food for thought

"About 75 percent of the cattle in the United States were routinely fed livestock wastes--the rendered remains of dead sheep and dead cattle--until August of 1997. They were also fed millions of dead cats and dead dogs every year, purchased from animal shelters. The FDA banned such practices after evidence from Great Britain suggested that they were responsible for a widespread outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as "mad cow disease." Nevertheless, current FDA regulations allow dead pigs and dead horses to be rendered in cattle feed, along with dead poultry. The regulations not only allow cattle to be fed dead poultry, they allow poultry to be fed dead cattle...[and] cattle blood is still put into the feed given to American cattle... The waste products from poultry plants, including the sawdust and old newspapers used as litter, are also being fed to cattle. A study published in Preventive Medicine notes that in Arkansas alone, about 3 millions pounds of chicken manure were fed to cattle in 1994."

"A nationwide study published by the USDA in 1996 found that 7.5 percent of the ground beef samples taken at processing plants were contaminated with Salmonella, 11.7 percent were contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, 30 percent were contaminated with coccus aureus, and 53.3 percent were contaminated with Clostridium perfringens. All of these pathogens can make people sick; food poisoning caused by Listeria generally requires hospitalization and proves fatal in about one out of every five cases. In the USDA study 78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal material. The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms...behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat."

That's Eric Schlosser discussing industrial cattle farming and processing practices in his book Fast Food Nation. Having just finished Schlosser's exposition, I thought I'd share a couple of thoughts on the last thematic portion of my summer reading: the contemporary industrial agriculture and food systems. After reading Jane Goodall's introductory, yet illuminating Harvest for Hope and seeing the film Food Inc, I wanted to spend some of my free time this summer investigating the subject further. So, to look deeper, I read Raj Patel's Stuffed and Starved, Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and finally, this week, Fast Food Nation. To compliment my reading, I watched some documentaries, which I highly recommend viewing (perhaps before your next meal), including: The Future of Food, The World According to Monsanto, and Flow. (check netflix, blockbuster.com, or amazon.com) Together, these analyses broach a range of important ethical, environmental, political, and health questions that should not be neglected.

I've decided to finish this post with a couple of suggestive statistics proffered by Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser:

"A hallmark of the Western diet is food that is fast, cheap, and easy. Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food; they also spend less than a half hour a day preparing meals and little more than an hour enjoying them."

"About 90 percent of the money that Americans spend on food is used to buy processed food."

"Obesity is now second only to smoking as a cause of mortality in the United States. The annual health care costs in the United States stemming from obesity now approach $240 billion; on top of that Americans spend more than $33 billion on various weight-loss schemes and diet products."

"Is it just a coincidence that as the portion of our income spent on food has declined, spending on health care has soared? In 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent of national income on health care. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on health care has climbed to 16 percent of national income."

With these in mind, Pollan's asseveration that "food no longer seems like the smartest place to economize" demands consideration.

(thanks for the great title suggestion Danie)

visitors, jobs, and school...catch up

Amazingly, among the (literally) hundreds of pictures taken last week, there is not a single one in which we all appear...thus Danie's noticeable absence from a cover picture persists. To see her and a handful of pictures from the family's visit last week, click here. As you will likely be able to infer, we had a blast last week. Together we braved a heat wave, worked on the apartment, walked the city, toured the Met and MOMA, played scrabble (of course), and made a concerted, yet inevitably unsuccessful attempt to work our way through the NYC Zagat restaurant guide. Between Dad, home depot drill in hand, adeptly maneuvering the subway system, Mom and Rach moving onto a first name basis with the the local thrift store staff, and the sheer frequency with which we visited the grocery & liquor stores, by the end of the week, Mom, Dad and Rach may easily have been mistaken for locals. And after that much fun, maybe some day they will be...

Now that they have departed, Danie and I are back to more quotidian activites. Danie's job search has proven successful, as she has just been hired as a server at an upscale French restaurant a couple blocks from our apartment. She starts training Monday. She also just got word that her application for Teach for America made the first cut, and will therefore be having a phone interview in September. I couldn't be more excited or proud of her. Should the phone interview go well, she can look forward to a day-long panel interview later in the Fall. Wow.

As for me, this week has been a bit hectic but very exciting. Tuesday night I had orientation and Wednesday I met for the first time with my advisor. Since then, I've been working on my class schedule quite a bit, which is both exciting and exhausting. The course offerings are remarkably extensive, and the faculty's CVs humbling, to say the absolute least. This makes choosing classes difficult, as I want to take far more classes than I will be allowed. Oh well, there's always next semester.

finishing touches

Since the last posts, Danie and I have put some finishing touches on the apartment. Though they've been relatively small, they contribute greatly to the atmosphere and all-around-homeyness. My favorite: the "Mediterranean Green" bookcase. We picked up a white bookcase on craigslist super cheap (visible in the previous post's picture) and painted it. We also painted a craigslist bookcase "Watermelon Red." Other touches include: hanging shelves, hanging lights, potting plants, getting a rug, getting a floor lamp, and organizational bins. Check out pictures here.

