The Organic Food Movement in Black and White
I'm a little late to the "dogpile on Julie Powell" party. She wrote an ill-informed op-ed piece for the New York Times condemning the elitist snobbery of the organic food movement (which she, like many, erroneously conflates with seasonal produce), and foodies around the Internet have been reacting. (see mmw, Kate, Richard, and eGullet)
While everyone's entitled to their opinions, they tend to work better when they're grounded in reality. Julie's condemnation of devotees of organic food makes me wonder how much she knows about it. I don't know any upper-middle-class foodie who looks down on low-income families for not buying organic produce. Government is the real villain here, subsidizing industrialized agriculture and its destructive products while penalizing small farmers and failing to give low-income households the resources to eat healthfully. Jeffrey Steingarten spent a month trying to live off the government's food stamp program and informational pamphlets, and he complained that instead of actually teaching people to eat in a healthy way at their income level, the government just told shoppers about the unhealthy processed food they could buy, long-term consequences be damned.
The organic food movement I subscribe to is essentially egalitarian: We believe that healthy (in the sense of pesticide-free), environmentally sound food should be the norm, not the privilege of the wealthy. Julie's beloved, nonjudgmental Western Beef is the ultimate in class warfare because it's an outlet for industrial producers to sell unhealthy products to consumers who can't afford the alternatives. If the rich won't buy it, sell it to the poor and reward the companies that foisted off their lesser goods on those who are struggling to get by. It's practically our country's motto.
Looking at the price tags, an organic tomato costs more than its industrial equivalent, but this is a short-sighted view. Proponents of the organic food movement realize that the industrial fruit is the dearer of the two. Subsidies to support large-scale agricultural enterprises, a flood of pesticides (or hormones, for livestock), a steady decline in fertile soil, more reliance on chemical fertilizers, toxic byproducts in our food and groundwater, and long-term health problems. Want to compare costs on that organic tomato again? If we as a culture paid more attention to the bigger picture, this kind of food would be more available to everyone, and as a society we'd be better off. So says my elitist mindset, anyway.
I was also struck by her assertion that we who believe in the organic food movement somehow dismiss the good food made by people who shop at Western Beef. I'd be curious to know who's she thinking of. Is this a version of foodie that exists in New York but not in the Bay Area? Most food lovers I know enjoy a good meal. We don't grill the chef about the ingredients or lecture them about their choices. My local Slow Food group recently had dinner at a restaurant that prepared a traditional Szechuan banquet for us. Our convivium leader acknowledged that the restaurant wasn't using "Slow Food" ingredients but it was helping educate people about a traditional cuisine in an affordable way, and that was just as valuable. Julie would have you believe that we were four dozen elitists gathered together to look down upon food made with non-organic ingredients. I just saw a bunch of food lovers enjoying a good meal. That's all I ever see at Slow Food gatherings or friends' houses, but perhaps Julie runs with a different crowd.
Trying to distill American attitudes about food into an op-ed piece is an ambitious goal, but perhaps Julie should read up a bit more before her inevitable next piece. The issues are complex and painted in shades of gray. Now that she's mastered the art of French cooking, maybe she should master this topic so that she can add something to the debate.
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