The Flying Machine

Salon interviews author David Kamp, who does his best to reassure elitist foodies that local, organic food is the food of the PEOPLE! I'm sorry, but I don't see hordes of poor people lining up at the farmer's market to try that radicchio that the rich folks eat.

Those movements did start with an educated, worldly crowd -- with Alice Waters' Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Julia Child in Cambridge, Mass. But they have grown out of their origins. Organic food is no longer just for smug people in Northern California. I see moms in small towns buy Horizon milk because they don't want their children drinking industrial milk containing antibiotics and hormones.

These things may have elite origins, but so what? They eventually spread out and have resonance across the country. I think that's true of so many movements, like in art and in fashion. Most fashions start with the most elite people on the planet and the average American can't wait to imitate them. But when it comes to food, we throw a fit. We've got to let go of that.

Clearly there aren't any problems with people imitating the airbrushed, skeletal fashion elite.

You won't find anyone more enthusiastic than me about the possibility of restructuring the entire American food system and culture around more local and organic lines. And I do agree that it's on its way. We're making unbelievable progress. But he brushes off what will be the biggest challenge of this movement - making this kind of food accessible to people of all incomes. The entire movement has been until now built by and for elites. Kamp seems to think that the benefits of this system will just naturally trickle down to everyone. Uh-huh. Lovely puff pieces glorifying Craig Claiborne and Alice Waters are nice, but can we please get over the fetishization of local/organic high cuisine and onto getting good food for everyone?

Salon had a better piece about Michael Pollan's new book, at least. Look how much more articlate and thoughtful he is about the same issue:

Yes, but I think most people could afford to spend more money on food in this country. There is a segment of the population, probably less than 10 percent, that can't spend more than they're spending now. And we need to help those people by designing food aid that points them to the produce aisle and away from the snack food aisle. But say we already help that 10 percent to feed themselves in healthier ways, the other 90 percent are spending less on food, as a percentage of income, than any people in the history of mankind. We spend 9 percent of our income on food, which is less than we spent 10 years ago or 20 years ago. If we could get that up a few percentage points, we could build a much more sustainable food system. So I think people just have to dig down in their pockets and spend more for food. We seem to be able to afford spending $50 to $100 a month on television and cellphones. I'm not saying people shouldn't have cellphones or pay television, but that it's finally a decision about what you value. And the elitism charge is often used simply to defend bad practices. I'm dubious about any situation where McDonald's can occupy the moral high ground.

But it's more than an issue of money, isn't it? I know plenty of people who would love to buy and prepare fresh, local food more often but don't feel that they have the leisure time.

It's true. That is an issue. It does take more time to eat well. People have to spend more time choosing what they buy and they have to reacquaint themselves with the kitchen. It's odd, to judge by the Food Network and the fame of chefs and the popularity of Viking stoves, we're obsessed with cooking in this society, yet we don't really cook anymore. Cooking has become more of a ritual than a habit -- a high ritual that happens once a month. But it's true that to get off of processed food, you might have to join a CSA [community-supported agriculture program], where you get a box of produce every week and you have to figure out what to do with all that chard or butternut squash. And a lot of people don't feel they have time for that, partly because of the $50 to $100 they're paying for cable television and the Internet. Again, it's a matter of priorities. The good news is that there's a great deal of interest in eating whole foods. Farmers markets are appearing and thriving all over the country. And there's a movement taking shape to source school food and other institutional food locally, which could make a huge difference given that we eat half of our meals away from home. The one upside to having a monopolized food system is that a single company can make a dramatic difference. When McDonald's got out of selling genetically modified French fries, that product disappeared in a year. I was once told -- though I couldn't confirm this -- that if McDonald's gets just 25 unorganized calls or letters on a particular customer concern, the matter will get on the agenda at a board meeting. And I think that that's exactly what happened with genetically modified potatoes.