Chef shows how he eats for less than $25 a week

[orenwolf]

@spetrovits

Thumbs up, Boing Boing.

Boing boing is many things, but it is not 1) the sum of it’s BBS posters, nor 2) any sort of borg-like single-minded entity.

I don’t buy organic produce because I have access to sustainable, local produce most of the year (and great grocery stores that focus on sustainable food from other regions when I don’t). It bothers me greatly that I’ll see “organic” produce shipped here from an ocean away in the grocery stores and most people don’t think twice about that. As with most things, your purchasing dollar should have close scrutiny before you spend it.

[anon30760835]

@spetrovits

The pesticides they use are usually “natural” pesticides, which again, doesn’t mean safe.

it does mean: can be detoxified by the liver and or excreted without detoxification.

You can strip all the nuance you like, the words have meanings to other people and I don’t think you’re confusing things very much. So, be incorrect. It’s your body.

[marence]

All of that stuff is why I said talk to the farmers.

In my city, there’s a famous “farmer’s” market that sells some organic, some sustainable, and a lot of just bought it this morning at the distribution center at the docks. You have to look, ask, and be proactive about getting good ingredients. And be willing to immediately go home and process all the good fresh food so nothing goes to waste.

[MikeTheBard]

I would love to have a standardized scale from say 1 to 5 that tells you how natural/processed your food is. Like, 1 would be strictly organic, 2 would be natural food that maybe used chemical fertilizers but not pesticides, up to 5 being whatever the fuck Taco Bell “beef” is.

[RedFury]

Oh, this is going to make the Happy Mutants mad, but every word is true:

When I lived in Minneapolis, one lunch break I went to the downtown Farmer’s Market. At every entrance was a big, official sign proclaiming that all of the produce for sale was organic and locally grown in Minnesota by Minnesotans. What did I see in every direction? Avocados, bananas, and pineapples. Ah, yes…one often hears tales of the pioneer days, when Norwegian farmers emigrated to Minnesota in order to farm….pineapples.

[heh]

Yes. ‘farmers markets’ and ‘locally produced’ are unregulated, unprotected marketing terms. And that’s why the ‘local farmers markets’ are much less expensive than the certified organic shops (because often it isn’t local, and often they aren’t framers). And that’s why I buy nearly all my produce from a certified organic store, even though there is a lot of marketing bullshit mixed in which needlessly drives up the cost. We need to invest more in our food supply to secure it for the future, and right now buying from certified organic shops is the only thing you can do as an individual consumer, even if it is only to show the food industry that you are willing to pay more for sustainably grown food…

I know it’s impossible to grow organic food for all the world population, so it’s not the final solution. I’d much prefer a certified ‘sustainable’ label. Where you can for example use certain forms of genetic modification to increase efficiency while still getting this label.

Sometimes the cynic in me thinks: the main problem is overpopulation, and sooner rather than later that will fix itself.
I do hope my children will survive the fix.

[Mankoi]

@nungesser

I guess I needed to specify “non-incredibly-poisonous” pesticides? I mean, I know organic farmers that use things like ladybugs and vinegar to keep bugs away, so they’re clearly using pesticides – anti-bug countermeasures – but aren’t spraying their vegetables with chemicals that are possibly deadly.

If you look at the article @spetrovits inked, you’ll see it’s not ladybugs and vinegar though. One organic pesticide is known as spinosad, for example.

It turns out that a key factor in chemicals being cleared for use on organic crops is whether they occur naturally. Spinosad, for example, comes from the soil bacterium Saccharopolyspora spinosa. It can fatally scramble the nervous systems of insects.

Other potent natural extracts that have been approved for use as pesticides include pyrethrin, derived from chrysanthemums, and azadirachtin, from the Asian neem tree, which was also detected on some samples of organic lettuce.

All three of these substances are considered slightly toxic by the EPA.

Synthetic compounds can also make it onto the list as pesticides, if they are relatively nontoxic combinations that include minerals or natural elements, such as copper or sulfur.

Are naturally derived pesticides less toxic than synthetic ones? The answer depends a lot on the dosage, says Gillman. “To control fire blight on the same acre of land,” he explains, “I could use a tiny amount of a potent synthetic that has proved safe over the last 50 years, or a much larger amount of an organic pesticide.”

It’s also worth noting that, in the article, Gillman describes organic pesticdes as a “relatively new chemistry.” So it isn’t as though these pesticides are proven to be safe any more than synthetic ones. If anything, there’s less evidence showing they’re safe. The only reason to trust them over synthetic ones is if you think somehow nature, which has spent billions of years evolving new and interesting ways for organisms to kill each other, is less likely to hurt you than people.

[nungesser]

Cool story, I’ll file it under “more interesting info on organic foods that isn’t related to eating well for less than $25 a week”.

[peregrinus_bis]

Haha! Eat to satisfaction before you go shopping. Instant 50% off!

[BethanyAnne]

So, a chef who is vegetarian, buying in season produce from a local market, and cooking it himself is still part of the problem. He is suspected of using a petrol burner to transport his goods. He didn’t interview each stand to find the farmer growing the goods, and he didn’t track each and every single farmer down and conduct a thorough inspection of the farmer’s property and interrogate each farmer about their methods.