Wordless Wednesday: Recent Reading

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRt85tOWECiQ83pjI9CyqbTRT46kktFAZt4T6GQRD6NlljTV-PBkwEc-u_lkAe7gx0rL2vf3mTyCXakyh4jkAdiIwat9KX_vLYsViPkz67F0cXgqpKpSbiMAylpHoLCHytPA9jYQri1UkP/s1600/salaman0123.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRt85tOWECiQ83pjI9CyqbTRT46kktFAZt4T6GQRD6NlljTV-PBkwEc-u_lkAe7gx0rL2vf3mTyCXakyh4jkAdiIwat9KX_vLYsViPkz67F0cXgqpKpSbiMAylpHoLCHytPA9jYQri1UkP/s1600/salaman0123.jpg" width="424" /></a></div><br />

Wordless Wednesday: Recent Reading

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Food Security in 2014

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwVcBO3qssUcXD9E9YO8I7fZLQY2x3JEl3D8uJ0VXvTfehVDhfe7idhjxsTibnA5cUHhZXVyePPiwNAjgb2G3IBCdyj9EPqC0zSE2CrkhsQ7ocUJlkY1JmfQAlW5qkMsV6I8CameKBYm8R/s1600/Percentage_population_undernourished_world_map.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwVcBO3qssUcXD9E9YO8I7fZLQY2x3JEl3D8uJ0VXvTfehVDhfe7idhjxsTibnA5cUHhZXVyePPiwNAjgb2G3IBCdyj9EPqC0zSE2CrkhsQ7ocUJlkY1JmfQAlW5qkMsV6I8CameKBYm8R/s1600/Percentage_population_undernourished_world_map.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Percent of population that is undernourished, 2012 data -- Wikipedia</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">Thinking of the grim topic of hunger throughout the world, I have been trying to read about food security and insecurity in the coming year -- a very broad topic. Discussions of inequality in our own society often touch on the consequence, for the poorest Americans, of having too little food and on the political motivation that causes much of the hunger in America. Throughout the world, both climate change and population growth are already affecting food supplies in many areas. Wars and conflicts also can drastically change the distribution of food, as when a dominant group oppresses its traditional or new opponents. Certain conflicts, like those in the horn of Africa and Syria, in fact, may themselves have origins in declining supplies of food and other resources.<br /><br />Hunger will continue to be widespread in 2014, and growing: "the reality [is] that by 2050, the world will likely have another two billion mouths to feed and face an estimated 70 percent increase in global food demand." <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/the-upside-of-frankenfood-can-gm-crops-reduce-global-food-insecurity/256809/">source</a>  </div><br />First, what is food security? A useful and frequently cited definition from Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life." <a href="http://www.philstar.com/business/2014/01/05/1275175/yearender-asean-economic-community-play-major-role-sea-food-security">source</a> <a href="http://www.sustainabletable.org/280/food-security-food-access">source</a></blockquote>Who are the insecure in the US, and why are they suffering in a country that seems so prosperous? Changes to government aid to the poor (such as reductions in SNAP benefits, formerly called food stamps) are a major reason why the poorest people in America are losing ground in the struggle for food security. Poor people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds are suffering; here is one example:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Even though a large percentage of American Indians receive SNAP benefits, current data suggests that a large percentage of American Indians are food insecure. ... In total, roughly 22 percent of American Indians do not have sufficient food maintain healthy lives." <a href="http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/11/04/snatching-food-mouths-babies-snap-cuts">source</a></blockquote>Who are the insecure outside the US? Almost every Asian and African country suffers from the threat of food insecurity. Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Nepal, the Phillipines, North African and sub-Saharan countries, and many others have been the subject of recent news articles about hunger.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"'We should expect much more political destabilisation of countries ...,' says Richard Choularton, a policy officer in the UN's World Food Programme climate change office. 'What is different now from 20 years ago is that far more people are living in places with a higher climatic risk; 650 million people now live in arid or semi-arid areas where floods and droughts and price shocks are expected to have the most impact. </blockquote><blockquote>''The recent crises in the Horn of Africa and Sahel may be becoming the new normal. Droughts are expected to become more frequent. Studies suggest anything up to 200 million more food-insecure people by 2050 or an additional 24 million malnourished children. In parts of Africa we already have a protracted and growing humanitarian disaster. Climate change is a creeping disaster.' he said." <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/13/climate-change-threat-food-supplies">source</a></blockquote>What are some of the consequences of this widespread disaster? In the underdeveloped world, the consequences are simple to grasp: many children and adults tragically starve to death; others experience terrible suffering.<br /><br />In the US, things aren't quite as grim, but there are consequences. Two examples:<br /><blockquote>"In the US, chronic food insecurity has been documented to lead to, paradoxically, obesity, especially in women and girls. One theory as to why food insecurity leads to obesity is that episodic periods of food insecurity cause the sufferer to overeat in an attempt by the body to recoup missing calories. The type of food consumed in food insecure households may be another factor: high calorie food made from commodity crops (e.g., fast food and 'junk' food) is often cheaper and easier to access than healthful food with high nutritional value." <a href="http://www.sustainabletable.org/280/food-security-food-access">source</a></blockquote><blockquote>"Poor people with diabetes [in the US] are significantly more likely to go to the hospital for dangerously low blood sugar at the end of the month when food budgets are tight than at the beginning of the month, a new study has found." <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/health/study-finds-more-diabetic-hospital-visits-when-food-budgets-dip.html?hpw&rref=health">source</a></blockquote> The subject of food security is broad and complex. I have excerpted just a few quotations to try to grasp the breadth of the problem.

