Issue No.13 Available Now

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The best of the coasts converge on Enid's this coming Wednesday to launch and celebrate two great lights in independent food publishing. Join the people of Diner, Marlow & Sons, Daughters, Roman's and Diner Journal, and those of Meatpaper, Chez Panisse, OPEN Restaurant, Bar Tartine, Scribe Winery, and Beretta for a night to remember.


EAST MEATS WEST : Social
A launch party for Meatpaper and Diner Journal
Specialty cocktails
Beer & wine
Charcuterie and prepared dishes from west and east
Roasted New York goat
And of course, more meat.

FOOD AND DRINK FROM:
Marlow and Daughters
Nico Monday
Taylor Boetticher / Fatted Calf
Ryan Farr / 4505 Meats
Morgan Maki / Bi-Rite Market
Scribe Winery
St. George Spirits
Bols Genever
21st Amendment Brewery
Hudson Valley Whiskey
... and more

WHERE
Enid's
560 Manhattan Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11222

WHEN
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
8pm - 11pm

TICKETS
$50
Pre-purchase tickets at http://eastmeatswestsocial.eventbrite.com/

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On the New York Times

The Carnivore's Dilemma
by Nicolette Hahn Niman
published: October 30, 2009


IS eating a hamburger the global warming equivalent of driving a Hummer? This week an article in The Times of London carried a headline that blared: "Give Up Meat to Save the Planet." Former Vice President Al Gore, who has made climate change his signature issue, has even been assailed for omnivorous eating by animal rights activists.

It's true that food production is an important contributor to climate change. And the claim that meat (especially beef) is closely linked to global warming has received some credible backing, including by the United Nations and University of Chicago. Both institutions have issued reports that have been widely summarized as condemning meat-eating.

But that's an overly simplistic conclusion to draw from the research. To a rancher like me, who raises cattle, goats and turkeys the traditional way (on grass), the studies show only that the prevailing methods of producing meat — that is, crowding animals together in factory farms, storing their waste in giant lagoons and cutting down forests to grow crops to feed them — cause substantial greenhouse gases. It could be, in fact, that a conscientious meat eater may have a more environmentally friendly diet than your average vegetarian.

So what is the real story of meat's connection to global warming? Answering the question requires examining the individual greenhouse gases involved: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides.

Carbon dioxide makes up the majority of agriculture-related greenhouse emissions. In American farming, most carbon dioxide emissions come from fuel burned to operate vehicles and equipment. World agricultural carbon emissions, on the other hand, result primarily from the clearing of woods for crop growing and livestock grazing. During the 1990s, tropical deforestation in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Sudan and other developing countries caused 15 percent to 35 percent of annual global fossil fuel emissions.

Much Brazilian deforestation is connected to soybean cultivation. As much as 70 percent of areas newly cleared for agriculture in Mato Grosso State in Brazil is being used to grow soybeans. Over half of Brazil's soy harvest is controlled by a handful of international agribusiness companies, which ship it all over the world for animal feed and food products, causing emissions in the process.

Meat and dairy eaters need not be part of this. Many smaller, traditional farms and ranches in the United States have scant connection to carbon dioxide emissions because they keep their animals outdoors on pasture and make little use of machinery. Moreover, those farmers generally use less soy than industrial operations do, and those who do often grow their own, so there are no emissions from long-distance transport and zero chance their farms contributed to deforestation in the developing world.

In contrast to traditional farms, industrial livestock and poultry facilities keep animals in buildings with mechanized systems for feeding, lighting, sewage flushing, ventilation, heating and cooling, all of which generate emissions. These factory farms are also soy guzzlers and acquire much of their feed overseas. You can reduce your contribution to carbon dioxide emissions by avoiding industrially produced meat and dairy products.

Unfortunately for vegetarians who rely on it for protein, avoiding soy from deforested croplands may be more difficult: as the Organic Consumers Association notes, Brazilian soy is common (and unlabeled) in tofu and soymilk sold in American supermarkets.

Methane is agriculture's second-largest greenhouse gas. Wetland rice fields alone account for as much 29 percent of the world's human-generated methane. In animal farming, much of the methane comes from lagoons of liquefied manure at industrial facilities, which are as nauseating as they sound.

This isn't a problem at traditional farms. "Before the 1970s, methane emissions from manure were minimal because the majority of livestock farms in the U.S. were small operations where animals deposited manure in pastures and corrals," the Environmental Protection Agency says. The E.P.A. found that with the rapid rise of factory farms, liquefied manure systems became the norm and methane emissions skyrocketed. You can reduce your methane emissions by seeking out meat from animals raised outdoors on traditional farms.

CRITICS of meat-eating often point out that cattle are prime culprits in methane production. Fortunately, the cause of these methane emissions is understood, and their production can be reduced.

Much of the problem arises when livestock eat poor quality forages, throwing their digestive systems out of balance. Livestock nutrition experts have demonstrated that by making minor improvements in animal diets (like providing nutrient-laden salt licks) they can cut enteric methane by half. Other practices, like adding certain proteins to ruminant diets, can reduce methane production per unit of milk or meat by a factor of six, according to research at Australia's University of New England. Enteric methane emissions can also be substantially reduced when cattle are regularly rotated onto fresh pastures, researchers at University of Louisiana have confirmed.

Finally, livestock farming plays a role in nitrous oxide emissions, which make up around 5 percent of this country's total greenhouse gases. More than three-quarters of farming's nitrous oxide emissions result from manmade fertilizers. Thus, you can reduce nitrous oxide emissions by buying meat and dairy products from animals that were not fed fertilized crops — in other words, from animals raised on grass or raised organically.

In contrast to factory farming, well-managed, non-industrialized animal farming minimizes greenhouse gases and can even benefit the environment. For example, properly timed cattle grazing can increase vegetation by as much as 45 percent, North Dakota State University researchers have found. And grazing by large herbivores (including cattle) is essential for well-functioning prairie ecosystems, research at Kansas State University has determined.

