Helping hunger + helping your brain

If you're an NPR devotee, you've probably already heard about Free Rice, a brilliant and fun website that fights world hunger while helping you improve your mind. Here's the basic scenario: the website presents a vocabulary word, and four possible definitions. If you choose the correct definition, the site donates 20 grains of rice to the U.N.'s World Food Program. You can keep playing (and donating rice) for as long as you want. The program also determines your vocabulary level based on your answers to the questions. (You can go as high as 50... if you reach that and let me know, you'll get a shout-out in my blog!)

I love this site and the overarching concept. It amazes me that I can help fight hunger (albeit in a small way) by doing something I enjoy. Go check it out! (Thanks, Paj, for the tip.)

As a side note, completely unrelated to ethical eating: I suspect that business models like this, where advertisers are willing to pay for site traffic, are heading for a crash. Haven't we all grown pretty much immune to web advertising? I was on the Free Rice site for ten or twenty minutes yesterday and couldn't name a single advertiser who had paid for my traffic. As much as I like the model, since it supports so much free content, I fear that a new, more intrusive wave of advertising is on the horizon.

The House champions ethical eating (for itself, anyway)

Monday's SF Chronicle featured an article about the House's decision to bring local, sustainable, and organic food into their cafeterias. This more ethical food will be served on compostable plates and eaten with biodegradable silverware (which cries out for a new name... sugarware, anyone?).

This move is a boon for the people who work and eat at the Capitol; they will have access to food that is better for them, better for the environment, and (I suspect) tastier than what they are used to. The switch also benefits local growers and vendors who will help supply Restaurant Associates (the catering contractor) with their sustainable food products.

The article gives Nancy Pelosi most of the credit for the change, since she has spearheaded the "Green the Capitol" initiative. Ironically, Ms. Pelosi is also the person most responsible for the current state of the proposed Farm Bill revision. Many people had high hopes for this year's Farm Bill (which only gets revised every five years). Ever since the 1970's, the Farm Bill has included provisions that provide subsidies and other benefits to corn, soybean and (to a lesser extent) other grain farmers, while excluding most fruit and vegetable growers from those subsidies. These subsidies have been blamed for everything from the current obesity epidemic to the high price of fresh produce relative to, say, a McDonald's hamburger. It seemed that 2007 might finally be the year that the Farm Bill removed those subsidies, or provided increased benefits or support to produce growers (especially organics), or both. After all, the Speaker of the House is a Democrat from California, which grows more than 50% of the nation's fruits and vegetables. Furthermore, even the USDA has acknowledged that fruits and vegetables (taken together) are more important to a healthy diet than whole grains, codifying this belief in their revised food pyramid.

Sadly, Ms. Pelosi and her colleagues did little to change the Farm Bill's status quo. A final bill has not yet been signed (as the House and Senate passed different versions), but the version passed by the House retained the majority of the grain subsidies, while diverting only small amounts of money toward fruits, vegetables, and conservation efforts. Now, I'm sure there were lots of competing interests at stake and that Ms. Pelosi was trying her best to balance those interests. I've read speculation that Pelosi was trying to protect some of the freshman Democrats from the grain-producing states. There are always excuses, always reasons that some important piece of legislation couldn't get passed.

I'm happy for Pelosi, her fellow Representatives, and all the staffers who will get to take advantage of the new cafeteria cuisine. They should keep in mind though, as they bite into their grass fed buffalo medallions with a side of local, organic potatoes and collards, that what they have chosen for themselves, they have denied the common American.

Cancerous red meat!

A new study has been published that finds a correlation between higher consumption of meat with a higher risk for a number of different cancers. (The study's findings were covered by many major news outlets; here's a link to one of them.) In addition to an increased risk of colon cancer (which was already known), red meat has now been linked to lung, liver, esophageal, and pancreatic cancers as well.

The media seem to love stories like this. With the rise of cancer rates in our society, we desperately need to find somewhere to point our fingers. It's the meat! No, the transfats! No, it's the Aspartame! the Teflon!

If we were to listen to every instance of "{insert food or behavior here} causes cancer" and change all of our behaviors accordingly, we would become fat-free, sugar-free vegan raw foodists.

And while that does sound enticing, I'll take some joy with my meal, thank you very much.

Buried in the study but not covered by the media outlets is the following point:

-The quintile with the highest red-meat intake (approx. 1/4 pound per day) also had the highest BMI (body mass index), the lowest number of servings of fruits and vegetables per day, and the lowest percentage of reported physical activity.

As far as I can tell from reading the study, the researchers did not control for any of these factors. (Smoking, on the other hand, was controlled for in the lung cancer findings.) In other words, although the researchers acknowledge the above characteristics of the biggest meat-eaters, they did not isolate any of these factors as possible contributors.