Food Security in 2014

Percent of population that is undernourished, 2012 data -- WikipediaThinking of the grim topic of hunger throughout the world, I have been trying to read about food security and insecurity in the coming year -- a very broad topic. Discussions of inequality in our own society often touch on the conse…

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Poverty in America

A few things have been making me think about hunger and poverty in America. First, I've recently evaluated many appeals for charitable contributions and decided among them and written checks. This included several organizations that help homeless and hungry people, particularly our local food bank, social work organizations, and homeless shelter.<br /><br />Also recently I've read a number of articles about the working poor people and also the unemployed in our country. For example, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/11/09/too-much-of-too-little/">an article in the <i>Washington Post</i></a> about the relationship of poor diet and obesity in extremely poor people, "Too much of too little A diet fueled by food stamps is making South Texans obese but leaving them hungry."<br /><br />One particularly interesting article in the <i>Atlantic</i> was "<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/the-past-and-future-of-americas-social-contract/282511/">The Past and Future of America's Social Contract</a>" by Josh Freedman and Michael Lind. The authors describe the historic progression from an American social contract beginning in the New Deal. For many years, employers provided a number of social services (especially health care and retirement income). We have moved on, say the authors, to a more modern "low-wage" social contract, in which workers earn little but are supposedly helped by lower-priced goods: often imported, often sold at Wal-Mart.<br /><br />They write: <br /><blockquote>"It is true that tax credits and cheap goods have boosted the standard of living for otherwise impoverished workers. Yet, according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes into account wage subsidies and additional costs like taxes and medical costs, almost 10 percent of the total working population still lives in poverty. This includes roughly 5 million Americans who work full-time, year-round. </blockquote><blockquote>"A key reason for this is that the low-wage social contract does not do much to help families in the areas they need most. Clothing, food, and other items found at Wal-Mart might be cheap for low-wage workers. But other necessary services—health care, daycare, eldercare, and college—have simultaneously become less affordable and more important as most mothers work outside of the home and the wage premium for college remains high. In 1960, the average family spent about $12,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars on childcare, education, and healthcare over the course of 17 years raising a child. Four decades later, the average family spends almost $63,000 per child. Medical out-of-pocket expenses now push more people below the poverty line than tax credits can lift above it."</blockquote>The authors believe that "we need to shift once again to a system more suited to the current economy and needs of workers and citizens." They believe that the government should supply the services that are essential and out of the reach of the poorest Americans, and suggest starting "by raising the federal minimum wage closer to a true living wage and expanding public early education, both of which are widely popular proposals."<br /><br />Sadly, I don't see that our current government is likely to embark on a program of this sort. I see too much hostility to workers and poor people on the part of legislators -- in fact, too much contempt for the poor, the unemployed, and others who are simply unfortunate. Cuts in food assistance from the federal government are one of the worst insults, as there seems to be acceptance for the idea that poor people don't even deserve to eat.<br /><br />Some of our politicians seem more heartless than the "let them eat cake" caricature of Marie Antoinette. <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2013/12/bread-sugar-coffee.html">My recent reading</a> of <i>Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution</i> brought to mind a variety of parallels between modern times, especially in America, and various events in that era. I'm not sophisticated enough to write about such parallels, but my reading made me think about "aristocratic" attitudes towards poor people here. I have no real hope of things getting better. I'm aware that I should be writing upbeat things about the wonderful holiday season, but this is what's on my mind. <br /><br /><i>Note: I'm also posting this on my other blog, maetravels.blogspot.com</i>

Poverty in America

A few things have been making me think about hunger and poverty in America. First, I've recently evaluated many appeals for charitable contributions and decided among them and written checks. This included several organizations that help homeless and hungry people, particularly our local food bank, …