Additionally, several recent studies show that pasture and grassland areas used for livestock reduce global warming by acting as carbon sinks. Converting croplands to pasture, which reduces erosion, effectively sequesters significant amounts of carbon. One analysis published in the journal Global Change Biology showed a 19 percent increase in soil carbon after land changed from cropland to pasture. What's more, animal grazing reduces the need for the fertilizers and fuel used by farm machinery in crop cultivation, things that aggravate climate change.

Livestock grazing has other noteworthy environmental benefits as well. Compared to cropland, perennial pastures used for grazing can decrease soil erosion by 80 percent and markedly improve water quality, Minnesota's Land Stewardship Project research has found. Even the United Nations report acknowledges, "There is growing evidence that both cattle ranching and pastoralism can have positive impacts on biodiversity."

As the contrast between the environmental impact of traditional farming and industrial farming shows, efforts to minimize greenhouse gases need to be much more sophisticated than just making blanket condemnations of certain foods. Farming methods vary tremendously, leading to widely variable global warming contributions for every food we eat. Recent research in Sweden shows that, depending on how and where a food is produced, its carbon dioxide emissions vary by a factor of 10.

And it should also be noted that farmers bear only a portion of the blame for greenhouse gas emissions in the food system. Only about one-fifth of the food system's energy use is farm-related, according to University of Wisconsin research. And the Soil Association in Britain estimates that only half of food's total greenhouse impact has any connection to farms. The rest comes from processing, transportation, storage, retailing and food preparation. The seemingly innocent potato chip, for instance, turns out to be a dreadfully climate-hostile food. Foods that are minimally processed, in season and locally grown, like those available at farmers' markets and backyard gardens, are generally the most climate-friendly.

Rampant waste at the processing, retail and household stages compounds the problem. About half of the food produced in the United States is thrown away, according to University of Arizona research. Thus, a consumer could measurably reduce personal global warming impact simply by more judicious grocery purchasing and use.

None of us, whether we are vegan or omnivore, can entirely avoid foods that play a role in global warming. Singling out meat is misleading and unhelpful, especially since few people are likely to entirely abandon animal-based foods. Mr. Gore, for one, apparently has no intention of going vegan. The 90 percent of Americans who eat meat and dairy are likely to respond the same way.

Still, there are numerous reasonable ways to reduce our individual contributions to climate change through our food choices. Because it takes more resources to produce meat and dairy than, say, fresh locally grown carrots, it's sensible to cut back on consumption of animal-based foods. More important, all eaters can lower their global warming contribution by following these simple rules: avoid processed foods and those from industrialized farms; reduce food waste; and buy local and in season.

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On the New York Times

The Carnivore's Dilemma
by Nicolette Hahn Niman
published: October 30, 2009


IS eating a hamburger the global warming equivalent of driving a Hummer? This week an article in The Times of London carried a headline that blared: "Give Up Meat to Save the Planet." Former Vice President Al Gore, who has made climate change his signature issue, has even been assailed for omnivorous eating by animal rights activists.

It's true that food production is an important contributor to climate change. And the claim that meat (especially beef) is closely linked to global warming has received some credible backing, including by the United Nations and University of Chicago. Both institutions have issued reports that have been widely summarized as condemning meat-eating.

But that's an overly simplistic conclusion to draw from the research. To a rancher like me, who raises cattle, goats and turkeys the traditional way (on grass), the studies show only that the prevailing methods of producing meat — that is, crowding animals together in factory farms, storing their waste in giant lagoons and cutting down forests to grow crops to feed them — cause substantial greenhouse gases. It could be, in fact, that a conscientious meat eater may have a more environmentally friendly diet than your average vegetarian.

So what is the real story of meat's connection to global warming? Answering the question requires examining the individual greenhouse gases involved: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides.

Carbon dioxide makes up the majority of agriculture-related greenhouse emissions. In American farming, most carbon dioxide emissions come from fuel burned to operate vehicles and equipment. World agricultural carbon emissions, on the other hand, result primarily from the clearing of woods for crop growing and livestock grazing. During the 1990s, tropical deforestation in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Sudan and other developing countries caused 15 percent to 35 percent of annual global fossil fuel emissions.

Much Brazilian deforestation is connected to soybean cultivation. As much as 70 percent of areas newly cleared for agriculture in Mato Grosso State in Brazil is being used to grow soybeans. Over half of Brazil's soy harvest is controlled by a handful of international agribusiness companies, which ship it all over the world for animal feed and food products, causing emissions in the process.

Meat and dairy eaters need not be part of this. Many smaller, traditional farms and ranches in the United States have scant connection to carbon dioxide emissions because they keep their animals outdoors on pasture and make little use of machinery. Moreover, those farmers generally use less soy than industrial operations do, and those who do often grow their own, so there are no emissions from long-distance transport and zero chance their farms contributed to deforestation in the developing world.

In contrast to traditional farms, industrial livestock and poultry facilities keep animals in buildings with mechanized systems for feeding, lighting, sewage flushing, ventilation, heating and cooling, all of which generate emissions. These factory farms are also soy guzzlers and acquire much of their feed overseas. You can reduce your contribution to carbon dioxide emissions by avoiding industrially produced meat and dairy products.

Unfortunately for vegetarians who rely on it for protein, avoiding soy from deforested croplands may be more difficult: as the Organic Consumers Association notes, Brazilian soy is common (and unlabeled) in tofu and soymilk sold in American supermarkets.

Methane is agriculture's second-largest greenhouse gas. Wetland rice fields alone account for as much 29 percent of the world's human-generated methane. In animal farming, much of the methane comes from lagoons of liquefied manure at industrial facilities, which are as nauseating as they sound.

This isn't a problem at traditional farms. "Before the 1970s, methane emissions from manure were minimal because the majority of livestock farms in the U.S. were small operations where animals deposited manure in pastures and corrals," the Environmental Protection Agency says. The E.P.A. found that with the rapid rise of factory farms, liquefied manure systems became the norm and methane emissions skyrocketed. You can reduce your methane emissions by seeking out meat from animals raised outdoors on traditional farms.

CRITICS of meat-eating often point out that cattle are prime culprits in methane production. Fortunately, the cause of these methane emissions is understood, and their production can be reduced.

