Organic, Inc

I basically try to follow and enjoy a diet high in whole grains, vegetables, fruits, low-fat dairy and eggs, lean meat, fish and little alcohol. The body digests these foods over time, slowing gastric emptying into the pancreas, keeping insulin release stable, blood glucose levels fairly stable.

I found Organic Inc immediately interesting because this is all discussed in its first chapter! This "diet", tends to be thought of as the South Beach Diet only because Miami cardiologist Arthur Agatston came up with diet to comabt heart disease and with comibination of reduced calories, subjects lost weight. The South Beach diet didn't offer up anything that nutritionists were not already saying at the time of its outburst, but its association with buff models and the miami area founder- led it to take off -becoming a spin on the nutritional approach going back to Hunza peasants of Britain, who have historically incredible survival rates ( their diet was high complex carbohydrates, vegetables and fruit, well taken care of livestock).

When you add in organic, local foods to this model, it no longer becomes a "prescriptive diet" for losing weight- it somehow becomes your "way of life". You increase sustainability by choosing local foods, you increase your health and eliminate pesticides in your body by choosing organic. It doesn't mean you have to shop at Whole Foods.... it means that you are a consumer that CARES!

The marketing exec from Whole Foods tells Samuel Fromartz (author of Organic, Inc), We knew consumers for quite some time heard about Organic, but no one really knew what Organic meant. For that matter, we also knew consumers did not CARE- they just wanted to feel good about the choices they made.

Whole Foods is also developing a way to ensure their meats are not only free of antibiotics and hormones, but also raised to animal-compassionate standards, another means of increased sustainability. Yet, Whole foods capitalizes on consumers- American consumers LOVE FOOD, they also LOVE SHOPPING, yet most HATE shopping for food. Whole Foods makes that easy, they make the choices for you- telling you its good.

Their 365 brand of organic products is an example - You can buy a bag of 365 organic pasta for less than $1 or you can buy Montebello brand pasta grown on hilltop in Italy, farmed free of chemicals for $2.99. The WF brand makes "organic" easier- cheaper. I question though, the sustainability factor; What about LOCAL people???!?! Yes you are doing a "good" thing for your body by purchasing organic, but what about the cost of transporting that hilltop Italian pasta from Italy? The jet-fuel, the gas mileage to the Whole Foods??

I mean, is it really worth it for the economy? Most people today in the U.S do not own a pasta maker or know how to make pasta. This is where my recent reading of Slow Food Nation and Gastronomical Me come into play. Shouldn't we also be concerned with sustaining the economy and sustaining human growth by education consumers to be co-producers, to know what gastronomy is and why it is important to have skills such as making pasta, or growing vegetables free of pesticides ?

Slow Food Nation, cont'd

What I took from Slow Food Nation and what I feel Carlo Petrini is portraying:

Food is a network of people, places, products, and knowledge. Think about a dish of pasta...
the tomatoes - Who grew them, what did they use in their soil, when did they pick them, how much gas did it cost them to transport them to the place you bought them?
Or where they canned- what an extensive process canning and preserving is! ?
What about the spaghetti, what did it cost to grow the wheat, make the flour, roll the pasta, package it, and deliver it to the store?
Did the farmer's know what the effects of pesticides could do to the tomatoes?
Did the famer make parmesean cheese from milk of cows fed animal by-products or grass fed cows ?

As a gastronome, you feel a part of that network. You belong to a food network, which goes from the global to the particular. From universal to local, for producers and co-producers. Reactivating the connections between producer and consumer, which often now are so far distant the nodes of the network do not even know they are part of the network, will circulate the network. New nodes of conscious people can expand the network , the network thus sustains itself. A sustainable network focused on human growth instead of economic growth- leading to quality food.

This new quality of food can be obtained via educational strategies of knowledge and of products: so that food is good for the palate and the mind, sustainable for the earth, and fair because every person's dignity is guarenteed