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Cuisine without Food

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD0ZHIzhfmHJjhUo091ajylQr7a8-Bz5poy_qYQgv8QypvdIjK8UMSn74nylPUF3GbsvUsnnGbNdAC0gkYqCdFWReCmgIPT1lbCtYOCxG34k5JMyTSu74gg4ffj1lcjJL87ehOEj0TZfNk/s1600/AnyaVonBremzen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD0ZHIzhfmHJjhUo091ajylQr7a8-Bz5poy_qYQgv8QypvdIjK8UMSn74nylPUF3GbsvUsnnGbNdAC0gkYqCdFWReCmgIPT1lbCtYOCxG34k5JMyTSu74gg4ffj1lcjJL87ehOEj0TZfNk/s320/AnyaVonBremzen.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I read the Kindle edition,<br />so I never actually <br />saw this dust jacket.</td></tr></tbody></table>In <i>Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing, </i>Anya Von Bremzen compresses the last 100 years of Russian history into a few representative meals. Tales of eating are punctuated by descriptions of several eras of scarcity and outright famines.<br /><br />Unlike childhood memories in the majority of food memoirs, the most vivid memories of this book were not of tastes that the writer experienced, but rather of dishes from literature and news reports that she and her family only imagined. If their pizza was a miserable piece of bread “smothered in ketchup and gratings of Sovetsky cheese” they imagined the original from their contraband copy of <i>Family Circle</i>. (p. 134)<!--EndFragment--> <br /><br />One huge irony of life for all the decades of Soviet history was how the communist leaders were eating incredible luxury food while the poor starved. The disasters of harvests ruined by foolish policies and the war years were the extremes, but there are many other examples. Soviet candy, for example, came in two identically packaged versions made by the Red October Chocolate Factory. Candy that you bought (sometimes, if you waited in line) in ordinary stores was vastly inferior to the same brands sold in stores for communist <i>nomenklatura</i>. (p. 172)<br /><br />Even the title "Mastering the Art..." of something that wasn't much of an art, but mainly the act of a desperate person, is ironic, riffing on the Julia Child title.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbZNJxkis35la4KBw0CzcEIF-jCiaboyA-lePGWYkWtWT-wUL1gUY34jhutL4j62RkiZ5SUWWwDbKvxUPDtoRvB0_xCpRAhzzuyuYXY4V92jJ-9UpyTBMkvnJUZOqdaN3cd4ftTeYUAJO3/s1600/cosco-madeleines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbZNJxkis35la4KBw0CzcEIF-jCiaboyA-lePGWYkWtWT-wUL1gUY34jhutL4j62RkiZ5SUWWwDbKvxUPDtoRvB0_xCpRAhzzuyuYXY4V92jJ-9UpyTBMkvnJUZOqdaN3cd4ftTeYUAJO3/s200/cosco-madeleines.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thinking of my own madeleines from<br />Costco: not Anya's poisoned madeleines,<br />not the cliche of  many other writers,<br />and also not quite like in France.</td></tr></tbody></table>Cliches from food memoirs here take on new twists, made ironic by hunger and longing. Proust’s madeleine memory has been used so often that many writers' references to it hardly use the actual source. Von Bremzen doesn’t bother too much with the original – she calls her own preface “Poisoned Madeleines.” She uses this term to capture the “epic disjunction” and “unruly collision of collectivist myths and antimyths” of her Soviet childhood (from birth in 1963 to emigration in 1974) and the life of her mother who was born in 1934. Through irony the author consistently dodges any sort of self-pity or whining.<o:p></o:p><!--EndFragment--><br /><br />She also refers specifically to rather formula-driven Russian emigre memoirs: "My First Supermarket Experience was the anchoring narrative of the great Soviet epic of immigration to America. Some escapees from our socialist <i>defitsit</i> society actually swooned to the floor (usually in the aisle with toilet paper)." The author relates various amusing first-supermarket experiences of the Russians she knew, wrapping up. "Mom ... roamed Pathmark's acres with childlike glee. 