The daily revelations emerging from the discovery of horsemeat in lasagna purchased in Ireland reveal the complexities of our food system. When EU health commissioners tracked down the source of the horsemeat, they found a trail that passed through multiple countries, processors, dealers, brokers, Romania, England, Cyprus, Poland, the Netherlands, and in some cases, through illegal hands.
Since much of our meat is processed, ground up, blended with flavorings, shaped into meatballs and stuffed into sausage casings, each step closer to our plates creates opportunities for processors to succumb to pressures from consumers who want cheaper meat in poor economic times. And this poses a challenge to regulators and concerned consumers who want safe and uncontaminated food.
The current kerfuffle about horsemeat Europe’s food supply chain reveals our persistent concern over what one Victorian writer, Andrew Wyntner, called “culinary poisons.” And todays heightened awareness of food sourcing only raises the steaks over public confidence in our global food system. Frederick Accum wrote in 1820 about food adulteration that he found so ubiquitous in Victorian London. Later, in 1848, John Mitchell lauded the advances in the uses of chemistry to detect the addition of substances that “diminished its real strength without altering its apparent strength. He called this kind of adulteration “the deadly kind.” Andrew Wyntner in “Our Peck of Dirt” claimed German sausages were so contaminated that he called them “poison bags.”
The discovery of horsemeat in Ireland was upsetting on several levels. Not only did the revelation raise questions about food safety and transparency, the mingling of equine with bovine clashes with cultural identities. The British have never been that keen to eat horses while the rest of Europe has assimilated horsemeat into its culinary repertoire. The consumption of horsemeat in France was legalized in 1866 on the eve of the Siege of Paris. While the French have Escoffier included horsemeat in his repertoire claiming that, “Horsemeat is delicious when one is in the right circumstances to appreciate it.” Clearly, he wouldn’t approve of the current circumstances.
Many of us wish for an opportunity to share our latest projects, especially if we’re crazy-passionate about it. Speaking at a TED conference is one of those opportunities. Recently, I had the privilege of speaking at the TEDx Austin event. As a speaker, I was witness to the miracle of a TEDx event, a day-long immersion into the inspiring and motivating lives of the speakers and attendees.
My talk came at the end of the day, and although I prepared for this talk more than I had ever prepared for the countless other talks, lectures, and seminars that I have given, I was full of remorse afterwards.
My talk was about curiosity and how it motivated me to run across four deserts; and how you can use curiosity to overcome your fear of thinking bigger about your life. In my case, I’m working on a new way to think about our food system, how we need to think bigger so that we can create disruptive, imaginative improvements for our food system. But there were important things I left out, some deeper, more revealing ideas that I really wanted you to know.
Yes, I know, speakers often think of what they could have done better. But my remorse came from seeing the irony of my talk in light of the event’s theme: fearlessness. Fear, as it turned out, was my nemesis. You see, I knew my talk, cold; but in the few days before the talk, I was having difficulty meeting the time constraints. So, I turned to reading my talk, instead of sharing with the audience my story, the one that I felt passionate about. If only I had taken a breath, just one, and listened to my heart, I could have gathered all those words I had crafted and put them into sentences that held a deeper, more personal message. Like this,
That we need to love life more than we fear death, in order for us to use our curiosity about life to understand how to solve problems, like those in our food system.
That just because understanding our food system in all its overwhelming complexity appears impossible, using our curiosity, even about the smallest aspects of our food allows us to take the first step towards a more complex understanding, the one we need in order to arrive at the “Big Ideas.”
And that to me, food represents all of life and love, its potential for creativity and close human connection. Food is constantly recreating itself, and our ability to re-invent its presence in our lives during a period of rapid change is vital to our survival.
And so now you know what I meant to say, really.
The day was full of rich and inspiring stories, of Byron Reese’s optimism that all of us have great purpose, of Darden Smith’s song that carried the revelation that we all have gifts that just need unwrapping and the courage to use them.
At the end of the day, the speakers and organizers met over an elegantly prepared meal to celebrate the success of the day. Sitting across from me was a bright young man who seemed curious about my desert running adventures. He asked me, “Are you still running?”
His question was well meaning, but it brought all the events of the day into sharp focus. “Still running?” Did it seem that I was done imagining, taking risks, being curious enough to think big. Hardly, I thought. This overwhelming challenge of mapping the food system in all it complexity, is the next uncharted territory that begs for some fearless explorers. Now is the time to lace my shoes again and get back on the desert. And if my talk was worthy, even to a few hungry souls, perhaps someone will walk along side me in some new uncharted territory.