Much of the problem arises when livestock eat poor quality forages, throwing their digestive systems out of balance. Livestock nutrition experts have demonstrated that by making minor improvements in animal diets (like providing nutrient-laden salt licks) they can cut enteric methane by half. Other practices, like adding certain proteins to ruminant diets, can reduce methane production per unit of milk or meat by a factor of six, according to research at Australia's University of New England. Enteric methane emissions can also be substantially reduced when cattle are regularly rotated onto fresh pastures, researchers at University of Louisiana have confirmed.

Finally, livestock farming plays a role in nitrous oxide emissions, which make up around 5 percent of this country's total greenhouse gases. More than three-quarters of farming's nitrous oxide emissions result from manmade fertilizers. Thus, you can reduce nitrous oxide emissions by buying meat and dairy products from animals that were not fed fertilized crops — in other words, from animals raised on grass or raised organically.

In contrast to factory farming, well-managed, non-industrialized animal farming minimizes greenhouse gases and can even benefit the environment. For example, properly timed cattle grazing can increase vegetation by as much as 45 percent, North Dakota State University researchers have found. And grazing by large herbivores (including cattle) is essential for well-functioning prairie ecosystems, research at Kansas State University has determined.

Additionally, several recent studies show that pasture and grassland areas used for livestock reduce global warming by acting as carbon sinks. Converting croplands to pasture, which reduces erosion, effectively sequesters significant amounts of carbon. One analysis published in the journal Global Change Biology showed a 19 percent increase in soil carbon after land changed from cropland to pasture. What's more, animal grazing reduces the need for the fertilizers and fuel used by farm machinery in crop cultivation, things that aggravate climate change.

Livestock grazing has other noteworthy environmental benefits as well. Compared to cropland, perennial pastures used for grazing can decrease soil erosion by 80 percent and markedly improve water quality, Minnesota's Land Stewardship Project research has found. Even the United Nations report acknowledges, "There is growing evidence that both cattle ranching and pastoralism can have positive impacts on biodiversity."

As the contrast between the environmental impact of traditional farming and industrial farming shows, efforts to minimize greenhouse gases need to be much more sophisticated than just making blanket condemnations of certain foods. Farming methods vary tremendously, leading to widely variable global warming contributions for every food we eat. Recent research in Sweden shows that, depending on how and where a food is produced, its carbon dioxide emissions vary by a factor of 10.

And it should also be noted that farmers bear only a portion of the blame for greenhouse gas emissions in the food system. Only about one-fifth of the food system's energy use is farm-related, according to University of Wisconsin research. And the Soil Association in Britain estimates that only half of food's total greenhouse impact has any connection to farms. The rest comes from processing, transportation, storage, retailing and food preparation. The seemingly innocent potato chip, for instance, turns out to be a dreadfully climate-hostile food. Foods that are minimally processed, in season and locally grown, like those available at farmers' markets and backyard gardens, are generally the most climate-friendly.

Rampant waste at the processing, retail and household stages compounds the problem. About half of the food produced in the United States is thrown away, according to University of Arizona research. Thus, a consumer could measurably reduce personal global warming impact simply by more judicious grocery purchasing and use.

None of us, whether we are vegan or omnivore, can entirely avoid foods that play a role in global warming. Singling out meat is misleading and unhelpful, especially since few people are likely to entirely abandon animal-based foods. Mr. Gore, for one, apparently has no intention of going vegan. The 90 percent of Americans who eat meat and dairy are likely to respond the same way.

Still, there are numerous reasonable ways to reduce our individual contributions to climate change through our food choices. Because it takes more resources to produce meat and dairy than, say, fresh locally grown carrots, it's sensible to cut back on consumption of animal-based foods. More important, all eaters can lower their global warming contribution by following these simple rules: avoid processed foods and those from industrialized farms; reduce food waste; and buy local and in season.

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Part Two: Dear Anna,

I told dad to answer his email I hope he did. He has a new kid he's tutoring and has had to teach himself algebra all over again. I have been thinking about your request for food stories and remembered the one my mother always told about how she outwitted me.

I would never eat cream cheese because I didn't like the name. So she tricked me into eating a cheesecake she used to make by telling me the filling was made of vanilla pudding. I remember the time when you were 3 or 4 when we had to remove you screaming and hitting from Shop and Save because we wouldn't buy you Captain Crunch.Your grandparents had no doubt been feeding it to you by the boxful.

My mother was famous for being a good cook and took a lot of pride in it, but she was equally as interested in the impression she made and how things looked, as she was in what tasted good. The thought of whether it was good for you really wasn't a concern in those days. We believed in wonder bread.

It was my father who actually taught me about good food even though I never saw him cook anything. When I was little the breadman and the milkman would come to the back door every week with a delivery. We bought something called bond bread and the delivery man was a chubby guy with curly black hair who always had a kind word for me. I loved that bread for years, probably because of the delivery man.

I remember my father, when I was a teenager, taking a slice of it and rolling it in his palms until it turned back into a ball of dough, (rather quickly actually). He had to do it over and over on several occasions until I saw the light. That's when I started to eat Pepperidge Farm or Arnold, or good bread from bakeries. He did the same to break me of the habit of watching soap operas after school as my friends did in Jr. High. He would sit and watch it with me and make such wicked fun of it that I couldn't continue doing it.

He taught me about good cheese too and frequently brought good ones home from his travels. He was a traveling salesman. Gouda or gruyere or emmanthatler. And he taught me how much better loose tea brewed was than teabags. I think he learned a lot of this on his travels to Canada. So it's funny while my mother was the famous cook, he was really the gourmet.

Anyway, all this rumination, forgive the pun, made me realize how much food and lies are intertwined. Our parents may be lying to us about what is good or bad for us, though they may mean well. The Tv and ads are always lying to us about what we should eat and why, and worse we are always lying to ourselves about why we should or shouldn't be eating or drinking something. Where does this all start?

I remember when you and Hugh were little and I was just starting being a doctor, reading a study done with toddlers, kids who were too young to have developed too many food prejudices yet. The researchers put out all types of food and let the little ones play and graze all day. They found that the toddlers actually ate a balanced diet when allowed to choose for themselves what and when they wanted to eat with out any prompting.

