Extreme Eating (let's rip Joel Stein a new one)

I knew the farm-to-table movement was out of control when Chris Dodd mentioned it at a presidential campaign event in Muscatine, Iowa. Eating food grown within 100 miles was, he argued, an important part of the new American dream. It was clear to me why a Northeastern liberal would never be President. I expected him to propose reducing poverty with rebates on iPhones.

Dodd was basically telling the Iowans that every night they should decide whether to accompany their pork with creamed corn, corn on the cob, corn fritters or corn bread. For dessert, they could have any flavor they wanted of fake ice cream made from soy, provided that flavor was corn.

--clip of a whole section where Stein tells American backyard gardners they all suck and are no fun at parties--

To prove how wrong the farm-to-table movement is, I cooked a dinner purely of farm-to-airplane food. Nothing I made was grown within 3,000 miles of where I live in Los Angeles. And to completely give the finger to the locavores, I bought the entire meal in the local-food movement's most treasured supermarket, the one that has huge locally grown signs next to the fruits and vegetables: Whole Foods.

--clip of a whole paragraph where Stein basically tells us how much he hates America because our food sucks--

My distavore meal was more a smorgasbord than a smart fusion of cultures, but I still ate the way only a very rich person could have dined just 15 years ago. The local-food movement is deeply Luddite, part of the green lobby that measures improvement by self-denial more than by actual impact—considering shipping food in containers is often more energy-efficient than a local farmer trucking small amounts that are then purchased on a separate weekend farmers'-market trip you take in your SUV. So I'm going to keep buying food from my foreign neighbors. Because it's the only way we Americans learn about other countries, other than by bombing them.

The funniest line in the piece: "And I want them much more than I want that carrot you grew in your garden. Because I know you're going to talk to me for 20 minutes about your carrot."

Here's the entire link if anyone wants to read it: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1702353,00.html

I forgot to include it. Sorry 'bout that, everybody.

Oh, and it pisses me off when cretins with sub-100 IQ's can have cool jobs writing for major newsweeklies and I can't because I know stuff. That, and the fact he's promoting the idea that trucking stuff across continents is a good thing just because.

there are definitely some Luddite tendencies in the Green movement right now. Eliminating air travel is another push I see a lot. While our wasteful consumerism is a problem that must be addressed, I think many of these folks would like to return to an agrarian, subsistence-farming society.

Flying is a pain in the ass (thank's George). As for the "eat local" argument, if you're looking for someone who buys into the grist.com worldview, you're looking in the wrong place. Until you can get Virginia-grown coffee and Georgia-grown bananas at the grocery store, it's just not practical. That's not the point. The point is that Stein offers a lot of straw-man arguments and not enough substance.

I bet if you talk to my hero, Alton Brown, he'll tell you there ain't nothing like locally-grown produce in season.

If that's who you're talking about then.....uh....really? You're getting agitated over something a humor writer wrote? Not finding it funny? I can see that since humor is subjective. But getting you riled up like that? Um....yeah. Sure.

If I'm thinking of a different Joel Stein then I'd like to know who this is and what he wrote to see if it would rile me up as well.

I guess I'm not used to finding satire masquerading as op/ed in Time.