Nothing ages me faster than calling my niece “Dr. Whetstine.”
Jena Whetstine (right) with sister Jessica Whetstine Brotherton at Jessica’s wedding
Professor Jena Whetstine has her Ph.D. in chemistry. My collegiate career, on the other hand, did not include one hour of chemistry. Does psychology still count as a science?
Our family is exceedingly proud of this accomplished young woman, all her siblings, and cousins. She is, and they are, beautiful on the inside and out with the easy-going, never-met-a-stranger warmth and sense of humor my husband’s family exudes.
Jena picked this post because as a chemist she found it “very entertaining.” Humor wasn’t exactly what I was going for, but you never know with chemists.
When I asked what her choice for 2012 would be, she was ready. “Having kids eat healthier is a great thing,” she said. “But trying to do it in a one-size-fits-all manner has never, ever worked.”
Law school is on the horizon for this fencer-immigrant-chef-student. Anna’s lobbying skills combined with her determination and common sense promise to make her one excellent attorney.
Anne carefully selected her Reader’s Choice post. “I love it because being alone with God and nature is my favorite thing to do,” she said. “It soothes the soul—centers your perspective—and lends itself to feelings of hope and promise.”
Oh, how I long for that this Christmas. Anne’s Reader’s Choice is:
Ryan graciously agreed to take a moment out of his celebrity schedule to be in our little Reader’s Choice feature. Meanwhile, our friend Dairy Carrie let me hijack his blog as a Bandita. I’ve never been a Bandita before!
As a mom and consumer, I know organic food garners a premium price. But I like to have choices. My family buys and eats food that looks and tastes good and that we can afford. That includes conventional, organic, biotech, heirloom, domestic, international, and farmer’s market fare.
Food that meets these standards can display the USDA Organic seal:
Organic crops. The USDA organic seal verifies that irradiation, sewage sludge, synthetic fertilizers, prohibited pesticides, and genetically modified organisms were not used.
Organic livestock. The USDA organic seal verifies that producers met animal health and welfare standards, did not use antibiotics or growth hormones, used 100% organic feed, and provided animals with access to the outdoors.
Organic multi-ingredient foods. The USDA organic seal verifies that the product has 95% or more certified organic content. If the label claims that it was made with specified organic ingredients, you can be sure that those specific ingredients are certified organic.
Seems straightforward. Why does confusion about organic food persist?
That brings us to what organic food is not:
peppers
Organic food is not more nutritious. This week’s Stanford University study concluded organic food is not healthier than conventional food. This isn’t really new information. Last year Scientific American reported 50 years of research comparisons have shown there are no health differences between organic and conventional food.
Organic food is not pesticide-free. Organic farms may use approved pesticides and fungicides derived from natural sources rather than synthetics to protect crops from insects and disease. Scientific American reported organic pesticides may be worse than those used in conventional farming. Organic food also tends to have more pathogens like E. coli and Salmonella than conventional food. It’s important to note the Stanford researchers found the pesticide levels of all food generally fell within the allowable safety limits.
Organic food is not better for the environment. According to Scientific American, organic farming requires more land to produce the same amount of food as conventional farming. If we were to switch to 100 percent organic farming today, we would have to clear another 20 percent of the ice-free land on earth to make up the difference in production.
Organic food is not necessarily local or fair-trade. Go Green Online reported the average organic food travels 1,200 miles before it reaches the consumer. And organic food may still be produced using illegal migrant workers receiving unfair wages in harsh working conditions.
My family buys and eats many different kinds of food; I’m not advocating one type of food over another. What I’m advocating is education and choice.
blueberries
We do ourselves a disservice when we pit organic against conventional or biotech, local against domestic or imported. There’s room at the table for all kinds of food to meet many different needs.
There’s freedom for us to learn and decide for ourselves what to eat.
You cause grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for people to use.
You allow them to produce food from the earth. Psalm 104:14 NLT
Translation: lots of fruits and veggies, not so much meat.
My friend Katie blogged about the new federal standards and why they don’t work for her family. Other women began blogging about the standards, too. They started a Facebook page called Sensible School Lunches to dialogue.
I pay taxes that support public schools and these programs. So do you. We pay regardless of whether or not we have children enrolled. The well-being of the children in a community is important to the community as a whole.
That makes us all stakeholders in this.
The new federal standards recommend children in kindergarten through fifth grade receive more than six cups of fruits and vegetables for lunch per week, but only eight to 10 ounces of meat or meat alternative for lunch per week.
You read that right. Per week.
That’s roughly two ounces of meat per lunch.