'She-ree-ohs ... Ri-seh-rohnee ... Vel. Vee. Tah ... " She murmured these alien names as if they had been concocted by Proust, lovingly prodding and handling all the foodstuffs in their bright packaging, their promiscuous throwaway <i>tara [i.e. packaging and receptacles, of which there had been a shortage in Russia]</i>."(p. 199)<br /><br />Her discussions of Soviet-era "Provansal" style mayonnaise and the jars (<i>tara</i>) that it came in are priceless: "If, as Dostoyevsky supposedly said, all Russian literature comes out of Gogol's story 'The Overcoat,' then what Gogol's garment was to nineteenth-century Russian culture, the Provansal mayonnaise jar was to the domestic practices of Mature Socialism." (p. 183)<br /><br />Of course she also discusses that other cliche of Soviet mayonnaise memories: Salad Oliver, which can never be understood in America because it features not only mayo but also canned peas. "A precious heirloom of our non-idyllic socialist pasts, the Olivier recipe gets pulled out from the memory drawer to commemorate a particular moment in life." (p. 176)<br /><div class="separator" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: center; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: left; font-family: Times; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-right: 1em; orphans: auto; padding: 6px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNbYCXLAuL1xwnRXgClTEqX6pW8OrfPiyErrpDWnyYix-mYZSr-d0_e1fbPOZxYWjjcf8qRKu9MxvKhYms4PWQEy_9R_tfI4LpbngGdUv7A_CxaYncuU0eXGUPKuctZ4Viuex3f9-FMZ5v/s1600/malevich-still-life.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNbYCXLAuL1xwnRXgClTEqX6pW8OrfPiyErrpDWnyYix-mYZSr-d0_e1fbPOZxYWjjcf8qRKu9MxvKhYms4PWQEy_9R_tfI4LpbngGdUv7A_CxaYncuU0eXGUPKuctZ4Viuex3f9-FMZ5v/s320/malevich-still-life.jpg" width="298" /></a> </td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">A still life by Casimir Malevich: Von Bremzen names<br />him as one of the cultural contributors to Soviet Russian<br />life in the 1920s.<br />The author's cultural and social descriptions<br />add to the liveliness of the book.</td></tr></tbody></table>Von Bremzen uses her own memories of food and events as well as her mother’s memories and political opinions along with impressive historical detail characterizing each decade of the past century starting in 1910. She uses the experiences of her relatives, such as her grandfather who was a spy during World War II and her father whose job for many years was as a member of a huge lab responsible for constantly restoring or re-embalming the corpse of Lenin.<br /><br />Because her mother's family were Jewish and her father's family not, the book encompasses both Jewish and non-Jewish Russian experiences -- including some of course ironic (of course) remarks about gefilte fish. In this respect I can also relate the stories to those of several Russian emigre families I have known.<br /><br />I learned an amazing amount of history from reading this book. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that this book made somewhat familiar history come alive for me, by linking to the many personal stories of Anya Von Bremzen's family, her conflicted feeling about Soviet heros like Stalin and Lenin, and her adventures in returning to the disintegrating Soviet Union and its successors several times in the 80s, 90s, and 00s.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMi78cxQ3K9f3sGR69KVUh7EfHef7X0AEmi4mItSFYzUQ8S30OpCTbHbsdPISuufQAfs___Bd2sOisfmVR2g42PRgb0i5VNxZ1VuwnHw2e04iqasK9VA53UfCzw3ZoYdOnGvkIG-CxbP7d/s1600/anya-blini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMi78cxQ3K9f3sGR69KVUh7EfHef7X0AEmi4mItSFYzUQ8S30OpCTbHbsdPISuufQAfs___Bd2sOisfmVR2g42PRgb0i5VNxZ1VuwnHw2e04iqasK9VA53UfCzw3ZoYdOnGvkIG-CxbP7d/s640/anya-blini.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Von Bremzen has had a long career writing cookbooks, magazine articles, and<br />published recipes, such as this one from <i>Food and Wine. </i><br />Her first cookbook, an enormous tome titled<i> Please to the Table, </i>appeared around 20 years ago.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />

