Dining and Opining

Oh my! So many things I like all in the same place: Jonathan Safran Foer. Chipotle. Short stories. Literature. Chipotle will now be printing small pieces of writing from great writers on its cups and bags, based on an idea proposed by Jonathan Safran Foer. As he describes in this Vanity Fair piece : “...I got to know quite a bit about the company, not in the process of doing this, but in the process of Eating Animals ,” he continued. “Chipotle was pointed to quite often, as a model of what scaling good practices might look like. The truth is, that’s not really why I did this. I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if it was for another company like a McDonald’s, but what interested me is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds having access to good writing. A lot of those people don’t have access to libraries, or bookstores. Something felt very democratic and good about this.” There will be stories by Foer himself, by Toni Morrison, Malcolm Gladwell, George Saunders,...

Below is a little story my college roommate Deepani wrote to me for my birthday. She lives in Tanzania, and writes evocatively about her first experience "sourcing" her own meat. Enjoy!  Kim and Deepani The first story I have is about our little farm that lives in the backyard garden. It's getting harder and harder to keep track now, but I think we have something like 2 hens, 3 cockerels, 6 ducks, 3 ducklings, a dog called Kim, and a cat called Mini. After many weeks of confident talking but with little action, a couple of weekends ago, Gary and I screwed up the nerve and sourced our own meat from our own backyard, all by ourselves. In more graphic terms, we caught, slaughtered, plucked, butchered, cooked, and ate a duck from our backyard flock. As meat eaters, we thought that it appropriate the we should involve ourselves in the process of what it means for an animal to become the food that we eat, and as caretakers of a flock of fowl, we finally had the chance. Sti...

 Researchers at the Medical University of Graz, in Austria, recently published a study that included an analysis of vegetarian diets ( available in PDF here ). Lots of European papers (and a few in the U.S. as well) are reporting on the study with titles like, "Vegetarians are 'less healthy' and have a poorer quality of life than meat-eaters" . Frequent D&O reader and my husband, JH, responds to the study:  . . . It's worth noting that this study has some pretty significant limitations: it only followed 330 vegetarians, all of them Austrian, and apparently didn't attain a representative sample, as over 75% of the subjects for the study were women. So, I think we should take this one with a pretty big grain of salt (while of course open-mindedly waiting to see if any of these findings are replicated), especially given the fact that the general consensus among folks who study nutrition goes sharply in the opposite direction.  So, for exampl...

Food and Water Watch recently launched their Healthy Farms, Healthy Families campaign to end antibiotic misuse. They are calling on specific cities to pass city-wide resolutions urging Congress to take action on this issue. Madison is the latest city in which they're working. You can help by signing the online petition to support this work in Madison. Ask the city council to pass the resolution urging Congress to ban the misuse of antibiotics on factory farms! What's the issue? Antibiotics are for saving lives, not for saving factory farm profits Antibiotic resistance is coming to be a serious public health crisis right now in the U.S. Last fall, the Center for Disease Control reported that two million Americans contact antibiotic resistant infections, and at least 23,000 people die as a direct result. Antibiotics are a foundation of modern medicine that we all take for granted, but it's clear that if don’t act now, antibiotics may not work for us the next ti...

Now, for something a little lighter, check out these food-inspired valentine cards : Find, and send, the whole spread here . Which are your favorite? UPDATED: Even more foodie valentines here, at the Kitchn!

There's big news in the [agricultural] justice world, as Walmart signed on to the Fair Food Program, which protects laborers and human rights in the US produce industry.  Walmart representatives John Amaya and Tom Leech, and CIW’s Lucas Benitez and Gerardo Reyes Chavez [plus Nely Rodriguez, not pictured] sign historic agreement at a Lipman Produce farm outside of Immokalee, FL. The Fair Food Program was initiated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. According to its website, CIW is a "worker-based human rights organization internationally recognized for its achievements in the fields of corporate social responsibility, community organizing, and sustainable food. The CIW is also a leader in the growing movement to end human trafficking due to its groundbreaking work to combat modern-day slavery and other labor abuses common in agriculture." Several other retailers have reached agreements with the CIW in the past, but Walmart's participation is huge, given th...

Recently, a friend shared this Intelligence Squared debate on the motion: "Don't Eat Anything With A Face" . Four experts debated the pros and cons of vegetarianism from a variety of perspectives. The whole video is worth watching, for sure: I liked the opening comments from the moderator, in which he highlighted the oft-cited (but still oft-ignored) reason that many people are comfortable with meat-eating: they just avoid thinking about it.  He said, "The simple act of eating a hamburger is, when you really think about it, one of the great acts of human denial, because what is a burger? It's edible protein in the shape of a disk every single time. And you can order it rare, you can order it well done, you can dress it up in ketchup, you can put a little onion hat on top of it, you can push it around on your plate, you can leave half of it behind, and never once have the thought cross your mind, as you're chomping away, I wonder what she looked lik...