Eat My Florida

• “Shortages are reaching crisis proportions in even the most highly developed regions, and they’re quickly becoming commonplace in our own backyard, from the bleached-white bathtub ring around the Southwest’s half-empty Lake Mead to the parched state of Georgia, where the governor prays for rain.” [Wired]

• “I go alone during the day to collect my water from the lake but I get scared because there are bandits along the road and dangerous gases that come out from the lake.”[Guardian]

• “Long-term refugees like Fathiya, in well-established camps, do not live in immediate fear of hunger. But they must devote about every hour of the day to the job of getting their families fed.” [Guardian]

• “Under a little-known international treaty called the Convention on International Civil Aviation, signed in Chicago in 1944 to help the fledgling airline industry, fuel for international travel and transport of goods, including food, is exempt from taxes, unlike trucks, cars and buses.” [NY Times]

• “I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit.” [NY Times]

The New York Sun reported this week that major retailers like Costco have recently imposed purchase limits on commodity foods like rice, oil and flour. It’s spotty, on a store by store basis, but people are noticing and some consumers (as well as restaurant owners concerned about rapid price hikes from distributors) are hoarding. And worldwide garin reserves are at an almost all-time low, resulting in a supply chain that has very little inventory to draw from. In the Sun article, survival blogger and former Army intelligence officer James Rawles noted that “even if people increased their purchasing by 20%, all the store shelves would be wiped out.”

Maybe Bush will recall troops from Iraq to start baking bread, a la Egypt’s Mubarak.

Rationing food. Hoarding food. Here in the US. Huh.

[Classic photo by Margaret Bourke-White. Look back at the past few weeks of Eat My Florida for more on the World Food Crisis.]

Although it’s tied up in the courts thanks to a last minute injunction, this week was supposed to be the start of the New York City Department of Health initiative mandating posted calorie counts on the menus of any restaurant chain with more than 15 outlets nationwide. Here are some of the early reactions, thanks to a few chains that kicked it off despite the delay — NY Times, NY Post, Village Voice, Midtown Lunch.

If only Florida could be so enlightened. Sadly, here in the Sunshine State you have to dig deep in the murk to find out the impact of your morning Frap and scone, or the taco salad at the Bell. Here at Eat My Florida, we want to make it easier for you to wallow in the angst of your dining decisions, so here’s a list of links to the nutrition section of every chain in the area. Here’s a teaser — bloomin’ onion = 2275 calories.

Eat it and weep:

• Burgers: McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Evos, Krystal, Five Guys, Whataburger, Hardee’s, Fatburger, Sonic, Steak N Shake,
• Chicken: Chick-Fil-A, Popeye’s, KFC, Pollo Tropical, Church’s,
• Other Fast Food Sandwich Joints: Arby’s, Subway, Miami Subs, Quiznos, Blimpie, Jersey Mike’s, Jimmy John’s,
• Other Fast Food: Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s, Chipotle, Moe’s, Panera, Boston Market, Pei Wei Asian Diner, Panda Express,
• Pizza: Hungry Howie’s, Sbarro, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Godfather’s, Dominos, CiCi’s,
• Breakfast, Smoothies, Coffee and Sweets: Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Smoothie King, TCBY, Einstein Brothers Bagels, Starbucks, Denny’s, IHOP, Bob Evans,
• Casual Dining Chains: Buffalo Wild Wings, Hooters, PF Chang’s, Chilis, TGIFiday’s, Outback, Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Ruby Tuesday’s, Carrabas, Sonny’s, Red Lobster

Who’d we miss?

Sadly, he’s only replacing him on the Food Network’s Dinner Impossible. The show will also be extended to 60 minutes, now that there’s no pinheaded Brit to get on the viewers’ nerves.

If only this accomplished Cleveland chef, beloved by fellow Ohioan Michael Ruhlman and recently crowned the new Iron Chef America, would take a look at liar-liar-pants-on-fire Irvine’s abandoned project in downtown St. Pete, too. We could use a real celebrity chef in the area, especially one with chops like Symon, in spite of the soul patch.

Whaddya think, Mike? [cleveland.com]

• “Bake 7 to 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling rack. Store tightly covered.” Win a million dollars. [Pillsbury]

• “It’s nearly Earth Day: Time to consume more to save the planet.” [Ad Age]

• “I don’t believe that anyone has asked Bill Clinton what he’ll be looking for in a chef should his wife become president or what he’ll serve at his first state dinner. (As his family’s former chef, I can’t resist affectionately suggesting that this is probably for the best, given his predilection for comfort food.)” [NYT]

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS: “In Haiti, protesters chanting “We’re hungry” forced the prime minister to resign; 24 people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt’s president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment.” [Economist]

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS: “What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert them to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world’s rich consumers.” [New Statesman]