So how do we fall from grace to greed and compulsion and obsession, to equating everything we put in our mouths with some sort of salvation or damnation? It's too easy to blame our capitalist society for seducing our tastes. You figure it out. You write a book called "Food, Lies and Desire". You'll make a million and support me in my dotage.

Love,
Mom

(for part one please consult the winter Diner Journal)

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Words of the Week

"This marks a new dawn for the curvy cucumber and the knobbly carrot!" said Mariann Fischer Boel, European commissioner for agriculture. This in response to the European Union lifting it's ban on twenty-six types of edibles born on the farm ugly or sadly misshapen the New York Times reports. However if you are an apple, peach, pair or strawberry watch out. If you don't look your best you will be "allowed onto the market provided they are marked as being substandard or intended for cooking or processing." Not for acting in movies, modeling or running for office.

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Reading Tonight

Please come join me, my mom and our friends at Capricious Space tonight at 7:30 pm. The gallery is located just half a block down at 103 Broadway Ave. Stuff will be read. Books and fun will be had!

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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Or rather a jalapeno plant. Last week a customer espoused on the ethical paradox we provide each purchaser of an iced beverage. The smoke screen that is the corn cup. It's not plastic! You can COMPOST it! All very well and good. But it does support commodity corn farming.. Never mind how few people probably actually carry around their iced coffee cup until they get home and start a compost pile in the 10 foot by 10 foot apartment. This is one of those environmental issues that I have been contemplating for a while and never come up on top of. Apparently I'm not the only one. Afore mentioned customer voiced these concerns and then upon feeling as though he or she may have over stepped a boundary (or something of that sort, I wasn't there so I can only speculate) returned with a gift. A jalapeno plant in a corn cup. And now the coffee counter has a new peppery friend. It reminded me of the open of the book by Betty Smith this post is titled after:

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.

Granted it is Fall in Brooklyn and we are a borough full of hope but I couldn't help taking this moment to remember our roots.

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Words of the Week: Today In the News

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Banished

Food Words that Cheffy Hates:
Veggie
Mache
Sous vide
Molecular gastronomy
Foodie
Toothsome

Ones that I hate:
Supple
Shmear
Kombucha

Tom:
Crunchy
Piquant: which means tasteful but really as Tom points out has no meaning or purpose.

Kirsten:
Mouth Feel

My New Favorite Word:
Arrabbiata: literally "angry" in Italian; in this case referring to a spicy tomato sauce.

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Harvest Time: Words for the Week

As can be seen, all this chopping and pounding has much to do with health. -Patience Gray

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As It Were

I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but [...] I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it. - Descartes

Some writers write only about love. Some only about boredom, others failure or food. It seemed to me that David Foster Wallace wrote mostly of suffering. This suffering took many shapes, the critique of irony, of media, of gastronomy. I remember the first time I ever read anything Wallace penned I was wandering around the creaky old house in Maine trying to abate my insomnia with Budweiser and crackers. My father, an unquenchable reader and closet insomniac, plopped down the New York Times magazine.

"This guy makes tennis interesting," he uttered with rueful enthusiasm. "Read it."

"Carl? Carl!" My mother's scratchy roll call. "Are you coming to bed. Carl!"

And with a sigh my father vanished leaving me alone with tennis and shrill buzz of Maine's pastoral silence.

Much of Wallace's writing is like his life. You get the sense you're waiting for the next foot to fall. Like with every experience we try to have in life, reading one of his articles is in the beginning simple or rather straight shooting. I believe this was a technique he employed to trick a reader into trusting him enough to lead her from goofy male machoism into a maybe bleak treatise on the human condition. An article is never just about tennis, lobsters. And an article is never just about human suffering. Here is an excerpt from an article published in 2006 on Roger Federer:

"Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.

The human beauty we're talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings' reconciliation with the fact of having a body.(1)

(1)There's a great deal that's bad about having a body. If this is not so obviously true that no one needs examples, we can just quickly mention pain, sores, odors, nausea, aging, gravity, sepsis, clumsiness, illness, limits — every last schism between our physical wills and our actual capacities. Can anyone doubt we need help being reconciled? Crave it? It's your body that dies, after all."

Here Wallace volleys the ball, not out of the park but out into the deep dark cosmos, kissing us all goodbye with a perfect spin into that black starless abyss.

Exhibited also in this passage is another favorite technique, the footnote. Wallace often used the footnote to break code with the editor, writer, reader trifecta. Here, in his notes, he tells the story he wants to tell, which may or may not break form with what is best for the article itself. Here he offers a compromise. Here Ruth Reichl is an article on the Maine Lobster Fest, and here in the footnotes is the more dynamic story I would tell were I not writing for you. And inevitably the footnotes are always published because they are the tiny signifiers that we can all relate to; they are not obscure reference points. I find them the most pensive and alive parts of his writing. The notes also create a call and response. They are never clever but simply the fractal sputterings of a brilliant mind. In reading them you start to get a glimpse of how David Foster Wallace's brain works. Or worked, as it were.

There is always anger around suicide. But I for one have never understood it. Wallace, it seems, struggled with depression for over twenty years and I am thankful that he survived that long. My mother explained to me once that she thought some people aren't (at least this time around) made to handle the weight the world wants us to. Some people were hunters, some gather. Some survive and some do not. Some people have stars in their pockets and some carry mountains.

When reading his articles earlier in my life I felt the profound sense that Wallace was speaking to or into the vacuum that is American madness.(1) It seems however he was faced with something much more harrowing, his own.

While Considering the Lobster for Gourmet Wallace forces you to ask does the lobster not suffer only because it cannot say it suffers. It struggles and claws and hangs on to its life as we would. We would not boil alive a cow, or a moose or a dear. The brilliance of this article is he forces you the reader to consider the hand you play in creating suffering, and your own suffering. In a chilling moment close to the end of the article Wallace contemplates the possibility that lobsters experience pain the way patients who experienced frontal lobotomies do.

"These patients evidently do feel physical pain, neurologically speaking, but don't dislike it; it's more that they feel it but don't feel anything about it- the point being that the pain is not distressing or something they want to get away from."

