I really enjoyed reading the extended back and forth regarding the school lunch program set off by this Alice Waters Op-ed on improving the school lunch program. The aspect of the debate I wanted to focus on largely circles around if Alice Water’s proposals are too extravagant to be justified.
I wanted to comment on this passage by Tom Philpott
I fear that Lee has lapsed here into what Michael Pollan has called “nutritionism” — the idea that human nourishment can be broken down into discrete elements, which can effectively be manipulated for good or ill by the food industry.
The case for Waters’ approach requires a broader critique. The food system has lapsed into near self-parody — a steady stream of public-health disasters (from long-term maladies like diabetes to immediate complaints like salmonella), an exploited workforce (from enslaved Florida tomato pickers to scraping-by Wal-Mart clerks), and ecological damage writ large. And incentives remain in place to keep the beast lurching along. Over the past year, McDonald’s shares have outperformed the overall Dow by more than 40 percentage points. In hard times, cheap food becomes a hot commodity.
While Lee proffers a solution to the school-lunch dilemma that targets (effectively or not) nutrition, Waters offers a robust model that offers synergies in many directions.
I’m very ambivalent, but for now you’ll have to count me as skeptical of the Alice Waters reforms . On one hand I’m generally supportive of trying to pursue multi-directional policy reform and the particulars of the Alice Waters vision are legitimate goals. Alternatively we’ve got tremendous budgetary constraints and I’m not real keen on doubling the budget of federal programs every time we find a ways to make them better.
While it’s true that low cost products or policies can only be low cost by externalizing their costs in harmful ways. I get worried that particular products or programs with higher costs don’t significantly eliminate those externalizations or avoid creating similar problems.
If the school lunch industry is a monster now, won’t Alice Waters’ proposals just create an alternative monster. New people and new incentives could just equal a new and different bad policy. If even a single lunch is denied a child and the right gets a hold of the story then the political viability of the whole product would be imperiled.
Further I’m not sure there is a strong case that children are particularly harmed by eating “industrial” food. Sure junk food is bad, and it’s connected to the industrial food process, but that’s not the same as establishing real harm to eaters from frozen foods, processed, or even genetically modified food. There is a stronger case for the environmental damage and non-sustainability of our food system, but actually showing that frozen lasagna is hurting school children is less clear.
And without that link it’s seems the school lunch program is the wrong venue for these reforms.
Filed under: Food Policy | 2 Comments
Tags: Alice Waters, Organic Food, School Lunch Program
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I would like to address the following comment:
“Further I’m not sure there is a strong case that children are particularly harmed by eating “industrial” food. Sure junk food is bad, and it’s connected to the industrial food process, but that’s not the same as establishing real harm to eaters from frozen foods, processed, or even genetically modified food.”
I can vouch personally from the harm “processed food” can do to a body. Processed foods have many additives..including aspartame (in places you wouldn’t expect) and different forms of msg. Add to that the fat content and loss of vitamins from processing, and you have so called “food” with no real nutritive value. After years of terrible health issues/symptoms, I did my own research. I cut out anything msg or aspartame related, added “organic” to my shopping list, and I can tell you honestly that the terrible symptoms all but disappeared. Can you imagine what that type of diet is doing to the bodies of children? I know we can do much better.
Hi & thanks for the comment,
While processed does remove vitamins etc, I’ve never seen any research that links that reduction to health problems.
What exactly do you think aspartame does? I drank aspartame as a child. I still drink aspartame and more recently Splenda all the time. I wouldn’t have linked it any particular health problem I have.
I’ve been trying to expand the organics I eat, but I’ve mostly focused fruits, poultry, and eggs. My current thinking is that locally grown would be preferred choice to organic from the west coast.