1. Greens - April and May mark the end of the growing season for salad greens in the area, which suffer heavily as temps gear up for the summer. Kale is good for you!
2. Strawberries - It’s almost the end for on of our area’s biggest crops and some local farms will be opening their fields for personal picking, now that most of the big harvesting is done. This time of year, strawberries are usually super-ripe and exceptionally sweet, perfect for jams and jellies, or you can add a little sugar and freeze them in their own syrup for later use.
3. Cucumbers - These guys are just coming into their own this time of year and you can usually find low-seed pickling varieties at farmer’s markets and bigger ones at the supermarket.
4. Sweet corn – We don’t grow a lot of this around here, but if you can find it the ears will be ready to go. Here’re some tips for cooking.
5. Rhubarb -I love to eat these sweet-tart stalks of pseudo celery straight out of the fridge, but you can also make a mean pie with some late-season strawberries.
6. Grapefruit - Some varieties keep coming in through the summer, but April is the end of the season for most. Buy a bunch an juice them for a better than orange breakfast treat.
7. Valencias - These (often) seedless wonders are just hitting the market and great for juicing.
8. Potatoes – Yet again, we don’t grow a lot of these around here, but those we have will be sweeter than the supermarket selections. I’ve seen some at several local farmer’s markets.
9. Tomatoes - This is prime time for Ruskin’s finest. Get ‘em while they’re bright and fresh.
10. Blueberries - They’re ripe and ready. You can make a crumble, but I like ‘em in muffins, or just tossed in with my morning Cheerios.

I know, I know, I’ve been obsessing lately over the World Food Crisis. But why not? It’s an issue that affects everyone, from the increased hits to our budget during the weekly trip to the grocery store to decreased portion sizes in restaurants. And considering the food unrest in countries like Malaysia, Egypt, Haiti and India, it could cause lasting political change in the world that the US might have to deal with down the road. And, no matter how you look at it, people are starving.

Lately, I’ve focused on biofuels as one of the insidiously evil underlying causes of this food crisis, that just so happens to cause irreparable harm to the environment in the process. Today, The Independent nailed an even bigger culprit — meat.

According to The Independent, almost 40% of all the grain grown in the world is slated for animal feed. Feeding animals is an inefficient process, requiring about 8 kilos of grain to produce every kilo of cow flesh, or 2k for every k of chicken. Meat production uses 6 to 17 times as much land, 5 to 26 times as much water, 6 to 20 times as much fossil fuels and 6 times as much biocides as grain. Just to cap it all off, remember that a single cow produces as much greenhouse gasses every day as an SUV out for a 45 minute cruise. And America is the world’s largest consumer of red meat.

It’s not all our fault — giant developing countries like India, China and Indonesia are consuming more meat than ever before, twice as much as 20 years ago. I guess we can look forward to that leveling off once the people in those countries start contracting diabetes and heart disease at record rates.

If you eat meat — like me –it’s likely that none of this will change your carnivorous ways. But a little extra knowledge about what goes into getting that steak to your plate, and what effects it has on the environment, starving families and world politics, might make you cut back. Just a little. Like me.

• “April 12th’s Saturday Night Live featured three clips of Ashton Kutcher dressed up as a giant chocolate bar with a killer instinct, cute mime clown face and all.” (Thanks Serious Eats)

• “What was supposed to be a temporary financial safety net for imperiled family farmers has become a huge boondoggle for a fraction of wealthy farmers, including landowners who’ve never gotten close enough to a barn to slip on the manure.” (Thanks PBS.org)

• “A simulated outbreak of the disease — part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called “Crimson Sky” — ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation’s National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets.” (Thanks AP)

• “Planners couldn’t come up with enough organic or sustainably grown food from Georgia to nourish just 600 people over two days.” Hmm, maybe I’ll have to start giving back to my alma mater. (Thanks AJC)

• “Smart owners, of course, have always carefully watched their costs, but when every bill comes with a “gasoline-price surcharge” and fewer people are walking through the door, it’s hocus-pocus time.” (Thanks WP)

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS UPDATE: “Cropland is suddenly in heavy demand, a situation that is fraying old alliances, inspiring new ones and putting pressure on the Agriculture Department, which is being lobbied directly by all sides without managing to satisfy any of them.” (Thanks NYT)

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS UPDATE: “When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels,” said India’s finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, in an interview.” (Thanks WSJ)

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS UPDATE: “As we know in the past, sometimes those questions lead to war,” he said. “We now need to devote 100 percent of our time to these questions.” (Thanks NYT)

Best thank you note sent to a restaurant, ever. (Thanks to SFoodie.)

Anyone who’s been following my frequent recent posts about the world-wide spike in food prices and the manifold problems associated with that will be familiar with some of this info. But in researching items for CL’s Green Issue next week, I found that biofuels are a big part of the problem.

Science Magazine recently calculated that “biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials incur little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages.” Not bad, until you realize that developing nations are clear cutting at record rates to either plant biofuel crops or compensate for the switch from grain for consumption to fuel grain in other areas. That’s when the shock comes – “Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food crop–based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a “biofuel carbon debt” by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO₂ than the annualgreenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels.” Not very eco-friendly.