Cuisine without Food

I read the Kindle edition,so I never actually saw this dust jacket.In Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing, Anya Von Bremzen compresses the last 100 years of Russian history into a few representative meals. Tales of eating are punctuated by descriptions of several eras o…

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The American Paradox

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw6QoTLOqjzoI2yAzDaasiG2Lzy2WwWPT74AGzrG79ugPwJ8rI5Zvc3X2gPLmfKD0cMeWYGQoiXtEV5HqePE0Z20WZVhTXr7MRZhVq3RrVMSSm2Nj_CMuHGBOkB9o5Eo0k0ChoEY33vIjb/s1600/endofovereating-kessler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw6QoTLOqjzoI2yAzDaasiG2Lzy2WwWPT74AGzrG79ugPwJ8rI5Zvc3X2gPLmfKD0cMeWYGQoiXtEV5HqePE0Z20WZVhTXr7MRZhVq3RrVMSSm2Nj_CMuHGBOkB9o5Eo0k0ChoEY33vIjb/s320/endofovereating-kessler.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>Why do Americans get fat and stay fat? When did they start getting fat? Why weren't they fat before that (whenever it was)? Can legislation make them stop getting fat?<br /><br />The number of books and articles on the subject of American fatness is vast, and the answers aren't really conclusive. And every day, it seems, there's news of another country approaching or even surpassing American fatness.<br /><i><br /></i><i>The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite</i> by David Kessler is one of the many to ask what can be done. Kessler examines not just the food Americans eat, but the way it affects them. Specifically, he argues, carefully engineered food products of many types change people's brains to make them crave more and more of their favorites. Beyond describing how food affects people, <i>The End of Overeating</i> offers advice on how to overcome the effects of this manipulation, though I'm doubtful that most people have the willpower to do so.<br /><br /><i>Crave</i> is the key word here. Creating food that people just can't stop eating is the goal of many industrial food laboratories, and Kessler describes both how they do it and how they express their goals of making people into a kind of food-crazed zombies: not his choice of words, but I think the current obsession with zombies reflects a kind of pervasive fear that we have been seized by forces that we can't control, and this is one of them.<br /><br /><i>Satisfying food</i> is the alternate to cravable food, according to Kessler. Satisfying food is the old-fashioned kind that could be eaten until one had enough. Satisfying food was plain food that didn't have a lot of added salt, sugar, and fat but also included complex traditionally cooked dishes. I think the American paradox, as suggested in Kessler's book and others, is that satisfying food has been crowded out by cravable food. Many people who have been conditioned by cravable food have simply lost the ability to recognize when they aren't hungry any more. The products of the food industry, Kessler demonstrates, make many consumers helpless. Though they often see themselves as victims, they keep eating and overeating, unable to stop.<br /><br />Kessler uses a number of examples of such individuals who say they just can't stop thinking of some favorite donut, cookie, sandwich, pizza, or other cravable delicacy -- people who engage in what he calls <i>conditioned hypereating</i>. The foods they mention share certain not-very-natural characteristics, Kessler demonstrates in a number of chapters. There's some overlap here with <i>Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us</i> by Michael Moss (as I wrote in <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2013/04/whos-rational.html" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;">Who's Rational?</a>) but Kessler emphasizes how people experience the food in real life, while Moss concentrates more on the labs.<br /><br />It's not just the content, which includes meticulously researched combinations of fat, sugar, and salt. To create a product that people can't stop eating, food labs also engineer the way that the food behaves when it's chewed. A potato chip may begin with a rush of salt and crunchiness, but it quickly melts away in your mouth: cravable food doesn't have too much fiber. A slice of pizza is layered with several flavors that pop and excite your mouth, but can be chewed and swallowed easily, allowing you to take another bite, another bite, another bite. Cravable meat dishes use tenderized or ground meat that requires minimal chewing compared to a real steak. A Cinnabon roll has a super appealing aroma and sweet spiciness, along with a creamy frosting that provides just the right mouth feel along with the flavor.<br /><br />Kessler talked to the food engineers whose research has provided Americans (and those to whom we export) with the perfect cravable foods, and he talked to their victims who couldn't stop. He provided statistics about how very young children studied in the past seemed able to keep eating until they had had enough to grow normally, and even how their food choices were balanced to match their needs. Recent research, he pointed out, suggests that this is changing: the engineered foods (like MacDonalds) hijack this innate ability, so children lose the capacity to know when to stop eating.<br /><br />Kessler mentions the French Paradox: why French people don't seem to get fat in the same statistical sense that Americans do -- or at least why that hasn't happened yet. As I read the book, though, just after my recent trip to Paris, I was struck by Kessler's category of satisfying foods: those that one eats with great pleasure, but that don't trigger the <i>hypereating</i> that he discusses. Satisfying food -- highly satisfying food -- is what's on the menu in the traditional homes, restaurants, bistros, cafes, and brasseries where I ate in France. Is that what most young French people are eating now? Maybe not. Maybe the French paradox will dissolve as their food industry catches up with ours and discovers how to make much more money with fat, sugar, salt, and engineered textures.<br /><br /><br />

The American Paradox

Why do Americans get fat and stay fat? When did they start getting fat? Why weren't they fat before that (whenever it was)? Can legislation make them stop getting fat?The number of books and articles on the subject of American fatness is vast, and the answers aren't really conclusive. And every day,…

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What did Magellan and his sailors eat?