My answer then, is: everything in moderation. I don't think the meat-eaters among us have to worry too much about these dangerous cancers, any more than we should throw away our non-stick frying pans. Certainly most of us could stand to substitute a hearty lentil soup for a Porterhouse steak every now and then, but I don't think we need to become ascetics. If you can find balance in your life, by eating a variety of foods (including fruits and vegetables) in moderation, exercising (both the body and the mind) regularly, and getting enough sleep, I think you're probably doing as much as you should in order to stay well and happy.

my first raw-staurant

A few days ago I ate my first meal at a restaurant specializing in raw foods. I was feeling mildly embarrassed not to have tried raw foods before, since there is so much overlap between raw foodism and some of my other lifestyle choices (for example, practicing yoga).

Now, I know I should not judge a restaurant, let alone a food movement, based on one meal alone. So I'll just present the meal and some of the facts about raw foodism, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

In brief, raw foods (also called living foods) are plants, fruits, nuts, and seeds that have not been cooked past 110 or 120 degrees. (Beyond these temperatures, certain digestive enzymes in the foods begin to break down.) People undertake a raw foods diet for a variety of reasons, including health benefits, weight loss, disease cure or prevention, and environmental concerns. Raw food gurus such as David Wolfe also claim that raw foods make you feel more energized.

(Here's a fun page of "before and after" photos of people who went on raw foods diets.)

So back to Cafe Gratitude, site of my raw food lunch. The first thing you should know is that all of the menu items are "affirmations," and our waitress informed us that when we order, we need to state our affirmation. So instead of saying, "I'll have the soup of the day," you say, "I am thriving." No kidding. Or, stated in the language of Cafe Gratitude: I am serious. (Check out their menu to find your favorite example of this.) I think this is a quirk specific to Cafe Gratitude, and not to raw foodism in general.

After considering my options, I went with "I am celebrating," or in layman's terms, the daily special. On that particular day the special consisted of spring rolls, side salad, and my choice of grain. My spring rolls were made of kale wrapped around cucumber, carrot, green pepper, greens, avocado, and dried cranberries. (Yes, the cranberries seemed a little random to me too.) There was no dipping sauce, just the rolls. My side salad was just mixed greens with some balsamic vinaigrette, and the grain on the side was steamed quinoa.

The salad was delicious. Of course, I eat salads all the time, and there is nothing novel about eating a "raw" salad. My quinoa had been steamed but was otherwise untouched. (Question for ye who know: doesn't steaming something sort of cross the line? Is it really "raw" anymore?) My quinoa really yearned for some olive oil, salt, and a squeeze of lemon. I made it taste better by adding some of the vinaigrette. Finally, the spring rolls. While they definitely felt healthy, they also struck me as... incredibly bland. Where in the raw foods rules does it say you can't flavor your meals? Isn't grey sea salt as raw as they come? Perhaps a chopped up chili pepper?

Janaki, my companion at this meal and sometime-raw foodist, informed me that after you eat enough raw food, the flavors of the foods themselves really start to emerge. In other words, the food itself is flavorful enough to stand on its own, without the assistance of spices or condiments.

I can understand the logic of this, although I think if you're aiming for maximum flavor from raw foods and vegetables, you have to find seasonal, locally-grown produce (disqualifying my spring rolls, since neither avocados nor green peppers is grown in NorCal this late in the year).

(Edit: I just returned from the Temescal (Oakland) farmer's market. To my astonishment, they had green peppers. This confirms that I don't understand the growing seasons in California.)

It's also true that this was my first raw food meal. If I were to commit to, say, eating only raw foods for a week, perhaps by the end of the week I'd feel convinced that my food was flavorful. (Would I also be hallucinating by then?)

Here are two things I can say for my raw food meal:
1) I felt full afterwards, and continued to feel full for the next five hours.
2) It must have been very fiber-rich. My toilet can attest to this.

Both of these points lead me to believe that yes, switching from a typical American diet (lots of meat, dairy, and processed foods) to a raw diet will cause significant weight loss. Common sense also dictates this: if I were to eat mostly fruits and vegetables, I would be likely to consume far fewer calories than if I were to eat, say, quarter-pounders with fries.

However, I can't say I envy raw foodists. There are too many things I would miss: grilled onions, cheese, and chocolate truffles, to name a few. I also think most of the pleasure I derive from eating would disappear. I absolutely adore fresh fruits and vegetables, but I would come to love them a lot less if they were all I had to eat, day in and day out. So I think I'll stick to my omnivore's diet, and while I won't become a regular at Cafe Gratitude, I'm certainly not opposed to trying a "raw" meal again in the future.

If you'd like to read a great article about raw foods, including a balanced perspective of the benefits and risks, here's one from The New York Times.