Here’s the formula for biofuel crisis: US farmers switch from soy to corn to take advantage of the demand for biofuels. Brazil sees the demand for soy, and chops their rainforests and savannahs into neat little soy fields. Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia don’t want to be left out of the bio-boom, so they clear-cut vast swathes to plant oil palms, displacing farmers and increasing food prices.

In 2006, more than 40,000 hectares of forest were destroyed every day. Deforestation puts more greenhouse gasses into the air than all the planes, trains, ships and automobiles across the world. Think about that before converting your car to “green biofuel.”

I’ll a steaming hot cup of corrections, with a soy shout out and a side of apology:

1. I mistakenly gave a wrong address for Kahwa Roaster’s new shop in last week’s paper. It’s on 2nd AVE. N, not 2nd St. N. My specific apologies go out to an irate woman who spent some pedal power trying to find the place on her bike. My bad.
2. That piece also prompted a letter from Anne Vela, owner of Cafe Hey. Here’s what she said:
   “Just to re-emphasize something I’m sure you know, an accepted localvore practice is to allow items that have been traded over the centuries from far distances, such as olive oil, some grains and also coffee. So Kahwa who yes trades its beans internationally, gets the seal of local approval.
   As a plug for my own shop, Cafe Hey (through which I go through much effort to purchase locally traded and produced items as well as organic and fairtrade foods whenever I can) serves Sweetwater Coffee roasted in Gainesville, FL. Being that they are located within 200 miles of Tampa, it also counts as locally produced! Sweetwater Roasters is also currently certified USDA Organic by QCS and Florida Organic Growers, certified FairTrade by Transfair USA, Rainforest Alliance Certified, a participant in the Eco Q system, is Smithsonian Bird Friendly AND lastly is certified by Utz Kapeh!!!
   They also roast some pretty damn fine coffee. Hope you’ll try it sometime.”
   I will, Anne.
   
3. Finally, in CL’s Urban Explorer issue a few weeks ago, I wrote the section on downtown St. Pete and referred to the Globe Coffee Shop as a “bohemian cafe.” Accurate, sure, but it’s also a tad inconsiderate to a little place a few blocks away called Cafe Bohemia (937 Central Ave., 727-895-4495). That shop also has an urban bohemian crowd, with good coffee, good beer and live music or DJs most weekend nights. Check it out and tell them I sent you to apologize for me.

• “Monsanto is big. You can’t win. We will get you. You will pay.”
• “Red Bull Cola: Strong and Natural.”
• “It gives me goose bumps,” says Carter, who founded a nonprofit to promote sustainable ranching on the Amazon frontier. “It’s like witnessing a rape.”
• “At least 10,000 farmers have committed suicide each year over the last decade because of their inability of repay loans taken at usurious rates of interest from local moneylenders.”
• “Oh, and in case you’re wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.”

This is only going to get worse, so start paying attention now:

• “World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Wednesday called for a new coordinated global response to deal with spiraling food prices exacerbating shortages, hunger and malnutrition around the globe.”

• “Foodstuffs have gone up 41 percent in price since October 2007, pushing many people over the line from poverty into privation or even hunger.”

• “What’s more, worldwide food reserves are at their lowest in 35 years, so prices are likely to stay high for the foreseeable future.”

• The cost of food: Facts and figures.

• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Anyone who wants to find both a good – and another bad — side to the ongoing economic woes of our fair country just has to look at their bottom line. Or, more accurately, the line of their bottoms.

Lately, local food and health advocates have stapled a silver lining onto the recession by claiming that higher prices of industrially-produced corn, meat and soy – caused by elevated oil prices, among a bevy of other factors – means that people will be eating more fruits and vegetables from local farms, since those prices have stayed largely stable. That’s good for the environment, public health and the local economy. The NYT had a piece about this today, featuring quotes and wishful thinking from luminaries like Michael Pollan and Alica Waters.

The problem is, prices for local and organic fruits and vegetables are only “bargains” in relation to those industrial products’ increased prices. That’s great for the environmental- and health-conscious middle and upper classes who already seek out better foods. But, mass-produced food is still less expensive and easier to obtain, especially for lower-income families, which means the unhealthiest, most inexpensive commercial foods might see as big a jump in consumption as local and organic products.

Burger King CEO John Chidsey nailed that problem in a Wall Street Journal Q & A last week: “It’s very hard for me to imagine that the economy could ever get so bad that somebody could not afford to go buy a Double Cheeseburger from McDonald’s or a Whopper Jr. from us for $1. If you go to the grocery store, I really challenge you to find something for under $1.”

When I tried the Food Stamp Challenge last year, I experienced those same issues. Making the best out of a small budget and and healthy desires takes precious time that the working poor don’t usually have in abundance. When money is tight, really tight, healthy eating falls quickly to the convenience of a cheap and filling fast food meal.