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I went to watch Food, Inc. yesterday.

It was not only in line with what Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan were saying - Eric Schlosser does not only show up in the film but also is a co-producer, and Michael Pollan speaks a lot in the film.

The story itself was not so new if you have been following the food issues in the past several years - what this film tried to do, it seems, is to make the message even clearer, make it approachable for the general public, or should I say, the consumers.

Sort of a similar fashion how Stonyfield grew into the third biggest yogurt producer in the U.S., and Wal-mart trying to move into organic business - efforts to bring the alternative into the mainstream are happening, and they are not without criticism for having come so far from the hippy small-scale idealism-laden operation.

There was something I did not like about the film - they sort of overused the image of the little boy Kevin who died of E-coli poisoning in the hamburger meat. I can see the filmmaker used it a lot to generate the sympathy from the concerned mothers - if that was the only effective way to communicate, it just tells me something about the self-centeredness of people - only when their children are at the risk, they want to make chanegs - in other words, they do not care unless they consider their children are at risk. The parents' protective nature may be only natural, but sometimes it seems that they only want to protect theirs and not many others.

In a strange way this movie made me cry, for thinking how far we have come to the point where they had to make this kind of movie, for thinking how this will appeal to the general public in the U.S., while at the same time it may be possibly viewed as a technological marvel in the eyes of the Third-World farmers, and for thinking why the U.S. consumers deserve to execute their purchasing power to change the world for the better - is this another kind of the America-saves-the-world story?

Every innovation in noodle technology brings us one step closer to souvlaksa: the ultimate Greek-Malaysian fusion food. Jay Rayner spots doner kebab flavoured instant noodles. His thoughts:

There was a moment, a taste echo, that reminded me of belching half an hour after having eaten the real thing – stop grimacing, for god's sake; this is a doner kebab flavoured Pot Noodle we're talking about. What did you expect? Proust? – but it was soon gone. Instead all that was left was that sickly-savoury, chemically-enhanced indeterminate flavour that all of them have.

I'm never sure if the aftertaste is a flavour or just salt and umami overload.

Here's the Burger King's advertisement site.

There are already plenty of criticisms and people blogging about this, such as:

Minnesota Hmong protesting against Burger King's Whopper Virgins campaign, on Twin Cities Daily Planet

Burger King Offends Global Culture on the Telegraph by Emily Haile

Burger King is Despicable: A Rant by Pico and the Man

Like the above two bloggers I guess the critics would find refuge in the Inuit's man's remarks that he prefers seal meat over hamburgers... but since the BK shows it as a part of their documentary-ish ad, I wonder if this is carefully crafted by the BK ad crew.

While I haven't been to either Baan Mon Kghor or Baan Khun Chang Kian myself, I also wonder if these villages are really that remote, in a similar vein with what Seng Vang is commenting:

This is obviously a false, as the specific people in the ads (who are our relatives) HAVE seen burgers before, lots of it. Almost every Hmong Thai villages in Thailand have a TV. Thailand has how many BK franchises? How many commercials in Thai have these franchises run in the past several decades? Even the most remote Hmong villages in Thailand, like the ones in your ad, drive Toyota Tundras, talk to their relatives in St. Paul on their cell phones, and watch CNN and BBC on their satellite TVs. Never seen a burger? Pure fiction. Hmong villagers in Thailand aren’t as backward or primitive as you want Americans or the world to think.

From what I have seen in the mountains of Thailand, some Hmong villages are indeed remote with no electricity, but some Hmong villages are electrified, in that case villagers do own satellite dishes.

I wonder why the BK ad crew chose the Hmong people of all "remote" and "tribal" people they could choose from, even though there are significant number of Hmong people who have immigrated to the U.S. after the Vietnam War, who would voice their opinions. If they wanted to pick up some of the most "remote" and "tribal" people from Thailand, they could have gone for the Mlabri people, for instance.

My guess is that the BK ad crew picked the Hmong villages because they are actually some of the most accessible of all the tribal villages. In the documentary-ish video, the Hmong people there are actually speaking Thai, and I won't be surprised if they have come down to the city of Chiang Mai and came across BK and McDonald's outlets in the night bazaar area where they'd sell their beautifully embroidered goods and silver jewelry to tourists.

There's been a small discussion over at the Last Appetite about the dearth of good food writing in the mainstream media, from which this excellent quote emerged

Steingarten in Vogue reminds me a little of running “quality” articles in Playboy magazine.

Phil Lees, 2008

Serious talk of food seems now to be relegated to a seemingly endless list of single commodity food analyses which Nalika once described as "crude"

Their basic premise is to illustrate wider economic, social, political and environmental issues through analysing one type of food. And it seems increasingly to be the stock and trade of many an academic these days seeking to escape their dusty old offices to seek fame and fortune on book signing tours for serious "foodies"

I began a list of these a while ago, and I'm sure that the list is incomplete, but here are some (are there anymore that you can think of?)

