Kspitz’s Weblog

A Response to Time Magazine’s Joel Stein

Time Magazine recently printed an opinion piece written by Joel Stein entitled “Extreme Eating” in which Stein describes the current “eat-local” food movement as “anti-globalization idiocy”. He has already received more than a few comments challenging him on this view and I am certainly going to add my voice to the crowd. If you are interested in reading the piece, here’s the link.   

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1702353,00.html

Stein’s comments stand as evidence of the depths of his ignorance – on several issues. First of all, he implies that Iowans, if urged to eat more locally grown foods, would have to eat only pork, corn and soy. While it is true that Iowa (along with Illinois and Indiana) does grow thousands of acres of corn, the type of corn you see filling the fields along Interstate 80 is NOT the type of corn you would make into creamed corn or top with melted butter and wrap your lips and teeth around – that’s sweet corn, idiot. The vast majority of field corn is fed to steers in feed lots (not their natural diet, by the way) or made into highly processed, unnatural sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup (one of the real reasons we have an obesity epidemic). Having been born and raised in Iowa, I must cease to comment any further on this particular issue lest I spiral further into the depths of name-calling.  

Stein’s paragraph in which he described the 21^st century eating as “part-travel, part cultural mashup” ends with the equivalent of a spoiled 3-year-old’s whining, “I want… I want… I want…” Well, I guess by buying all of your ingredients for dinner from as far away as possible you also want to increase poverty and hunger levels in poor nations, and you want to put local farmers out of business because there is no market for their lamb right here. I guess you would also prefer that Chilean sea bass become extinct because their numbers have been so desecrated by greedy consumers like yourself, and you prefer the taste of pesticides which are sprayed on asparagus fields – pesticides like DDT which was banned from use in this country in the 1970s, but is still used in many less developed countries like Peru.

And as far as dining like a rich person, well, you did. Considering the prices Whole Foods charges for the items you described, that meal surely set you back $100 or more – certainly not what the average American family would be spending on a single meal and far more than you would have spent at a local farmer’s market for foods of similar, if not higher, quality. By the way, Whole Foods is NOT the local-food movement’s most treasured supermarket – the local farmer’s market is. At the farmer’s market, and at the farm itself, you can talk to and get to know the people who actually grow your food – which is one of the most important aspects of the eat-local movement.

So, Mr. Stein, if you prefer to go on shopping in ignorance, and contributing to the huge, multi-billion dollar food industry that cares nothing for our health or the health of our children, then go ahead, this is America and you do have that freedom of choice, but I must ask you, who is the real idiot here?  I urge you do just a little more research on these issues before you go around “giving the finger” to educated, concerned citizens. When the huge, globalized, unsustainable food industry starts to crumble, which I believe it eventually will, you and many others will be turning to the local farmers in earnest, and you will be GRATEFUL for that sweet corn and roast pork.

GK