Two ounces of meat per lunch didn’t sound like much to me, but I wasn’t really sure. My son and I headed to our local market to find out.
Two ounces (.125 pounds) of raw ground beef is about one meatball. Enough for a small hamburger or a portion of spaghetti sauce. Not bad.
2 ounce meatball on scale
Consider the chicken leg. It’s overweight at .31 pounds (4.96 ounces).
chicken leg weighs more than 2 ounces
Two slices of bacon is fine, but a two-slice limit wouldn’t go well at my house.
2 ounces = 2 slices of bacon
At another store, we determined one hotdog would pass.
ballpark beef franks, 1 hotdog = 2 ounces
So would a package of lunch meat like this.
2 ounces of oscar mayer chicken
My son enjoyed our investigative reporting. But as I snapped photos of Oscar Mayer, I wondered what the menu changes meant in real life.
Will children really eat 1/4 cup of jicama and 1/4 of pepper strips as suggested for the Monday menu, assuming they know what jicama is? How about Tuesday’s suggested 1/2 cup of broccoli and 1/2 cup of cauliflower?
Who are these kids? We try at our dinner table. We really do, but it’s a win if the child ingests more than one green bean.
please do not climb on cow
By the time Friday rolls around, the weekly allowance of meat on the sample menu has been depleted. Cheese pizza is the suggested fare. Why not front-load the week with this deficit and participate in Meatless Mondays?
Let’s say a child eats his veggie-rich lunch of jicama and peppers with two ounces of turkey and one cup of fat-free milk, but is still not hunger-free. How will that child perform in class?
What if that child’s only meal for the entire day is school lunch?
The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act updates public school menus for the first time in 15 years. It’s a commendable start.
The emphasis on fruits, veggies, whole grains, and low-fat milk is terrific. Still there are questions that need to be addressed for these standards to succeed in real life.
Giving local schools more say in what works best in their communities with their students makes the most sense.
Local schools are also better equipped than the federal government to network with area farmers and ranchers to supply foods, another goal of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.
There’s work to be done. Please contact your elected officials. Visit Sensible School Lunches to learn more and to dialogue. Bloggers, consider writing your story about this topic and sharing it there.
He always does what He says—
He defends the wronged,
He feeds the hungry. Psalm 146:7 The Message
And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for. A link to the Wendy’s commercial that inspired this post’s title: Where’s the Beef?
Milk Wars was first posted more than a year ago. Besides being our most read post, it’s also our most shared post with 528 Facebook shares and counting.
Apparently, the message still resonates.
I know that You can do all things;
no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. Job 42:2 NIV
10,000 Reasons by Matt Redman, a new favorite in my house: Let me be singing when the evening comes.
Yesterday was a banner day. Thank you for reading and sharing.
open for comments
To any new readers, welcome aboard, folks. Fasten your seat belts.
A few things you should know. First, this isn’t a farm and food blog. If it were, it’d be called Farmilicious or Chick & Biscuit or Butterbean Babe.
I’m a suburban girl who didn’t grow up on a farm and doesn’t live on a farm now. I write all sorts of things. You never know what’s coming next, and neither do I.
This isn’t a devotional, although there are Bible verses that apply to the posts.
This isn’t a music blog either, but I really like music, hence the links to songs. Like a soundtrack for a movie.
Now about yesterday’s post Food Fright. Your response encouraged me to take inventory. Lo and behold, a pattern emerged.
Posts about what’s true and what’s not true about farming and food matter to you.
field of dreams
Since Milk Wars exploded a year ago, I’ve met a lot of cool people. Yesterday reminded me there are stories waiting to be told. Questions begging for answers.
Is my food safe? Are farms ruining the environment? Who’s behind all this? Will there be a Madagascar 4?
So among the posts about the dog, the family, the ups and down, the cosmetics and clothes, the social issues and flashback hits, don’t be surprised to see more about farming and food.
Chick & Biscuit can take a hint.
Let them praise the Lord for His great love
and for the wonderful things He has done for them.
For He satisfies the thirsty
and fills the hungry with good things. Psalm 107:8-9 NLT
Recently I ventured into the 630s and 338.19s at the downtown branch of the Wichita Public Library. Those are the Dewey Decimal call numbers for farming and production.
I was looking for a book that could help me address the concerns of yet another well-intentioned friend who watched Food, Inc. and hit the panic button.
Instead of books about the dignity of farming and food production, here’s a sample of the titles I found:
The End of Food: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Food Supply–And What You Can Do About It
Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
Stuffed & Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System
A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil
Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization
Really?
