Comida Natural

Food, in general, is better in Mexico.  I didn’t do a chemical analysis, but just consider…

I get fish from the fisherman as he drags his boat up on the beach.  Lemon’s grow on trees.  When I ask my friends for one, the usual response is “take many”.  I don’t know many lime trees, but I think the natives do a lot of barter and giving between relatives.  The tortillas are sometimes made by hand.  The Mango’s are fresh, or they are not there, but never are they ancient.  The beef is rumoured to be top rate.  I have not spotted CAFO’s, although I have seen many a cow tied to the roadside eating the grass.  I’ve seen tomato CAFO’s, but who ever got mad tomato disease?  The nopales is local.  The remainder of the food looks pretty good to me.  The fast food is fresh and local, quite the opposite of our side of the border.  The stands without refrigeration are forced to use fresh ingredients.  In the interior, the restaurants loudy announce Mariscos, but they don’t have any.  Food is Local, not because they are locovores, but because it’s easy and cheap to use local ingredients.

The price of food

It's seems to be going up.  Dried beans cost several times what they used to.  Going to a yuppie markets doesn't help.  They have good produce, but they get you on staples.  I suppose this is why we go to several markets.  Speaking of produce, my chili called for green peppers, which are decidedly not in season during December in Minneapolis.  And that's why we eat root vegetables in the winter, or break out the tomatoes that were froze during the harvest time.

The battle between corn farmers, GMO companies, Ethanol producers and consumers will come to a head some day.  I don't see why organic food should cost twice as much.  True, there is more labour, but there is less expense for chemicals and the like.  I think it's a matter of scale.  As support for real food grows, the price will come down.  Who know, maybe supermarkets will switch to all organic natural food.

While we complain about food prices, food expense as a percentage of income is historically low in the US.  People in the 1800s spent much of their income on food, and it wasn't gourmet either.  While we can lower our expense by buying seasonally and consuming staples such as rice and beans and potatoes, I feel for the third world people who live on a dollar a day.   For them, a doubling of food prices means a halving of how much they get to eat.  This is the true tragedy of our Ethanol policy.

Prius Envy

They're just great little cars.  Well, they're not unduly small, they're just great.  Great milage.  Warm, cool, good visibility, a stereo.

For some reason some non-owners are fiercely opposed to them.

"The battery will wear out".  But it didn't when taxi drivers put on hundreds of thousands of miles.

"The battery will be hugely expensive".  This is hard to reckon, because the batteries hardly ever fail.  If one ever did fail, there should be plenty of wrecks to cannibalize.

The only drawback I see if price.  They are not cheap, even counting the gas savings.  You don't buy one to save money today.  You buy it because it has way low emissions.  Because you want to walk around saying "I'm so green, I'm so green" to yourself.  Because you think there will not be peace in the middle east and the rest of the world, and that gas supplies may be disrupted, and gas prices may double some day.

What could be better?  Well, the plug-in sounds pretty cool.

Elevators. Just say no.

Here are some reasons:

• Walking stairs is good exercise. While you are at it, use the stairs to do some calf lifts every day. If it’s too many stairs to walk up, just walk down.

• Avoid that awkward time, too short to converse, long enough to be uncomfortable as you both stare at the floor number display.

• Save energy.

• Sooner or later, it’s going to get stuck and you won't be on it. Yay.

• It’s unlikely that the elevator will free fall, but it is even more unlikely that the stairs you are walking on will collapse.

• It can save your life. I had a co-worker who was in good shape. He had a large brood of children and a boyish aspect to him. He liked stairs. On 9/11 he was working in the World Trade Center, and he walked down 40 flights of stairs and out the door, safe and sound.

Food and Politics

I did not stress non-GMO and Organic in the All-Food Diet, even though I think they are find ideas.  There are several reasons for this.  I think the most important thing is eating real non-processed food.  If you go to restaurants, have friends feed you, or shop in a supermarket, you will end up eating lots of non-organic food, and it probably won't kill you.

It's also hard to define organic.  How many years does it take a field to recover from conventional farming?  If I grow an organic garden next to a non-organic one, is the food still good what with wind and contamination?  How is organic defined?  This is a political hot potato.

How do we change the food world?  Some people are 100% opposed to fast food, which is understandable.  But where is their voice?  The organizations they seek to change are not listening to them.

Another strategy is to divide and conquer.   Can consumers convince one grocery or fast food chain to incrementally improve the quality and labeling of their food?  Yes they can.  This is the power of the pocketbook.  This is how change comes about.  Walmart is carrying organic stonyfield yogurt.  Who'd a thunk it?  The non-GMO movement seems to be gaining ground as well.