Desert Running, a PB&J Sandwich, and the Future of Food: Robyn Metcalfe at TEDxAustin
In November’s Meatpaper: Issue 19, you’ll find this essay, a short piece inspired by a trip I took with my dear friend, Linda.
Early Californians lusted after gold, traveling up and over the chiseled granite Sierra Nevada on their way to the Gold Country. Two summers ago, a dear friend and I had high prospects of climbing Mt. Whitney, repeating the trek we had previously taken over thirty years ago. We hove up and over the majestic peak before returning to our encampment at the base of the mountain. Slithering through the camp was a stream teaming with California’s native freshwater fish, the Golden Trout. After a few brief, but apparently effective demonstrations of fly-fishing technique by the camp cook, I flicked my fly rod over the water’s surface and returned to camp beaming with three glistening Golden Trout. Nothing – really nothing – delivers a rush like that of freshly caught Golden Trout cooked over a campfire. Those early California gold seekers held their pans in anticipation of a few flakes of gold; I held my pan satiated with my three nuggets of golden treasures.
Over fifteen years ago, Rob Savenor, owner of Boston’s Beacon Hill grocery store, sat with me on his loading dock to discuss how much he’d pay me for my leg of lamb. I had traveled to Boston from my farm in Maine with a cooler full of “heritage” meat. “Heritage” is a term used by foodies, even then, to describe meat from a few remaining breeds raised by farmers centuries ago. Much like heirloom seeds, these animals are no longer commercially viable and so are left to conservationists, such as myself and a few others, who feel that they have both historic and culinary value. During the 1990s, convincing Ron of these values had taken persistence and he cautiously agreed to sell the meat to his customers.
The scene on the loading dock occurred more frequently over the following months, and soon our heritage lamb and then pork appeared on menus of high-end restaurants in Boston and New York City. Chefs began to see the value of pasture-raised, artisanal, and niche products could enhance their menus, endearing their restaurants to customers who began to ask about the origins of their food. Now, chefs everywhere tout their greenness, sustainable practices, and local provenance, not to mention their good fortune in acquiring a few heritage meats for their menus.
Public awareness, the food industry, investors, and the government are clambering for a seat at the table in the food space. Food is no longer of interest just to foodies and molecular gastronomists such as Nathan Myhrvold. McDonald’s wants to be in the game along with food activists and entrepreneurs. Fast food is no longer content to be fast; it now want to be casual, local, green, and able to tap into their alert and voracious market. This means a food bubble is about to arrive.
A sure sign is the interest expressed by first-rate venture capitalists who have begun to invest their funds in food startups. Another is the success of crowd-funded ventures for food products, circumventing the traditional round of angel investing. After years of Slow Food, Farm, Inc., and the unabashed meteoric growth of Whole Foods, the flow of funds to food startups is about to begin.
So what does this mean for our food and for investors? Speculative bubbles are tools for the innovator. Capital comes out of the woodwork, hoping to cash in, and eventually out. The challenge then becomes one of mitigating loses.
Bubbles in other industries show us that when the bubble fizzles, the food industry will have been benefitted by the competition among the thousands of entrepreneurs and ideas that will flood the market. And yes, investors could brace themselves for the seductive quality of food ventures. New restaurants and the possibility of ending hunger and of eliminating obesity are compelling arguments for investing in a new enterprise.
The bubble may be an opportunity to move past the political and cultural arguments around food that tend to sidetrack reason and sabotage efforts to innovate. With an infusion of capital and a pinch of social investing, our food system may benefit from innovation that can create scalable solutions while offering a range of options, including big and small farms, local and global providers, and a pragmatic utilization of technology. Let’s get ready for the bubble.
Dr. Robyn Metcalfe, University of Texas at Austin, Director of The Food Lab, Food Historian, and Research Fellow, Center for Sustainable Development, School of Architecture.
Eating out of the box, in the box, and from the box is a culinary activity that is drawing new and fortuitous attention. Eating OUT of the box is the challenge issued by food nutritionists and foodies who want consumers to resist the temptation to buy processed, ready-made meals that are sold in microwaveable boxes. Eating IN the box is an activity that takes place in large, industrial buildings owned by such behemoths as Wal-Mart and Costco. Those “big box” enterprises are often castigated for their inhumane, boxy shape and are eschewed by those who resist bigness, not to mention boxes. And last, eating FROM the box means eating items from boxes that arrive on your doorstep through the postal service or other carriers. These boxes are fast becoming the new metaphor of our food system.
The relationship between food and boxes seems shallow; but look deeper and you observe that boxes are the repositories of education, food retailing, and healthier diets. How so? For decades, the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement offered its subscribers monthly deliveries chock full of a farm’s monthly produce. You bought a share in a farm’s produce, you received a box of a farmer-curated harvest. Now, subscriptions to monthly deliveries of food are taking new forms as entrepreneurs see a potential for the box.
