The Food Chain

Ep. 1364: Bone-Building Broth

Cindy Campos, Weston A. Price Foundation, and Andrew Renard and Michelle Carter, Kitchen Table Cultures

(Traditional Nourishing Food, Bone broth, Bone broth recipes)

All ancient cultures included bones in their diets.  The ancients ate bones because they tasted good and strengthened their own bones.  Then along came modern times and broken bones!  And so we pause to ask:

Should we look to ancient diets to strengthen weak bodies?

Like many, I often started my day with a hot cup of strong coffee.  The heat warmed me up and the caffeine jerked me awake.  Good morning world!

This morning coffee habit began in high school, and continued without interruption until a few years ago, when I was introduced to bone broth by the folks at the Weston A. Price Foundation.

The Foundation caught my attention by boldly standing atop a soapbox in the public square and stating the dietary heresy, “Fat is good!”  This statement directly contradicted the dominant dietary truth of the time, as put forth by the American Heart Association, that “Fat is bad!”

The Foundation furthered their dietary heresy by also claiming that modern foods are nutritionally “poor,” while the foods of traditional diets were “rich.”  And furthermore, one of the things that made traditional foods rich was that all traditional diets included that which modern diets exclude – bones.

And so today I prefer to start my day with a hot cup of rich bone broth.  The heat warms me up and the nutrition awakens my body.  Then, after the bone broth has set up my day, I go for that cup of coffee.

What I have found in bone broth, and the other foods of nourishing traditions, leads me to ask:

Should we look to ancient dietary staple of bone broth to strengthen our breaking bones?

Connect: www.metrofarm.com

 

 

Ep. 1363: A Mexican Maize Standoff

Carey Gillam, Author, The Monsanto Papers & Research Director, U.S. Right to Know  

(GMOs, WTO, Glyphosate, International Food trade)

 

After standing firm on its plan to ban genetically modified corn from Germany, and the attendant pesticides from China, Mexico capitulated to the demands of  the United States and cancelled its plan to ban.  That leads us to ask:

Why did Mexico stand-down from its GMO maize stand-off?

A while back I participated in a panel discussion at the U.S. Farmer and Rancher Alliance International Biotech conference in Chicago.  The subject was genetically modified crops. 

If memory servces, the panel included the presidents of the National Corn Growers Association, National Pork Producers Council, American Soybean Association and others.   The audience consisted of the biotech industry professionals who re-engineer the genetic intelligence of crops to make them more compliant to the needs of farmers and ranchers.

In my concluding remarks, I gestured to the biotech professionals in the audience and said, “The technology you have developed to re-engineer crops is truly miraculous.  You have made it possible for one farmer to grow a thousand acres of crops without weeds or insects!  That truly is a miracle! Your technology has made you rich, and made the farmers and ranchers of America happy.  However, one day the people who eat your food are going to wake up and say:  “Hey!  What’s in this technology for us, other than food that is infused with insecticides and drenched in herbicides? 

“When that day comes, you are going to need to provide the people who eat your food with an answer.  What will your answer be?”

That day appears to have arrived.  But to my knowledge, no answer has been given, other than, “Shut up and eat the cheap food.”  That leads us to the recent capitulation of Mexico on its Maize stand-off with the United States, Germany and China.  And so we ask:     

Why did Mexico stand-down from its GMO maize stand-off?

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

 

Ep. 1362: Bonders Metropolitan Bees

Emily Bonder, Apiarist & Educator, Santa Cruz Bee Company

(metropolitan bee keeping, apiarists, honey bees)

They say bees are responsible for one-third of every bite of food we eat.  Given how much we love to eat, and how much we love to hear the buzzing of bees, we simply must ask:

How does one keep bees in the city?

We all know how important honeybees are to the productivity of natural and man-made food chains. 

And so, when we look about the garden and see fewer and fewer bees every year, we get to wondering what we will do for food should all the bees disappear.

Of course, there would still be some pollinators buzzing or crawling about, but would they be sufficient to feed all us very hungry people? 

Having hosted a number of feature stories about bees on the Food Chain Radio Podcast, I have become attentive to their numbers as they buzz about the garden.  And though I have not taken a formal census, I do believe there are fewer and fewer bees in the garden.

The wife and I recently decided there is one way to allay fears about bees disappearing, and that is to become metropolitan beekeepers.  Today we take the first step in that direction by asking:

How does one keep bees in the city?

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

 

 

Ep. 1361: Driscoll's - Barons of Berries?

Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry

(Food industry consolidation, Driscoll's Berries,  

Across the landscape of American agriculture, one can see where there were many, there are now few.  What we see leads us to ask:

Is it better to have a few big farms or many small farms?

The Food Chain Radio Show & Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, for a conversation about the consolidation of the nation’s food chain into the hands of a few.

Topics include how the share-cropping of the antebellum South has been adopted by industrial agriculture; how share-cropping has been used to control production and market share; and whether big successful businesses, like the Driscoll’s berry company, are “robber barons.” 

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

Radio Host:  www.santacruzvoice.com

 

 

Ep. 1360: Maizie's Marketing Magic

Maisie Ganzler, Chief Strategy and Brand Officer Bon Appetit Management Company & Author, You Can’t Market Manure at Lunchtime  

(Food marketing, advertising and public relations)

He who has a thing to sell, and goes and whispers in a well, is not so apt to get the dollars, as she who climbs a tree and hollers!    And so we ask:

How does one win the minds and dollars of those who eat food?