The family flies in tonight and I couldn't be more excited. It'll be nice to do some of the touristy activities that Danie and I have so far neglected, and more than anything else, just spend some time hanging out. For all those interested in visiting, let me discourage you from choosing August. It's hot and it's humid. We're very sweaty.

it's here!

A piece of home has arrived today and already made an indelible mark on our apartment! Thank you chum.

what a week!

well, a week in and I'm forced to disclose a troubling reality... a week of living in New York is all it has taken for Danie to develop an addiction. It's true, and it's serious, though hers is not one of the quotidian vices to which the young and vulnerable often flock. No, Danie is addicted to craigslist. Each morning, as she reaches for my computer, I can only imagine what the day may entail. As I reflect on the past week's exploits, and more consciously recognize their relentlessness, I begin to understand why I feel so lethargic this morning. When I last posted, we were waiting for our Ikea furniture to be delivered so that we could get off the ground (so to speak). Since that post, we've devoted each day to getting settled into our apartment and making it feel like home. The best way to convey our whirlwind of travails then, I think, will be in outline format, focusing on the highlights. So, the day by day is as follows:

Last Wednesday: arrived at our apartment with 3 boxes, 4 suitcases, a backpack and a purse just before midnight local time. Spent the next 45 minutes or so hauling our luggage up five flights of (humid) stairs, where we finally laid to rest on the infamous air mattress.

Thursday: afore mentioned, state line-crossing Ikea trip.

Friday: apartment-bound from 10am-5pm for our various deliveries. Spent the day cleaning our apartment, and the evening assembling our Ikea bedframe and our Ikea kitchen island-table hybrid.

Saturday: had an extremely successful Goodwill trip where we found a (brand new) Target-home coffee table for a fraction of the original price...we don't mind a minor ding on one corner, but we do appreciate $150 tables for $24.99. As it turns out, coffee tables are really heavy, and so are more fun to buy than to carry home. That evening we assembled our coffee table and our Ikea dresser-nightstand hybrids--with limited space, multipurpose furniture is appreciated.

Sunday: visited somewhere between 4 and 6 grocery stores, each of which had some valued special. Among the culprits were staples and heavyweights Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, as well as our new local favorites Key Foods and From Farm to Market. We also saw an, at times, awkwardly small stand up comedy show that evening. The comedian had the ability to transition remarkably quickly from hysterically funny to unimaginably creepy. Overall, worth it.

Monday: Danie found a great deal on a huge Ikea dresser, listed on craigslist, only 6 blocks from our apartment. After negotiating a bit, we rendezvoused with the seller where we were again faced with the now perennial dillemma: "okay, now how on earth do we get this enormous piece of furniture home?" After being turned down by a couple of his cohorts, one (perhaps a bit green) mini-SUV taxi let us hang our dresser out of his trunk while Danie rode shotgun and I ran home to meet them, where, as if I wasn't sweaty enough, Danie was waiting for me to help carry our new dresser upstairs.

Tuesday: more craigslist wheeling and dealing pays off. we found two different bookcases for sale, both at about a fifth of the original price, and both ready for immediate pickup. However, because of the sellers' distant locations, we had to hire movers (also advertised in the furniture section of craigslist). Though so far our frugality had trumped our interest in hired help, I will admit it was nice not to have to shlep the bookcases upstairs. Plus, even with the movers our bookcases were extremely reasonable.

And so a week into the move we're a bit tired, calloused, and sore, but our spirits are high. Though we haven't seen many of the tourist attractions or local hang outs, we are on a near first name basis with most local grocers, hardware store owners, and Danie has a very active craigslist account. Jokes aside, our prioritization of getting settled in is paying off as our apartment is now very homey and we feel really comfortable in our neighborhood. Plus, now that we've got our base assembled, we can more confidently venture out into the entropy that is Manhattan.

As promised, pics of the assembled apartment can be seen here.

Cam

elated to be inflated

So, we've arrived! And we're living on the floor!

Okay, while the second bit is admittedly less exciting, Danie and I have discussed it and we're certain there are some valuable lessons to be gleaned from sitting, sleeping, eating, drinking, emailing, reading, and now, blogging, on an air mattress. Lessons like: be glad you aren't doing the same activities directly on your hard wood? In any case, we should be off the floor soon. Yesterday (our first day here), we successfully maneuvered interstate public transportation to get to the New Jersey Ikea (the Garden State's alluring 3.5% sales tax easily vindicated the hour-long bus ride), where we found some great furniture that, thanks to next day delivery, we will be assembling this evening.

So here we sit--yes, on the air mattress--alan wrench in hand, waiting for the Ikea truck. Check back soon for pictures of the assembled apartment!

Cam