part of the problem - ie people don't care.
Contrary to popular belief, however, not all Americans gorge on fast food round the clock or anything in that vein. Like most everything else about America, it's very much a mix. In fact most people I know eat fast food only once in awhile or almost never, like me.
You have to remember that any given European country doesn't have near the demands on it as America does in terms of how many people it supports, food and otherwise - to say nothing of exports. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just pointing out that we "need" to produce on a much bigger scale, lending itself more to mass production. And yes admittedly our culture and mindset plays a big part too - sadly more often for the worse.
The part that bothered me the most is how cruelly animals are treated.
Interesting posting & question. When I've traveled, I have found that many foods have more taste and flavor--the whole chickens in Quebec are so delicious compared to ours..and same with cheeses and breads. Pizza in Italy is a whole different story than our gloppy mess.
In the U.S., many/most of our foods are factory-farmed with pesticides, fertilizers and if animals, with growth hormones and other things such as antibiotics.
Our food is praised as "cheap/affordable." And, it's true, as Americans, we spend less on foods than many other people do in other countries.
But then we're eating, in many cases, poorer quality foods. Lots and lots of high fructose corn syrups, trans-fats, salt, coloring, fillers, artificial flavorings and preservatives And we're paying the price in obesity and ill-health--and un-affordable health care costs. We're a sickly, over-weight nation.
Fast foods and prepared foods are much more popular here than whole foods and cooking from scratch.
I don't have answers, really. Education would help. Kids don't learn how to cook from their parents as my generation did. It's so simple, really, to do a stir-fry and rice...but it's daunting if you don't know how to buy vegetables or steam rice...so highly processed foods are purchased instead due to not knowing how to purchase and prepare healthy meals.
Very sad.
I think we need to start with kids, and at an early age. Education, cooking lessons (starting with how to grocery shop), nutritional advice and introducing whole grains and how to combine foods for complete nutrition. Hands-on in the classroom. Revive home economics classes.
Having a backyard garden is a great step, too. Maybe keep some chickens for free-range eggs...there's so much that could be done. Poor kids, sometimes they start out as heavy youngsters and only get worse from there due to lack of knowledge.
The production and distribution of food in the USA is nothing short of miraculous. There are many countries in the world where the typical family's food budget is 70-80% of their total income, and it is still an inadequate diet. Americans could (but often don't) eat reasonably healthy and wholesome food, for about 20% of an average household budget. Fresh foods are available year round. There is never a shortage of anything important.
Consider the potato. It is grown on agricultural land that is worth a couple of thousand an acre, often irrigated with fuel costs, planted, tended and harvested by paid labor using state of the art mechanical equipment and fuel, then processed and sorted and packed and shipped half way across the continent, stored in expensive climate-controlled warehouse space, and they arrive in good shape, no spoilage, long remaining shelf life, redistributed by a wholesaler, stacked in an attractive supermarket, bagged and ready, and checked out and carried out to your car, for about 25 cents a pound. The consumer earns the price of a large potato, after all the steps it has gone through, with about one minute of work. There was a time when a man would work all day for a potato.
That, to me, is the Number One Miracle in America.
Suggestions for preserving small scale agriculture and family farms:
None.
(!)
Farming, especially non-mechanized traditional farming is hard work, unpleasant, and not for everyone. But it beats starving. And in America's case, the concept of a compact village of farmers surrounded by their fields never took off. American family farms are usually based on a solitary farmhouse in the middle of the property, separate from other farms. So America's family farmers were often isolated, bereft of social contact, and lonely. There was an old saying, "How will you keep them down on the farm?"
Mid scale agriculture, based on farming villages, might work, in the post - petroleum, post - SHTF future. But that is so foreign to the current status quo, that I doubt that it would happen before a collapse.
Your vision of compact villages of farmers sounds appealing...much as the Amish organize their society, in other words? Isolation is not healthy for community. But sharing resources and equipment-and labor when needed-- makes a lot of sense. Local food production means a much lower carbon footprint--and will result in better quality and more nutritious crops that are not picked hard and green and transported 100's--or even, 1000's of miles from production to consumption.
That's why a just picked, warm-from-the-sun home-grown and perfectly ripe tomato is an entirely different thing from one imported from Peru and shipped to us.
Lord! What a difference!!
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No, American food would not kill you immediately, but over the time it will get ya. They say corpses no longer rot at the same rate as in the past because dead bodies are overloaded with food preservatives.