Urban farm-to-table services are delivering curated food to city dwellers by subscription. Companies like Austin’s Greenling, Farm-to-Table, and Farmhouse Delivery gather up produce from local farmers and bring them to your door in a recyclable box. Web-based services offer monthly-curated boxes that include such artisanal foods as handmade chocolates and herb-encrusted roasted almonds. Consumers learn about new products and local businesses become part of a local brand as they get a chance to provide samples to their target audiences. Examples of these companies include Joyus, Zingerman’s, Tasterie, Love with Food, and New York Mouth. These new companies bring connoisseurship to the CSA box. The curated food box, valued by its association with sophisticated taste, adds value for customers by leveraging the culinary intelligence of an individual who hand-picks the box contents. Called “discovery commerce”, the curated box is the new food app.
This week Wal-Mart made a appearance in this emerging market with its own curated food box. The creation of Wal-Mart Labs, where the company innovates and creates new products and services, the food box moves Wal-Mart into a market usually filled with companies that align themselves with the organic and Slow Food movements. The new box evoked both surprise and consternation by food activists who see Wal-Mart as the symbol of what’s wrong with our food system. But perhaps this is a sign that improvements are coming from the top down, not only from grassroots communities.
Wal-Mart’s curated box is available through a new service called The Goodie Company. If the new venture does well, Wal-Mart could expose their customers to new and healthier ways of eating at lower prices.
Could this be a win for consumers? While Wal-Mart is off-limits for most foodies, for either quality, political, or ethical reasons, shouldn’t we celebrate innovation and opportunities for consumers to buy better food from local businesses at lower prices? Wal-Mart may be bringing scale to the concept of small and precious. Perhaps this is a model worth watching, either from the box, in the box, or by buying the box.
P.S. I forgot to mention a new Austin box, Coterie Market…..not up and running yet, though.
I take pity on anyone who asks me to join them for a meal. It’s nearly impossible for me to suspend my intense occupation with food and sometimes, which must at times be almost unbearable, if not embarrassing. My hosts at this weekend’s football game put up with my challenge to find healthy food at the stadium. At University of Texas at Austin Darrel K. Royal Stadium that weekend, the Longhorn football team emerged the victor over its rival, Iowa State University. But the fans lost when it came to eating a healthy meal.
If, while spending four hours watching the game, you become hungry, you are provided traditional fare for game day: popcorn, corn dogs, hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, and French fries. But what if you’ve begun to care more about your diet, spend time at farmers markets, and hear how your food choices will either extend your life or lead to obesity or diabetes?
You prowl the stadium for a few green leaves that could resemble a salad or at least one yogurt or fruit smoothie stand. Alas, you will search the multiple floors of the stadium with little to show for your good intentions. Not only are hot dogs, pizza, and BBQ on fluffy white rolls ubiquitous, they are expensive. The standard price for a hot dog is $4 and a 44-ounce drink is $6. Forty-four ounce drink? What would Bloomburg do?
We decided to see if we could turn up some green lettuce or a tofu wrap. And we succeeded. One food truck, hunkered down on the visitor side of the stadium offered tofu tacos. And in the food court outside the end zone, Starbucks, a sushi stand, a local hamburger purveyor, and Quiznos offered their “game day menu,” which included at least a variation of their signature dishes The lines were shorter at these stands and the servers were delighted when even a short queue appeared. A lonely ice cream stand stood in the corner of the end zone area, offering scoops of locally made ice cream with flavors such as Madagascar vanilla, double dark chocolate and, oops, cotton candy.
Feeling sorry for the sushi guys, I purchased two California rolls for my husband and I (Total=$20). As I carried the sushi through the stadium on my way back to our seats, three members of the stadium security staff stopped to ask where I got the sushi, assuming that I must have brought in from outside the stadium. (The stadium regulations state that no food or beverages purchased outside can be brought into the stadium.) The security guards quickly remembered the sushi vendor but after the third encounter, it was apparent that the sushi had become a security risk.
No wonder. A cursory look at what others were eating made it clear that French fries were the standard fare. The good news is that the stadium food managers made an effort to provide a few healthy options; the not so good news is that the spectators that day really want the dogs, burgers, and fries. So let’s not say that the fans lose when it comes to food options as at Darrell K. Royal Stadium; lets just say that they scored three, representing at least the sushi guys, Quiznos, and a hidden cooler behind one pretzel vendor stand that had some lonely whole wheat bread sandwiches. And not to pile on, but the only ones getting any exercise that day, were the guys on the field.