<br /><div class="MsoNormal">"Real bread" was the first food that the 18 survivors of Magellan's circumnavigation of the world ate upon returning home. Their fleet's one remaining ship had finally landed at the mouth of the Gualquivir in Spain. For three years, they had been at sea, having left the Guadalquivir with five ships and 265 men. After spending months out of sight of land, taking sides in a failed mutiny, witnessing the death of their leader Magellan and many other comrades, and exploring new territories in South America and the Pacific, their privations were over and they kissed the earth as they landed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">"For years they had not fingered the soft, aromatic crumb; for years they had not known the flavours of the wine, the meat and the fruit of their homeland," wrote Stefan Zweig at the end of his account of Magellan's voyage. Zweig's<i> Magellan</i> is an imaginative and dramatically written account of this, the first voyage around the world. He published it in 1938, but like many of his works, it's been reissued recently.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Zweig depicted Magellan as a taciturn hero, who acted boldly but never without forethought, except perhaps in the instance of the one fatal mistake that led to his death. Zweig was as admiring of and interested in Magellan's long and careful preparation for the voyage into the unknown as he is in the voyage itself.  He detailed first the patient preparation of food, ships, and supplies, then the alternation of plenty and famine as the five, then four, eventually only one ship, the Victoria, (shown below in an image from Wikimedia, from a 1590 map) circled the globe.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMnjgWpDnj_ZTdV2KlSn80DrWtFgcTlR-oAEJTgsQBqTnIcp4YgEFF4-x6vkXtHx5F_UoFwRsATfLO4LGpAOyvJkK_WqBs4GlMCvdAplsE5MhIYdOQRwbIbmDieIPFdmsHh1EJe8ti8lU/s1600/magellanship.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMnjgWpDnj_ZTdV2KlSn80DrWtFgcTlR-oAEJTgsQBqTnIcp4YgEFF4-x6vkXtHx5F_UoFwRsATfLO4LGpAOyvJkK_WqBs4GlMCvdAplsE5MhIYdOQRwbIbmDieIPFdmsHh1EJe8ti8lU/s320/magellanship.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Just decades after Columbus's discovery, when ocean voyages were extremely long, basic ship's provisions mainly consisted of biscuit (a long-lasting hard bread that was the mainstay of all ocean trips until modern times). Magellan's ships also carried beans, lentils, oil, salt pork, cheese, dried fish, and other staples. A few cows would provide milk for the start of the voyage; along with a few pigs, there could be fresh meat -- though not for long.  In both the text and in an appendix, Zweig lists the amounts and the cost of all these provisions, illustrating Magellan's careful record-keeping and planning.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Wine was to be served with two meals a day during the voyage: Magellan laid in hundreds of casks and bottles. Obviously he also provided what he hoped would be adequate supplies of drinking water -- though the ships' reservoirs often became foul and the water after long days at sea became nearly undrinkable.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Magellan wanted his men to eat well. To the staple supplies he added intriguing extras: sugar, vinegar, garlic, onions, raisins, figs, almonds, honey, currants, capers, salt, rice, mustard, quince paste, and flour. What were the cooks' recipes to be made from these tasty additions to ordinary ships' provisions? I'm sure no one made any record of such a thing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Preparing to sail around the world -- which had never been done before -- Magellan knew that his would be the longest voyage ever planned. He expected few opportunities for re-supplying his five ships. In fact, he believed the strait between the Atlantic and the Pacific to be far closer to the equator than the Strait of Magellan, which he discovered. And he found the Pacific Ocean to be much vaster than expected as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Consequently, the enormous food supplies were inadequate. As the five ships finished the voyage down the coast of South America, a mutiny and the desertion of one of the ships helped to deplete the supplies. Magellan's underlings, when they traitorously took over one of the ships, opened the stores to the crew to buy their loyalty. By that time, perhaps the most luxurious foods like figs, raisins, currants, and almonds had already been used up -- rations had already been cut significantly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">After coming through the newly discovered strait, the remaining ships had an agonizingly long reach across the Pacific. The crews experienced first hunger, then scurvy and other forms of malnutrition, and finally (in many cases) death by starvation. The biscuit, unpalatable when fresh, crumbled and turned to dust; however, it was the only nutrition available. The sailors eked it out with sawdust and with the meat of the ship's rats, which became a delicacy. They soaked, boiled, and ate some of the rigging as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In contrast, when the starving remnant reached the Philippines, the welcoming king of Cebu Island offered them feasts of sweet tropical fruit and other delicacies. Bananas, palm wine, coconuts, exotic vegetables, and roasted fish with fresh ginger --good food and fresh water brought them back to life. As they visited various islands, including the Spice Islands that had always been their goal, they learned to enjoy these treats. Though Magellan was already dead, they claimed the islands for the king of Spain as they had meant to do.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">While making their way back to Europe, the voyagers suffered again. By this time, 1520, the route from the Spice Islands through the Indian Ocean and around Africa was well known. Politics, however, made the excruciatingly long trip from the Spice Islands back to Spain even more frustratingly hunger-ridden than the Pacific crossing. Magellan, a Portuguese by origin, had been rejected by his own king, and thus was sailing for Spain. All the ports were Portuguese, and his ships and men were labeled pirates in Portuguese territory -- a price was on every head.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Thus, the survivors had to hurry across the seas without going into port except once, on a ruse. By the time the last 18 sailors once more tasted the bread and wine of their homeland, they had been starving for months since their days of feasting. Moreover, they were starving within a ship loaded with exotic and unimaginably valuable spices that could do no more for their hunger than the ocean did for their thirst, according to Zweig's narrative.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Obviously, most of <i>Magellan</i> is about non-food issues -- though the motive Zweig cited on the very first page, and which persisted throughout the voyage, was to create a proprietary Spanish trade route to the Spice Islands to obtain rare spices for European use. I've concentrated on the issues of eating and starving that were the undercurrent throughout.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><h2>Afterthoughts</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjutWRh77fPu72rsXUhqeJdEnvyvfTdaiQV9ylUJ-8loxgzVosZTrOZyXLLQO7kVWvkhXSUv8QhXJtxnRuZM4ODU4m5CdnIMoFlEEXHQ7NW6JZyFGw8lqSpK3YodAIDCpsNXH_RGTSXTtI/s1600/cormorants9946.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjutWRh77fPu72rsXUhqeJdEnvyvfTdaiQV9ylUJ-8loxgzVosZTrOZyXLLQO7kVWvkhXSUv8QhXJtxnRuZM4ODU4m5CdnIMoFlEEXHQ7NW6JZyFGw8lqSpK3YodAIDCpsNXH_RGTSXTtI/s320/cormorants9946.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I'm writing beside a very calm Pacific Ocean beach, thinking of the naked terror that other parts of these waters must have delivered to Magellan and his crew. Cormorants roost in the trees and tiny sailboats dash around the harbor. So different!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Two very interesting things in <i>Magellan</i> that are not related to food are:</div><div class="MsoListBullet"></div><ul><li>Magellan had a Philippino slave who traveled with the ships and was intended to be an interpreter. When the ship landed in his land of origin, he thus became the very first man ever to circle the globe. (He also was caught up in the nasty aftermath of Magellan's death at the hands of a rival to the Philippine king who welcomed the voyagers, and thus remained in his own country when the ships left.)<br /> </li><li>Upon their first stop at a port on the African coast, when they were almost back to Spain, the surviving sailors discovered the paradox that their carefully maintained ship logs recorded the day of the week as Wednesday, but the local date was Thursday. Being the first men to make a full trip around the world, they discovered that you need an international dateline (to explain it with an anachronism). Zweig says this was incredible to the people of that era: "as exciting to the humanists of the sixteenth century as has been the theory of relativity to those of our own generation."</li></ul><br /><div class="MsoNormal">I enjoyed Zweig's book and its rather retro style of writing historic narrative. My only reservation is that he sometimes overuses Homeric similes.</div>