Wallace was seeking electo-convulsive therapy in the year before he died. There is something wild and American in that. And like the lobster how often is it that we can truly speak or even simply express our suffering. Is it American madness or rather sadness or is it my very own? Are we all somehow implicated when someone so fragile and titanically talented succumbs? And so I can't help but feel that here we are again mourning in the kitchen, trying to reconcile an ever-lonely chicken and the yearning of an egg.


(1) The kind of madness that brings me, via fiber optic cables and the grand delusions of contemporary democracy, a gun toting, bikini wearing Sarah Palin into my everyday consciousness. The kind of madness in which a woman in Alaska is forced to pay for a rape kit when she goes to the hospital after surviving the most violent and ugly of acts. The madness of hurricanes and bankruptcy.

Illustration by Harry Aung

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Book Report: The China Study

The China Study
Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health
by T. Colin Campbell, PhD

You can read all 368 pages of this book (I made it about halfway) or you can just read the introduction - or this book report - to get the thesis and practical application of all the knowledge and data contained within the book.

This thesis is best described in the immortal words of the Robot Boy circa 1995:

"Go Vegetarian, or Go Fuck Yourself!"


In less profane and more articulate terms, this book was written by a Dietitian and former professor at Cornell, MIT and Virginia Tech (shout out to the Applebys) amongst other institutions. Dr. Campbell has spend half his life studying the effects of diet on disease. He first studied on lab rats and later got the unique chance to perform what has been termed "The most comprehensive study on nutrition ever conducted" on humans in China...The China Study.

The result of all his studies, and the results of further studies done by others before and after him which he quotes in the book, is that there is a direct relationship between the consumption of animal proteins and what are termed "diseases of affluence." Diseases of affluence include Heart Disease (the #1 killer in the US for over 100 years,) Cancer (rates exponentially growing in the US since the 70s), Diabetes (much favored by today's health headlines,) Obesity, Osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and others. In other words: the more animal-based food you eat, the more likely you are to be afflicted by these diseases. He has also found a negative relationship between vegetable-based foods and diseases of affluence. So, the more vegetable foods you eat (not as quantity, but as percentage of your diet) the less likely you are to be afflicted by diseases of affluence.

The numbers look like this: if more than about 5% of your total calories consumed are coming from animal proteins, you are running a much higher risk than if you were consuming 5% or lower.

Of course, it must be mentioned that a varied, vegetarian diet is necessary for good health. You can't just go on eating pounds of broccoli every day and nothing else. Throw a kale in there now and then and maybe a radish for good measure. The more colorful your array of vegetables, the more micro-nutrients you will be getting. And the less processed your vegetable foods, the more nutrients you will be getting.

So, about 200+ pages of the book are dedicated to giving evidence of the above thesis. The book is a bit annoying because it is very comprehensive and written in a narrative form. So, it's not just the straight dope, it's peppered with anecdotes and tales of tribulation from a radical thinker who bunked the established theories of his times. The remaining 100+ pages are about why mainstream media hasn't picked up on his findings. I didn't bother to read this part as I am sure I know the answer: agribusiness, lobbyists and government sponsored research grants. Need we say more?

Conclusion:
This is a great book for a non believer. Someone who doesn't see that a breakfast of ham and eggs, turkey sammy for lunch and a steak dinner are going to lead to some health problems, will find eye-opening evidence in this book. But those of us who eat animal products (this includes milk and cheese) in some moderation probably don't need to actually read the book. We can just take his word for it and use this confirmation of what we already know or suspect as a little prod to go a bit further in reducing animal foods in our diets. That's what I think anyway.

By Handy Instrumental

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A Bit of Obit and a Lot of Lady

I've been reading obituaries and have found their structure unduly formulaic. Life and language is mostly formless so why is it that we force our posthumous celebration of it into tiny plotted out packages stacked together in the columns of the New York Times. Is the most important thing about a life it's obvious plot lines, she had three children, she received a Ph.D. and published a book? In reading about Karen Hess, a food historian who died on May 15th of this year I am compelled by her spirit and peculiar projects.

First and foremost, I have to acknowledge that Hess herself might see this blog post as a disservice considering I never met her myself. Hess was an adamant believer in primary sources. She believed or rather knew that history was made in the moments in between books, in between victories and defeats, in between meals. She also spent a good part of her career updating or interpreting old cookbooks such as "Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery." I admire the intention to not lose antiquated texts but instead to adapt them to us as we adapt to the world around us. So here I wish to celebrate Hess with some of her words in some less stagnant structure. I may have never met Karen Hess but her words provide me a little insight into the beacon that she was. How immediate her message still is. Can most Americans be wrong? Need we say more?

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Living on the Edge... with a Goat

A few months ago, I was reading Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods. This is the bible of fermented cuisine by Sandor Ellix Katz. Mixed into the recipes for mouthwatering ciders, tempehs, yogurts and vinegars are stories about life in the Short Mountain Sanctuary—"a queer intentional community in the wooded hills of Tennessee".

The first thing I wondered while reading this book is, why don't I live in a queer intentional community in the wooded hills of Tennessee? The second thing I wondered was whether I had the power to create something immortal. My brief quest for a life beyond death was inspired by the chapter on bread. I read there that, "with a little attention, your sourdough starter can live forever."

Of course, I tried. But my own sourdough starter did not live forever. Most distressingly, it kind of…exploded.

Sandor Ellix Katz had never mentioned that combustion was a potential property of the sourdough. I was stunned. My kitchen table was ruined. I thought briefly of a career in international dough terrorism.

Then I remembered the warnings. About how to ferment "live-culture" foods is to cultivate the volatile hyperactivity of certain microorganisms. To whip them into a frenzy. To drive them bananas. And at this point—who knows? You might get a sauerkraut. You might get a cheese. You might—if you're me—get a bomb.

Based on the stories that Sandor Ellix Katz tells, Short Mountain Sanctuary seems like a very friendly place. I imagine it must be. Because where else would permit these crazy experiments? The bread bomb was probably due to my own incompetence at work, but Sandor Ellix Katz takes it way further than a jar of bread dough.

He tells one story in Wild Fermentation about how he once pickled a goat in the community kitchen.