- the banana book “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World”

- the oyster book “The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell"

- the cod book “Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World”

- the sushi book “The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy”

- the coffee book ” The coffee paradox: Global markets, commodity trade and the elusive promise of development ”

- the rice book “Rice and Man”

- the potato book "The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World"

- The salt book "Salt: A World History"

- The spice book "Spice: The History of a Temptation"

- the chocolate book "The True History of Chocolate"

- the corn book "Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance"

- the vanilla book "Vanilla : The Cultural History of the World's Favorite Flavor and Fragrance"

- and a forthcoming is a book on the matsutake mushroom


As I said in the comments page of Last Appetite, it sometimes makes me want to yell “argghhhh…we get it food is symbolic of wider economic, political, social and environmental issues”. But the point is that food writing varies from the sublimely silly and superfluous to the deeply analytical and enlightening. Personally I like a bit of sugar with my fibre, junk food for my brain if you will.

But now comes a new type of food book, in line with Patel's Stuffed and Starved these new food books do not focus on one type of food and the limited insight that they may afford of a vastly complex system, they are not seeking to make you feel more enlightened about your everyday commodities but rather explain to you why we're all fucked.

The book ,The End of Food by Paul Roberts explains that while industrial food may be in crisis, its still making the best out of a bad situation.

A reviewer says

Reading through the recent food-politics bookshelf, it's too easy to take away an "industrial food bad, local food good" attitude. But how many modern-day locavores would readily embrace the life of, say, a 19th-century prairie farmer, tending to livestock, grain crops, and a vegetable patch without electricity or machine power? Shopping at farmers markets and joining CSAs -- activities I wholeheartedly support -- present a necessary challenge to a global food system gone mad, but are unlikely to prove sufficient for transforming it. To mount a real challenge, we'll need a clear-eyed grounding in the history and economics of food production, in addition to locavore zeal. And that's were Roberts makes an important contribution.....Robert's historical frame drives home a key point that his predecessors didn't quite nail down: In many ways, modern food production is an attractive response to centuries of chronic food insecurity. Who wants to spend nearly all of one's income on food, and rely on sugared tea as a key source of calories, as did the 19th-century British working class? Who wants to spend hours a day preparing food as peasant women did, not by choice but for survival? By the dawn of the 20th century, people quite understandably longed for food security and freedom from drudgery. The modern food system -- for all of the new problems it created -- largely met those desires, at least in the United States and Europe. The locavore movement will eventually have to confront them head on.

Yes, who indeed wants to live like a peasant? (aside from you Phil and Hock who's apparent dream is to spend all of their waking hours cold smoking meats and makin bacon)

Basically, the point is that yes modern food is deeply problematic but if we get rid of it human kind will undoubtedly face starvation....the end of food, and all those mindlessly indulgent food writers and bloggers and the equally useless academics that go along with it.

From Asahi shimbun (with Google translate) June 26, 2008:

Marubeni, organic fertilizer as the "vegetable plant" to sell the world's first

Marubeni Corp., Kanagawa Prefecture venture partners, vegetables, organic fertilizer to cultivate indoor only "vegetable factory" to embark on business sales. The first time in the world. Food prices are rising, while the lack of attention to food safety and increasingly suffer from the use of idle facilities and local governments, you want to own restaurants to procure food for sale are anticipated.

Trays of nutrient solution in hydroponic cultivation, a type of "factory" to dozens of locations in the country but the large amount of nutrient solution and it was necessary to use chemical fertilizers. The new plant development, venture companies in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, "Verde" is a fabrication, and水ごけspecial clay soil mixtures to use. Water and fertilizer to maintain a strong force for a small amount of organic fertilizer to cultivate.

Sat 1 percent of normal weight for several buildings in shelf-over set up a stage, so much culture. Besides growth from garden-grown quickly. Fluorescent and LED (light-emitting diode) illumination of a 24-hour guard and nurture. Lettuce, garden-grown twice a year, about a month once the harvest and the annual harvest of the garden-grown to more than a dozen times.

Marubeni is a growing shelf of land, and adjust the level of carbon dioxide and other equipment, needed a set to grow sales. About 100 sq.m. If you have the plant cost 50 million
yen. From the cost of open culture, Marubeni is "a lot of harvest on the safety of high crop prices from 5 percent higher if the plant cost as little as five years in recovery".

Atsugi city set up a factory test plant in the "cake shops for fruit cultivation," and a pastry shop, "using the old school house, for winter tourists who want to offer locally produced
vegetables" Local governments have been from the tour. Marubeni own future is owned by the management is considering a large vegetable plant. (Norihiko Saitou)

During the ag-food conference in Belgium last month, there was a showing of a movie "Our Daily Bread."

It's all about industrial and high-tech food making process, with no narrations or conversations. They just show it to you. A little disturbing, and very provoking.

Below are a few images downloadable from the movie website.



I wasn't sure what the below image was about when I saw the movie... ..but when I downloaded this image, the file name was "UNSER TÄGLICH BROT Spargel."

Oooooh.

Spargel, the white asparagus!!!

Since the movie contains explicit images of animal slaughtering, we joked about conference participants changing their mind about the reception dinner choice... which, to our surprise, they served stuff like foie gras, which did not seem to be the best thing to serve at a conference on sustainable agri-food systems...