Thoughts on why Time's cover story on eating locally missed the mark.
As a proponent of green eating, I was both annoyed and intrigued by Time Magazine's recent cover story on the local food movement. It heralded the article with a cover featuring a larger-than-life red apple with a round yellow sticker on it reading, "Forget Organic. Eat Local."
Annoyed, because the admonition to "forget organic" seemed an irresponsible blanket statement about a more eco-friendly way of eating that's growing by leaps and bounds. Intrigued, though, because I understood what the headline writer was getting at: organic is better than conventional agriculture but not as good as agriculture that doesn't ship food hundreds or thousands of miles from where it's grown.
After reading John Cloud's feature, though, I was left mostly annoyed. While informative in many ways, the article was often glib -- the reference to food co-ops as "too political for me," for example, or calling the concept of community supported agriculture as sounding "a little lefty." There was also this comment, in response to Michael Pollan's assertion in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" that "We place our faith in science to sort out what culture once did":
"But science should trump culture on matters of nutrition," Cloud writes.
Never mind that the science Pollan refers to isn't sound nutritional science but the junk/industrial food science that gave us things like chicken nuggets, neon-hued yogurt and snacks that change color in your mouth.
Finally, it struck me as a gross omission that an article about eating locally never mentioned Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, probably one of the earliest proponents and practitioners of this food movement.
Learning to eat well and in an environmentally responsible, sustainable manner deserves serious treatment, not wink-and-a-nod coverage that ends with comments like, "I'm not a purist about these choices -- I ate a Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's on the way to (a CSA) farm. But in general, I have decided that you are where you eat."
Sorry, but knocking organic food over local while giving back-handed praise to fast food does the green food movement, whatever its focus, a disservice.