For two weeks, "it bubbled and smelled good."

Then he roasted it. "As it cooked, an overwhelming odor enveloped the kitchen… There was some swooning and near fainting… Perhaps a half dozen of us tried the meat… My fellow communard Mish absolutely loved it. He hovered over the pan for a long time picking at the meat, praising its strong cheesy aroma, and gloating over the rarefied "acquired taste" that only he and a few others could fully appreciate."

I am appalled and yet fascinated. I certainly will not attempt a goat until I have mastered the immortal sourdough. In the meantime, my friend Johanna suggested that someone (else) ought to brew their way through the whole of Wild Fermentation. If anyone is up for this, let me know! I will sniff and taste your concoctions, however moldy and otherwise unstable. I will find a happy home for all of the sauerkraut, kombucha, and beers that you produce. If you are feeling frisky, I will even find you a goat.

By Maya Joseph

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Words for the Week

Whoever looks at a beehive should actually say with an exalted frame of mind, "Making this detour by way of the beehive, the entire cosmos can find its way into human beings and help to make them sound in mind and body."
-Rudolph Steiner

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The Scanner broke and I had to think a lot about commas today...

This is what I learned:

"The en dash is slightly longer than the hyphen but not as long as the em dash. (It is, in fact, the width of a typesetter's letter "N," whereas the em dash is the width of the letter "M"—thus their names.) The en dash means, quite simply, "through." We use it most commonly to indicate inclusive dates and numbers: July 9–August 17; pp. 37–59."

And then I learned that there is no en OR em dash on the contemporary keyboard... only a hyphen. Unless, of course, you use the subtraction key.

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I'll Be Honest Here

This is not one summer's reading. It's as though I enjoy unbeatable odds. Or maybe that I know my own limits and aspirations and have come to peace with them. These books I have collected over the years, hauling them on ever sweet smelling vacation or snow laden coastal drive. Mailer, Hemingway, Benjamin, Blake and Melville... One might draw some conclusions... I think I will restrain.

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Summer Swartzy

Who hears fish when they cry? It will not be forgotten by some memory that we were contemporaries.
-Henry David Thoreau

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Mark's European Summer Set:

From the mystics to the mountains... both books tell very singular and somewhat solitary notions... Bicycle and brain!

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Spam Spam Spam Poetry and Spam

I couldn't help trying to find logical patterns in the raging sea that is my morning deluge of internet spam comments. There amongst the 1000 gambling and car insurance blips I banished today I found this little haiku:

For motorola cell phones

bela tarr harmonies artificial eye review
frog eye salad recipe
jack johnson if i had eyes
how long does alcohol stay in your system


ps. One of my first weeks working in the store at Marlow's we got Spammed. Drunk customers left cans of Spam hidden on the shelves. I also should say I am a bit taken with gambling and car insurance as somewhat romantically linked ideas... There seems to be some method in this madness... How long does it...

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Someone I Know Loves This Trashy Vampire Book

This is how the book came about:
I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.

Who could it be?

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More Summer Reading In the Sky

Also known as the only book Andrew has finished this summer. When you have 20,000 bees to take care I suppose it's wise to read up.

I think it is neat how these old extractors look like printing presses. Is there a more modern way of extracting now or have we reverted to old techniques. Bears with our paws in?

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Put A Egg On It

Today at the Rose tasting I thought the day couldn't get better. I was having temporary amnesia. I had forgotten the new air-conditioner in my apartment didn't work and almost fell out the window. That poor bird dog has a vet appointment. That the sun is as hot as fire, and the asphalt torching. But it was noon and I was drinking Rose. Life was great. And it was Pink. Domaine de Montrieux, Mas Jullien, Ciliegiolo.

Then someone handed me something. A manila folder with this egg journal and pin. As I have harped on before I have a hard time reading about food and the biggest culprit is preciousness. Immediately I was attracted to the little green zine. It represented the punk zines of lore, referencing the ripped borders, the content on the front page, the humor and ironic graphics and the paper. Still I worried. I had a sip of the bubbles in front of me. And started to read.

Words I dislike jumped out at me. Munch. Meal. Ravenous. Delicate. But still I read on and... I was compelled. The magazine features a lovely and sincere tale of eating in the rain and a night that ends in a slow dance.

This little number is a gem. It is reverent of its roots, paying subtle homage to the punk and the rock. The photo spread in the center is as sincere as the text and alive with the mess, awkwardness and community that is eating.

I would like to thank Sarah Keough, who is the author and editor, and recommend this tiny book to all. Also R&S Media are the perpetrators of Print Fetish, one of my favorite blogs. Ever.

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Of the Land: Books Andrew has been dabbling in

First Sentences:

My first garden was a place no grown-up ever knew about, even though it was in the backyard of a quarter-acre suburban plot.

One of the peculiarities of the white race's presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it.

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Office readers unstoppable

Tom, Harry and Kirsten (from left to right) continue to keep it real. Maurice, besides winning best sordid typefont, looks like E.M. Forster's dark horse masterpiece. And it's set in a series of boys' schools! Nothing, I mean nothing, could be better. Harry's latest choice, The Hell Screen, is a whodunit full of signs, shadows and scandal in eleventh-century Japan. It's hard to put into words, but this book just feels good when you hold it. I think it's the cover and page weight. And, last but not least, The Sign for Drowning was written by a friend of Kirsten's. Pretty cool! Books that find their inspiration driven by the currents of the sea always have a place on our shelves.
Leah

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A chain of reading! A wild fire!

Kirsten picks this book up off Anna's desk, reads it to her seven-year-old niece, tells Cheffie about it. Cheffie considers reading it, even amid her reading of Second Nature and Walden.

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Sean's Books Day and Night

For daytime, Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen. "Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son. Shadow Country traverses strange landscapes and frontier hinterlands inhabited by Americans of every provenance and color, including the black and Indian inheritors of the archaic racism that, as Watson's wife observed, 'still casts its shadow over the nation.'"

And for the night, Out Stealing Horses by someone Norwegian.

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Harry's Latest Read

But don't get too comfortable-- this dude eats books for breakfast, and he's almost done with this one.

