Ah, if only it were that easy. But let’s face it: we’re recovering addicts. Processed food is deliberately loaded with brain-pleasing salt [...]]]> Ok, so you’ve read your Michael Pollan, bought The Art of Simple Food, and now you’re dedicated to the proposition that home-cooking is where it’s at. No more processed food for you. No, sir.

Ah, if only it were that easy. But let’s face it: we’re recovering addicts. Processed food is deliberately loaded with brain-pleasing salt and sugar. It comes in pretty packages and needs only to be emptied into a pot or warmed in the oven. Instant gratification never felt so good.

Hi, my name is Paul and I’m a junk-foodaholic. I fondly remember childhood buckets of KFC. Half the stuff I ate as a kid came from a can. In university the heady aroma of an Egg McMuffin seduced me on many a hungover morning. Junk food still tempts me, as does any sort of processed, packaged, preserved, bottled, instant food that is going to save me precious time in the kitchen.

So what are some possible coping strategies for recovering junk-foodaholics like me?

1. Be nice to yourself. If you made one fabulous, home-cooked dinner this week and ate crap the other six days, don’t beat yourself up. Instead, try saying: “Well done, me. I could have eaten crap all week long, but I didn’t. I made that one great meal.” Prepackaged, processed foods have been such a marketing success in recent decades because people are busy. It’s really, really hard sometimes to make the time to cook. So pat yourself on the back when you do. Emphasize the positive and don’t be rigid about those resolutions.
2. Keep it fun. I don’t love cooking all the time. Which is why I usually try to emphasize meals that are dead simple and easy. By not boring or exhausting myself on a daily basis, I find I’m much more likely to go for that genuinely entertaining feast once and a while. You know, the kind where you try something new (occasionally requiring exotic ingredients or a new kitchen toy) and impress whomever you’re sharing it with. Those memorable occasions are the ones that keep me coming back for more. Last summer, for example, I made cherry pie from fresh, whole organic cherries. Pitting the cherries by hand made it an epic five-hour undertaking, which I’m not likely to repeat, but I can still taste that pie, and it still makes me happy to think about it.
3. Stick to it and gradually learn. Everybody can follow a recipe, so it’s sometimes easy for me to forget what a complex skill cooking is. In the early days of my effort to do more home cooking I had the added stress of not knowing anything about anything. Didn’t know what ingredients or spices to use. Didn’t know what any of the kitchen gear was for. Total ignorance. My only hope was to follow a recipe the way a contractor follows a blueprint. I know now what a drag that was. I couldn’t do anything quickly, and I couldn’t improvise. The point is that it gets a lot—a lot—easier to make good food from scratch over time. Eventually, you’ll be doing everything unconsciously and it’ll be almost as fast and easy as dumping the canned soup in the pot. So stick with it.
4. Get inspired. Inevitably, there will be times when enthusiasm wanes. Watching hilarious old Julia Child clips on YouTube or picking up an entertaining food book are great ways to rekindle interest. Here are three titles (we’ll take Michael P. as read) I can suggest off the top of my head: Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, Swindled by Bee Wilson, and Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis. If you’re a twitterer, following the @Jambutter/ProFood list will provide you with interesting food and food politics links. Feed your mind and the stomach will follow.

It’s become an axiom of food politics that progress in a free marketplace is going to require a resurgence in home cooking. The dollar-votes of people who know how to cook are what we’re all counting on to help reform our entire food system from the laboratories of Monsanto to the farmer’s field to restaurants, to distributors and grocery stores. Good food has always been a pleasure. Now it’s a cause as well.

It’d be nice if cooking became something we all encouraged each other to do. It’s good for our health, good for our relationships, and good for the planet. How many pleasurable activities are there that you can so readily say that about? I don’t know about you, but I like the chances of a political movement that’s solidly based on hedonism.

Now…what am I going to make for dinner tonight?

[If you missed Part 1, go here.]

The Organic Movement

Most people are vaguely familiar with the counterculture roots of the organic movement. It’s a success story (perhaps too much of one for those who believe that small is beautiful). A couple of decades ago, the organic section of the average grocery store consisted of a bin [...]]]>

[If you missed Part 1, go here.]

The Organic Movement

Most people are vaguely familiar with the counterculture roots of the organic movement. It’s a success story (perhaps too much of one for those who believe that small is beautiful). A couple of decades ago, the organic section of the average grocery store consisted of a bin of small, knobbly, expensive apples at the very back. Since then the “organic” brand has become a multinational hit. Many little mom-and-pop food processing and retailing businesses, launched by people who were motivated more by ethics than cash, have long since been acquired by giant food companies who recognized the value of this new label.

There was a time when going organic meant making a deep commitment to an alternative way of farming and living. It was about much more than pesticide-free food. An organic farm was one which certainly avoided the use of industrial pesticides and fertilizers, but which was also dedicated to soil conservation, small-scale polyculture, good treatment of workers and relentless innovation.