Did you eat today? How about yesterday? Last year? Do you plan to eat again?
Did you have trouble finding food? Or did you have your choice of food at your choice of markets? Is someone preventing you from growing your own food if you want to do so?
I know your food didn’t kill you or you wouldn’t be reading this.
steak
I have a child. To borrow a line of reasoning from Katie Pinke, because I have a child, do you think I abuse him? How about my dog? Do you assume I abuse her?
If you have children or animals, should I assume you abuse them? How about livestock or poultry? If a farmer raises livestock or poultry, is it a foregone conclusion that those animals are abused?
Did you find insects in your produce? How about fungi on your fruit? Was your corn sweet and robust or wimpy and weedy? Was it dripping with chemicals?
Bad things happen in agriculture. There are accidents and outbreaks. There are crimes. Sometimes animals are abused. Sometimes people die.
There’s always room for improvement.
Bad things happen at local swimming pools. And at city halls. In factories. Police departments. Schools. Daycares. Animal shelters. Fortune 500 companies. Convenience stores.
There are accidents and outbreaks. There are crimes. Sometimes animals are abused. Sometimes people die. There’s always room for improvement.
Bad things happen, but they’re not the norm.
They’re certainly not the intention of the majority of people who work in these sectors. Crimes should be prosecuted. Innocent people shouldn’t be attacked.
Research, funding, and lifetimes of labor by dedicated farmers go into improving farming and our food. The result is one of the safest, most plentiful, least expensive food supplies in history. We have choices of what to eat.
Surely there must be something right about farming and food.
Much of what’s wrong appears to be grown and harvested on a bookshelf of misinformation. And don’t even get me started about what’s on the internet.
radicchio
Show me the right path, O Lord;
point out the road for me to follow. Psalm 25:4 NLT
The Farmer’s Song by Murray McLaughlin. Thanks for the meal, here’s a song that is real from a kid from the city to you.
I snapped the food photos in this post at The Fresh Market in Wichita, where conventional, organic, homegrown, and imported foods are sold from the same shelves.
What’s your take on this? What are your concerns about farming and food? What would you like to stay the same? What would you like to change?
“Thank You for this food,” says my father-in-law when he prays over our family dinner table. “And bless the hands that prepared it.”
Today as I sit down to a simple lunch of tomato soup and tuna melt, I think of the hands that prepared it.
Of course there are the farmers and ranchers. Vegetable growers and harvesters of the tomatoes for the soup and the cucumbers for the relish.
Dairy farmers whose cows produce the milk I stir into my soup and the cheese that makes my tuna melt. Poultry farmers whose chickens lay eggs for the mayo.
produce
Wheat growers who give us grain for bread. Fishermen who harvest albacore on the open seas.
It would be enough to stop there in the bread baskets, victory gardens and teeming waters of our world. But that would only be part of the story.
Equipment, machinery, tires, and fuel run modern farms. Veterinarians and animal health products shield livestock from disease.
Inputs like fertilizer boost plant health and production in our cropland. And yes, there are chemicals to keep our food from being infested by insects, ravaged by disease, or starved out by weeds.
cheese shop
There are ecologists and extension agents to watch over natural resources. Agronomists, biologists, chemists, soil specialists and a host of other scientists to improve and develop technologies.
Bankers, accountants, and lawyers are involved. Marketers too. Farming and food production are expensive ventures.
There are processing companies like the one that canned my soup. Planes, trains and big rigs with 18 wheels to transport the food to my town.
There are farmers’ markets and grocery stores. On-premise butchers, bakers, and chefs. People to work the checkouts, collect carts, or clean up on aisle seven.
checkout
Managers to manage it all. Administrators, human resources professionals, and thousands of other employees, plus federal, state and local government agencies.
So many people, so many hands take part in preparing my food and yours. We are free to buy, cook, or order up nearly anything we can imagine to eat.
Food prices have risen a bit lately. Yet last week I spent more money on clothes for my growing child than on groceries to feed him.
This is the state of food in America. The abundant, affordable state of food.
The pilgrims would fall to their knees if they could see it now. We’d do well to take their lead.
The eyes of all look to You in hope;
You give them their food as they need it.
When You open Your hand,
You satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing. Psalm 145:15-16 NLT
A special thank you to the friendly folks at the Richmond Center and Ladue Schnucks grocery stores for lending their smiles to this post.
#foodthanks
This post is part of FoodThanks, a forum sponsored by AgChat where people can give thanks for those who produce our food. To read more perspectives or to link up your own, go to AgChat.com or click on the #foodthanks button here.