"Seattle sailing instructor by day, rock musician by night, Jay Becker leads a life others only dream about...until he meets his new sailing student. A German beauty named Marlene, she soon sparks trouble beyond Jay's darkest imagining: beyond the lies about her "employer" - a shadowy figure known only as Albatross...beyond the brutal deaths surfacing in her wake...Soon Becker will be drowning in a sea of stolen U.S. defense secrets and high treason, trapped by a cold savagery that will test -or break- his last mortal fiber..."

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A book made for the subway

Last year I was given this book as a birthday gift. Finally, on my way to work each day, I've begun it.

"If, sooner or later, we all face the challenge or pleasure of eating alone, then Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant provides the perfect set of instructions. In this unique collection, twenty-six writers and foodies invite readers into their kitchens to reflect on the secret meals they make for themselves when no one else is looking: the indulgent truffled egg sandwich, the comforting bowl of black beans, the bracing anchovy fillet on buttered toast."

Imagine my surprise learning that Diner gets a nod in one of the stories compiled in this book! Jami Attenberg writes, "There's a long bar in the center of the restaurant lined with comfortable leather stools perfect for the solo diner, although I sometimes feel I'm sitting too close to the person next to me." There's even a recipe for Caroline Fidanza's Roasted Beet and Cucumber Salad with Ricotta Salata.

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Why are old book covers so cool?

"A great crack opens in a volcano under the sea. There is an explosion of hot lava and burning ashes. The lava piles higher and higher.

Slowly, an island rises up in the sea.

There is no life on this new island. Yet, years later it is green with growing plants and teeming with living creatures.

Here is a wonderful story of the birth of an island. It is also the story of how plant and animal life come to any island in the world."

This book cost 35 cents when it came out.

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The Old Diner and the Sea

I'm totally stealing this book off Anna's desk. The back cover reads: "We came from the sea, and we would be nothing without it. Without the sea, no clouds, no rain, no rivers, no life. Seven-tenths of the world's surface is sea. We play at its edges, we put down nets and feed from it, we send cargo across its ruffling surface. And yet it remains the wildest, strangest and least-known part of the planet: a puzzle. Science knows more about the surface of the moon than it does about the ocean floor (somewhere between ten million and a hundred million unclassified species live there; science has still to find out). We do not quite know how the sea works. Is it rising? Warming? How much pollution can it take? How many of its island states will disappear?

The sea is the natural arena for adventure, mystery and catastrophe (the Odyssey, Moby Dick, the Titanic, El Nino). But air has replaced water as the transporting element of the twentieth century, and the sea has been retreating in the imaginations of the West.

For too long we have turned our backs to it. This issue of Granta looks outward again."

Leah

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A Pearl of a Book

Oysters and all the written word penned in their honor continue to fascinate us.

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Summer reading

As the office hits the books and the beach this week, we'll keep you up to date on the reading list. First up:

A cookbook and a catalog of marine life, this compendium puts geography at the center of the plate.

And it has gnarly drawings of shellfish.

(Photo credit: Waves from Tarlow Family Pictures)

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The "Buzz" About the Office

Today our top articles included Royal drinking and driving. A very wealthy dog named Trouble and some cosmic lotto numbers from Kirsten: 41, 51, 61, 48 and 17.

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Words of the week:

The question that must be addressed, therefore, is not how to care for the planet, but how to care for each of the planet's millions of human and natural neighborhoods, each of its millions of small pieces and parcels of land, each one of which is in some precious way different from all the others. Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence.

—Wendell Berry, "Word and Flesh" in What Are People For? (1990), p. 200.

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This week in the news: Mark at the Market!

Sunday was a wild success on the island and in the borough. While most of my peers were selling out of ham and pickle sandwiches and helping the lovely Robert LaValva promote the New Amsterdam Market, Grant and I kept it really real with many plastic cups of Sweet Action at the UnFancy Food Show. I would like to thank Sasha Davies, Tom Mylan and Robert for again creating a thoughtful and fun way to raise awareness about food, how we consume it and who makes it. Here is an endlessly cute interview with the causal duo on gothamist and a impressive photo essay of the seaport market on eater.

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Today In The News

On my way to work today I bought the Daily News? For its front page as pictured here. Sifting its foully ink drenched pages I began to question my decision. Obviously a hilarious, effective, and important headline to anyone living in a fast food city such as New York, as well as directly pertinent to the industry and political platform (local food, know your farmer, seasonal etc.)we often perch on. I still felt a tiny wave of discomfort or unease. And I realized it had nothing to do with the proximity my brain waves were to the ultra-saturated gossip page. I started this morning, moving slowly through the hell wave that is our climate today, wondering about how I ingest information.

In my inbox when I sat down this morning was an article on South Korea's Prime Minister and Cabinet resigning in hopes to quell riots over US Beef being allowed to be imported after a 5 year stay due to fear of Mad Cow disease. The issues here run deeper, wallowing in what seems to add up to a deep rooted mistrust of the three-month old presidency of Lee Myung BakThis. The article was from the Times Online listed under the category of World News. Fair enough. Again an article aligned in some way with my concerns with the world, to make a possibly unfairly sweeping statement.

So I recognize a thread here. One from the World News section of the Times Online to the front page of the Daily News. For more investigation I moved my attention to the New York Times Online today. Here I found an even more complex system of shoots and ladders.

In the Nation Section (and I'm aware as I write this that the New York Times Online is tricky, moving an article from one section to another it might pertain to, creating a Rubik's Cube of qualified information) an article on how the aforementioned tomato crisis will most likely pull in an extra 275 million in next years budget for the failing FDA. In Well, a health blog, Tara Parker-Pope discusses the dangers of lawnmowers, without ever mentioning the environmental ramifications of a perfectly manicured and pedestrian lawn. In the BUSINESS section is an article on farmers (mostly of corn and soy etc.) expecting a harrowing harvest due to water logged land. In the Magazine/Home and Garden section a somewhat tritely in depth article on a hipster in London who "guerrilla gardens" for what seems to boil down to street cred.