The advent of industrial organic farming and the marketing practices of food processors (and even shampoo makers) has destroyed the once broad semantic domain of the term “organic.” Organics have sadly become an upsell opportunity as much as an ethical alternative. Label the shampoo organic and, presto, the price goes up 30% and people are still willing to pay. I like to think the broader food movement is at least partially a reaction to the usurpation of organics by salespeople. Marketers may have cut off the hydra head of the organic food movement, but a dozen other movements have sprung up in its place.

The Local Food Movement

Originating with The 100-Mile Diet by fellow Adbusters alumnus, James MacKinnon, the locavore craze is stronger than ever. Why local? In two words: climate change. Environmentalist David Suzuki has indicated that given a choice between organic food and locally grown food, he’d choose the local stuff. All those food miles racked up by your imported dinner in our globalized economy arguably have more of an impact on carbon emissions than the fossil fuel inputs going into your non-organic dinner. Amazingly, you will still find apples from New Zealand in the bins of major grocery stores in North America in September. That is pretty crazy when you think about it.

Locavorism has other dimensions too, such as making and benefiting from a deeper commitment to neighborly provender. Going to that new farmers’ market in your neighborhood and meeting the farmer who grew your tomatoes or peaches or garlic, is not only fun, it often results in better value. So much of what passes down the industrial food supply system these days is insipidly mediocre. The locavore trend also includes a renewed interest in urban vegetable gardening and, of course, the whole backyard chicken thing.

The Sustainable Food Movement

This is a vague, catch-all term, synonymous with the “good food” or “real food” movement or just plain old “food movement.” (Some people in the agricultural community don’t like terms like “real food” because of the inference that large-scale biotech crops result in something like “fake food.”) Sustainability is a concept that gets so much play that it starts to lose meaning after a while, but in the context of agriculture it often means, “not dependent on oil.” It’s closely associated with organics because the mass production of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in industrial agriculture is very much dependent on using lots of fossil fuel.

#ProFood

If ever a man has used social media to pick himself up by the bootstraps and create something out of nothing, that someone is Rob Smart, or, as he’s better known, @jambutter of the twittersphere. I should know, because I had a front row seat from the beginning. Almost a year ago, before Twitter hit the headlines as the next big thing, a web developer friend convinced a very reluctant me to pay attention to Twitter. “It’ll be huge,” he said. I lifted a skeptical eyebrow in response. But I joined anyway and looked around for food tweeps, one of whom was Rob.

Rob was an amazingly active twitterer and he had a plan. He engaged both the food activists and the mid-western cattle ranchers in fierce, often entertaining debate. Rob worked hard and put in long hours. Six months later he had carved out a hashtag principality of his own: #ProFood.

ProFood has its own special niche in the food movement: finding entrepreneurial solutions to the serious problems facing America’s food system. But it has also served as a meeting place and organizational tool for a diverse group of twittering foodies. The success of ProFood has shown that the food movement is still young and opportunity abounds.

The Whole Is Greater Than…

I’ve described a few of the components. So what the heck is the food movement en masse then? Admittedly, it’s partly epicurean. Opponents love to exploit this angle as a vulnerability, to dismiss the food movement as the playground of brandy-sniffing, souffle-nibbling elitists. But the pleasure principle is actually one of its strengths. Learning about food leads very quickly to a more pleasurable, healthier life, regardless of your means. A little education results in more discrimination in the grocery store, which leads to better value for your grocery dollar. The fast and universal payoff of an interest in food politics is one of its most potent engines for growth. Broadly speaking, the food movement is a consumer movement.

Shoulder to shoulder with the consumers you have political activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, environmentalists, journalists, chefs, designers, and philosophers, all taking a mutual interest in the future of food. The movement is emanating from America, because the land of junk food and all-powerful lobbyists needs it the most, but it’s global in reach. It is fundamentally progressive and interlinked with the trend towards more sustainable forms of manufacturing, transportation, and energy production. Although food is a universal concern, the movement’s attention to government policy and criticism of industrial agriculture has the potential to change the way business is done and profoundly affect paychecks and pocketbooks, and so the movement is attracting its share of conservative opposition. So it goes.

The pursuit of change has already borne fruit. Farmers’ markets are popping up all over North America. Michelle Obama has become the First Lady of food reform. Campaigners are taking on the obesity epidemic, and making explicit the doubtful role of big business in it. The lost art of cookery is reacquiring a little of the old respect. Entrepreneurs are busy finding ways to satisfy the growing demand for alternatives. And perhaps most importantly, awareness that there is such a thing as a “food movement” increases every day.

If you’re looking for ways to get on board, you’re faced with an embarrassment of opportunity. It would probably be harder to avoid getting involved at this point. If you’re truly a novice, just start with the basics. Start reading one of Michael Pollan’s books. Wipe the dust off the pots and pans. Head to the farmers’ markets next spring, and take a moment to rethink every purchase you habitually make at the supermarket.

Proponents of the food movement have the easiest sales pitch of all: learn more about what you’re putting in your body and you will live longer, more happily, and get better value for your money. Guaranteed.