What did Magellan and his sailors eat?

"Real bread" was the first food that the 18 survivors of Magellan's circumnavigation of the world ate upon returning home. Their fleet's one remaining ship had finally landed at the mouth of the Gualquivir in Spain. For three years, they had been at sea, having left the Guadalquivir with five ships …

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Hunger

<blockquote>"Hunger is an unforgivable disease because it is the easiest one to cure. It is devastating to wake up in the morning and look east, west, south and north and see that there is nothing green that you can chew. During a drought everything goes yellow and dry. ...<br /><br />"Hunger is dehumanizing. It gets to a level where you do not know how you will survive and you will do anything for a simple kernel of corn."</blockquote><br /><br />So writes Peter Kimeu in "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/opinion/sunday/remembering-a-hungry-childhood.html?ref=opinion">Remembering a Hungry Childhood</a>" an op-ed in today's <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Times</span>. It's a powerful essay: almost unbearable to read. Such suffering is outside of my own experience and that of almost everyone I know well. Kimeu doesn't ask the reader to take responsibility for his past, but his last words are: "It is incumbent on all of us to band together and fight this very curable disease. No child on earth should ever have to sleep like that."<br /><br />But what can we do? I feel totally helpless to make a response, as I don't see any reasonable charitable, governmental, or global political measures being offered that would effectively address hunger on a global scale.

Hunger

"Hunger is an unforgivable disease because it is the easiest one to cure. It is devastating to wake up in the morning and look east, west, south and north and see that there is nothing green that you can chew. During a drought everything goes yellow and dry. ..."Hunger is dehumanizing. It gets to a …

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Two Sad Meals by Picasso

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA6FEgYObGC9138rHf5KUl8w2Z49YBGV8e8BBM_pLKbJiDuMULnzpuv4MzEee1Y7VYxYI0jpSbR4m2pHWUFQ817KERe1i_zi5GxUb3pK2InVes_dU8AueVBq_ebTsP4wXTuMqpAkFhbSSr/s1600/picasso-repast-frugal2.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627082447457635970" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA6FEgYObGC9138rHf5KUl8w2Z49YBGV8e8BBM_pLKbJiDuMULnzpuv4MzEee1Y7VYxYI0jpSbR4m2pHWUFQ817KERe1i_zi5GxUb3pK2InVes_dU8AueVBq_ebTsP4wXTuMqpAkFhbSSr/s400/picasso-repast-frugal2.jpeg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 326px; height: 400px;" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv9FgCaefypjrGhMPvfR8eJe7CTuYCYf0ubRH-SjTkwO4xaCWYBGEiLIsKzlGCdE-tDYDMooSmPxumHDS7ySG9EycizL7xKSarQphZnSlPgimr3EkivBWL4Tlrlnt8uX43z_CeLpUtuGXN/s1600/The+Blindman%2527s+Meal+by+Pablo+Picasso.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5627082440960783970" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv9FgCaefypjrGhMPvfR8eJe7CTuYCYf0ubRH-SjTkwO4xaCWYBGEiLIsKzlGCdE-tDYDMooSmPxumHDS7ySG9EycizL7xKSarQphZnSlPgimr3EkivBWL4Tlrlnt8uX43z_CeLpUtuGXN/s400/The+Blindman%2527s+Meal+by+Pablo+Picasso.jpeg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" /></a>It's well known that in his early days in Paris Picasso was often hungry, maybe even offering paintings in exchange for something to eat. The first of these two works, "The Frugal Meal" is often reproduced; the second, "The Blindman's Meal," is less famous, I think. The people depicted during Picasso's blue period are often depressed looking, but these works seem even sadder. Both suggest the desperation of hunger and poverty.<div><br /></div><div>I need to look more thoroughly for later Picasso paintings of people eating, perhaps even enjoying food. I would not expect to find a painting of food preparation, at least my current knowledge of Picasso's biography wouldn't lead me to expect such subjects. He did later paint still-life subjects, but that's more for the shape and color of fruit and other objects on a table, not really about eating them.</div>