Quote:Yet aside from a few tomatoes and some Swiss chard, which he says "tasted dirty," Reynolds has never grown any food. Nor is he too tied to gardening as an ecological act, a way of restoring nature's order; he gladly plants invasive species if they're aesthetically appropriate to the setting.

Also in Home and Garden a timely little piece about growing your own tomatoes and an interesting, if surface, instructional on how to live off the grid in your early retirement home without sacrificing your microwave. Thank you Sun. In Regional you will find out how Economic Development Corporation owes 45million dollars in water bills. In Business and World a mention of Mad Cow and the South Korean unrest, in Technology a treatise on plants and the possibility they recognize their relatives and are nicer to them. Similar to us? I'm not sure. Also a question mark on climate control, class and infectious disease in Dot Earth/Science.

Perhaps the most poignant article today is also found in Science. The dubious future of our friends the horseshoe crab, who like most ocean inhabitants are fighting for survival.

Quote:The loss of the horseshoe crab would be tragic, researchers said, not only because the creatures are fascinating and cute and predate the dinosaurs by 200 million years, but also because so many contemporary life forms depend on them. Their annual spawns draw hundreds of species of migratory birds, predatory fish, reptiles, amphibians and various other alimentary canals eager to brunch on the freshly deposited Limulus eggs. "Horseshoe crab eggs are like filet mignon around here," Dr. Mattei said. "They're a very popular item on the menu."

At first the scattering of environmental issues bugged me. Why do I have to scour the paper or the internet for what I find interesting and vital when someone else can check the golf scores in about .5 seconds. Maybe not a totally apt metaphor but you see what I mean? Then something else happened. Looking at the information I had gathered from each section it started to mean something more. I began to recognize that just as I find our earth tangibly present in most moments of every day, be it the 98 degree weather, lunch or the pop art littering the cover of the Daily News, so does the newspaper or rather the information stream. It might be quite impossible to limit these articles to one section or "streamline" them everyday because they are everywhere, in everything, informing the air around us. Our land, farm or asphalt, is our lens, our sphere, our metaphor as well as our sometimes scarred reality.

Much like the horseshoe crab, what we stand upon depends on us just as much, if not more, than we depend on it.

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You Must Sit Down,

So I did sit and eat.

The scallop, like poetry, is cool. It is interesting how geometry will unconsciously effect our preferences for something. The shape of the scallop shell, for its equality of design, its balance, is what we think of as THE SEA SHELL by the seashore. This is maybe why Sasha was so fascinated and excited by it that she took this lovely picture. Also did you know that scallops can sing? It's true! And also there is a form of poetry called the Scallop that due to its syllabic restrictions appears in the shape of our beloved bivalve.

It is the very quality of form, like the contours of a poem, that makes verse so unique. Several weeks ago I came into the office to find a copy of George Herbert's poem called Love. Apparently this poem, which I stole the closing lines from to name this post, is one of Tom's favorites. Then out of no where, as if to give the air itself structure and purpose Molly started reciting this tiny but satisfying agenda by Shakespeare:

Where the bee sucks

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

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This Week in the Moos

This week the New York Times has reported extensively on how cows are being used and abused. Fighting on A Battlefield the Size of a Milk Label and A Case of Abuse, Heightened made me start thinking about our quiet bovine friends.

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Bug Spray Food

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Fast Food, Ed Behr, and Ponds filled with...

Reading this recent article on the Farm Bill I realized I had heard of these waste lagoons somewhere before. Sure enough, I found mention of them in an excerpt that didn't make it into the Diner Journal's winter interview with Ed Behr. Lagoons alone are creepy places, horror film motels are always situated next to a lagoon, creatures lurk and are spawned from them, Nancy Drew seems to always be catching robbers counting their loot down by the lagoon, but this is above and beyond.

Here we are talking with Ed Behr about his influential article in The Art of Eating on Niman Ranch and Paul Willis in Iowa. This article about raising hogs naturally, without antibiotics and on pasture greatly influenced Steve Ills, CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill, a fast food chain now committed to using humanely raised animals.

DJ: Have you been to Chipotle?

EB: Yes. We ate at one in Denver. There aren't any up here in Vermont. And I just didn't realize how big they are and how much pork they use. It's really significant that they are asking for good pork. It's just mind-boggling. It's honest food without meat that is evil.

DJ: Well you know I guess the question is then about grass fed beef?

EB: On my long "article-to-do" list is one on purely grass fed beef, not finished on grain. It sounds much more complicated then it seems. I like grain-finished beef. But then the big issue has to do with flavor, slaughter, hanging and all that. I worry that Michael Pollan is simplifying the issue. And sometimes it is necessary to simplify a cause to a slogan to get a large amount of populous support. And I don't know if this is the case. Getting cattle out of unhealthy feedlots is different then feeding them grain.

DJ: Well if people don't till the soil to grow the grain and the cows are out to pasture we can sequester carbon and reduce green house gasses dramatically.

EB: I'm hugely in favor of that. That's charming. But the question is and I don't the answer but how much grain do you need? How can you grow grain without massive inputs in oil? Surely it can be done. There is a wonderful organic dairy farmer, there first non-traditional organic dairy farmer in Vermont and the United States. His name is Jack Lazor at Butterworks. He bought valley land just to grow grain he loves to grow grain and he is building his own windmill to create their own power.

DJ: We are visiting Abe Collins tomorrow who is selling carbon credits on the open market and has pasture raised cows on grassland.

EB: Well there are things that can be clearly superior on grass and then it's the quality of the grass and once upon a time it was the Shepard's job but now we do all those things differently. Animals at pasture are just a beautiful thing. When we were in Italy we saw three career Shepards at work, which was really great, and amazing that there are any left.

DJ: So back to Chipotle, you had such a huge political impact.

EB: It's stunning because it's anti-industrial farming. And all of these things bear on Vermont too. Now the state mandates manure ponds which is one of the worst aspects of pig farming. And they are mandated in Vermont and I mean you have to wonder what evil things are going on in there, like when the manure lagoons bust and fishermen get lesions in their arms. But you know if you're out to pasture your manure is not going into a pond.

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Salt Pepper and Booze

Would be hard to live without! Still it would be nice for our food to have a flight path similar to a honey bees.

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