Much of our food now comes from far, far away, where it was grown, processed and packaged with mysterious technologies by complete strangers.  Therefore when it comes to knowing what we should buy to eat, and what we should not buy, we city people are pretty much babes-in-the-woods. 

As babes-in-the-woods, we need a mother to tell us what in all those colorful plastic bags that line the grocers’ shelves, we should buy and eat, or not buy and eat.  Trouble is, everyone wants to be our mother, and so we babes-in-the-woods are continually assaulted with messages that say “Buy this!… at this… “No, this is better than that, so buy this!” …

With all those voices out there telling us what to eat, who should we babes-in-the-woods trust to be our mother?  And so today we pause to ask: 

How does one win the minds and dollars of those who eat food?

Ep. 1359: Local Versus Natural

Fred Provenza, Emeritus Professor of Behavioral Ecology,  Utah State University & Author of Nourishment: What animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom

(Food Nutrition and Labeling)

The supply chain that feeds our food chain now extends across the country and around the world.  Given what we see happening across our country, and around the world, we simply must ask:  

Can we go back home again with food?

I just returned from attending Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, which bills itself as the having the largest collection of natural, organic and conscious food products available anywhere.

It took me 6 hours to hike the 7 or 8 football field-sized exhibition rooms filled with various foods and supplements.  Most all of the foods were available for tasting, and the 60,000 foodies in attendance were eating away at them.

But I was on a mission and so did not stop to taste many of those samples – only a few.  The first was some granola infused with Earl Gray Tea.  I guess the idea was to wake myself up and get fed in one bite!

My mission at the Natural Foods Expo, was to find natural foods that had a good story to tell.  Though I did find a few good stories, I did not find many natural foods.  What I did find were what seemed to be thousands of ultra-processed foods in brightly colored packages.  

 

Michael Olson’s “natural” foods are the plants one forages or the animals one hunts in nature.  Next in line are the real foods, grown from real soil, by real farmers.  Last in line are ultra-processed foods grown with the industrial technologies of energy-intensive agriculture – and they are the foods that come with in brightly-colored packages with lots of promises. 

Given that the supply chain that now feeds our food chain extends across the country and around the world, and given what we see in the news of our country and the world, we simply must pause to ask:

Can we go back home again with food?

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

 

 

Ep. 1358: Meadowlark - The Canary of the Prairie

John Marzluff, Emeritus Professor of Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Author of In Company of Meadowlarks

(Environmental Degradation and the Vanishing of Song birds)

 

Meadowlarks are the canaries of the prairie.  Where one hears their song, its safe to go out onto the prairie.  But where the meadlark’s song is no longer heard, there is danger on the prairie.  And so we ask:  

Can people get enough to eat if canaries sing?

Having grown up on that narrow slice of geography that lies between the peaks of the Rocky Mountains and the grasslands of the high prairie, I learned at a very early age to take joy at the song of the meadowlark. 

  The yellow-breasted robin-sized bird’s song could be heard from a great distance, when conditions allowed, and whenever I heard that song it would bring a moment of great joy to whatever I happened to be doing at the time.  I would often try to whistle the song right back, though it did take a wet whistle to even come close.

However, the song of the meadowlark is becoming increasingly rare for the same reason buffalo no longer eat the prairie grasses in any significant number.  People and their agriculture have moved onto the prairie, and meadowlarks ­– and many of their feathered kindred – have been forced to move out, thus portending that “silent spring” Rachel Carson promised. And so the canary of the prairie leads us to ask:

Can people grow enough food for themselves and allow birds to sing?

 

Contact:  www.metrofarm.com

 

Ep. 1357: Yellowstone's Crows of Winter

John Marzluff, Emeritus Professor of Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Author of In the Company of Crows and Ravens

(Animal Nutrition and Environment)

Yellowstone Park in winter is a cruel place for the wildlife that can no longer endure its cold, snow and hunger.  And yet what is cruel for some can be a blessing for the corvids of Yellowstone’s winter   And so we ask:  

Can anyone love the black birds of Yellowstone’s white winter?

There was a stretch of years when wife Marlene and I would sneak off to Cooke City, Montana, for some cross country skiing.  In winter, Cooke is a snowbound little town at the very end of the only open road through Yellowstone Park. 

Though Cooke City is well known among snowmobilers for its access to the stunningly beautiful high country, snowmobilers and cross-country skiers are not of a kind.  Our aim, as skiers, was Yellowstone’s Lamar River Valley, which is, thankfully, off limits to the noisy, smelly snowmobiles.

The Lamar Valley is the wintering grounds for many of Yellowstone’s animal populations.  And our cross country skis allowed us to fly over the surface of snow packs the animals had to plow their way through.  We were not the only ones flying about the Lamar with such abandon.  So, too, were the corvids – Yellowstone’s black birds on white snow.

Yellowstone’s winter is a cruel time for the animals that can no longer survive the cold, snow and lack of food.  But from what we saw, while flying over the snowpacked landscape, was that winter was treating crows and ravens with lots of opportunity to feast, and their feasting often sounded as raucous as an out-of-bounds wedding celebration. 

From watching their feasting, and from watching them watch us as we flew across the landscape, we came to see corvids as being winners of Yellowstone’s season of losing.  And we wondered:

Can anyone love the black birds of Yellowstone’s white winter?