Two Sad Meals by Picasso

It's well known that in his early days in Paris Picasso was often hungry, maybe even offering paintings in exchange for something to eat. The first of these two works, "The Frugal Meal" is often reproduced; the second, "The Blindman's Meal," is less famous, I think. The people depicted during Picass…

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E-Yah, the Hungry Spirit

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBck-H3an__lQukLVvak_daJFeA65Tg6znn59JHAthnNE4CXdtlY9VNqQ7d9yiF84FoRSYLplQeoJ0TQ3Vwx-h5uAuUutcEzL0i78bDCGCLfDXQ43PvgeNW8aD-KhUP8nYqMUTYQHZSALN/s1600/e-yah2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5588904691259802098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBck-H3an__lQukLVvak_daJFeA65Tg6znn59JHAthnNE4CXdtlY9VNqQ7d9yiF84FoRSYLplQeoJ0TQ3Vwx-h5uAuUutcEzL0i78bDCGCLfDXQ43PvgeNW8aD-KhUP8nYqMUTYQHZSALN/s400/e-yah2.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 295px;" /></a>Today at the Detroit Institute of Arts we encountered E-yah, the spirit of gluttony. E-yah, an insatiably hungry spirit, appears as a tiny head on enormous wooden bowls like the two in the photos we took. These bowls were filled to the brim with food and offered up at feasts held by "an elite group of spiritual leaders of the Yankton Sioux nation in South Dakota." Ability to eat enormous quantities of food indicated a sign of spiritual power, according to the documentation (which you can see by clicking on the image).<br /><br />I searched for more legends of this god and found a tale about a man on a journey who returned "looking like a specter. ... The poor fellow, delirious with hunger, fancied himself engaged in mortal combat with Eyah, the god of famine, who has a mouth extending from ear to ear. Wherever he goes there is famine, for he swallows all that he sees, even whole nations! The legend has it that Eyah fears nothing but the jingling of metal." From <a href="http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/o/20466-old-indian-days-by-charles-alexander-eastman?start=30">Old Indian Days</a> by Charles Alexander Eastman.<br /><br />A god of gluttony or famine who presides over feasts and swallows whole nations? Fascinating. Obviously the product of a very different set of experiences than that of us modern feast-or-diet humans.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFxeTBSBwUpI20_upnAib1OlDyytWlhcazs9AH8S2bBz-h9E5MnS1VdOSCfzJjpyKCjmS5QauYJhgsLe2x6LrUonuf3iyrfntkdZaFAIeeyRK-aPM6OoXBTj87Ya8snoc7_ktvUBfx391M/s1600/e-yah1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5588904682222403938" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFxeTBSBwUpI20_upnAib1OlDyytWlhcazs9AH8S2bBz-h9E5MnS1VdOSCfzJjpyKCjmS5QauYJhgsLe2x6LrUonuf3iyrfntkdZaFAIeeyRK-aPM6OoXBTj87Ya8snoc7_ktvUBfx391M/s400/e-yah1.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 263px;" /></a>

E-Yah, the Hungry Spirit

Today at the Detroit Institute of Arts we encountered E-yah, the spirit of gluttony. E-yah, an insatiably hungry spirit, appears as a tiny head on enormous wooden bowls like the two in the photos we took. These bowls were filled to the brim with food and offered up at feasts held by "an elite group …

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Famine? Scarcity?

The top story in the <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Times</span> today is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/world/europe/06russia.html?hp">Russia Bans Grain Exports After Drought Shrivels Crop.</a> Commodity prices are usually not at the top of my interests. Like most Americans, I assume that prices will vary, but that food will always be affordable, and I don't think about global issues of famine or scarcity. Will all of us become more conscious of these issues as the climate -- both physical and political -- creates new problems of supply of foodstuffs? The article begins with these grim paragraphs:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Russia banned all exports of grain on Thursday after millions of acres of wheat withered in a severe drought, a portentous decision at a time when crop failures caused by heat and flooding span the northern hemisphere.<br /><br />Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, announced the ban, from Aug. 15 to Dec. 31, saying it was necessary to curb rising prices for food inside Russia, one of the world’s largest wheat exporters, which is suffering the hottest temperatures recorded since record-keeping began more than 130 years ago. Rail cars heaped with fresh grain were already grinding to a halt around Russia, stopped in mid-harvest, and mid-journey from the country’s vast and iconic wheat fields to the main grain exporting ports on the Black Sea.<br /><br />The decision caused an immediate and sharp rise in the already high global price of wheat. It rose more than 8 percent in early trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on Thursday, after having increased about 90 percent since June because of the drought in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and parts of the European Union, and floods in Canada.</span></blockquote>

Famine? Scarcity?

The top story in the New York Times today is Russia Bans Grain Exports After Drought Shrivels Crop. Commodity prices are usually not at the top of my interests. Like most Americans, I assume that prices will vary, but that food will always be affordable, and I don't think about global issues of fami…

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