14.In a push to promote “localvore” eating habits, is he disregarding the limits of people who live in impoverished inner city areas, and those who have limited access to fresh produce?
14.In a push to promote “localvore” eating habits, is he disregarding the limits of people who live in impoverished inner city areas, and those who have limited access to fresh produce?
Pollan like many other seemingly good intended authors has failed to realize the economic costs of the “localvore” movement.
Yes it is good to support people in your local community and encourage common bonds, but if your local farmer is spending all this time to produce a yield that is minuscule in comparison to larger farms this has to come at a cost. Most often that cost is directly passed on to the consumer who might be continuing to support this farm because of the “localvore” movement even past the point that the farm has demonstrated that it is not economically viable. There are also environmental costs as a local farmer might not have to drive his produce as far to market, but the carbon released per item can still be a great deal more than someone moving larger quantities of produce per shipment.
Pollan also pushed for the need for variety in diet. If someone were to eat only the produce that grew well in the climate surrounding them they would have a very limited selection of foods. Here in the Willamette Valley we are blessed to have incredibly good farm land, but there are many parts of the country that simply cannot sustain many crops. Ancient peoples in those regions probably had their own ways of dealing with those problems, but modern farming will ignore those older methods. This means that regions of the country with lesser grade farming land are left to farm in the same traditional method that Pollan rails against even though they are “local.”
I don’t think he is at all disregarding the limits. he even talks about them earlier in the book. In fact, I think he is a very good author because he does point out the weaknesses of some of his expectations. But I also agree with you Graham that he does push the need for variety however, variety doesn’t mean different food every single day. Sometimes it just means changing things up. There is always enough variety for people to break their old habits, like maybe replacing some foods with others. Each season has its own variety, we just need to seek it out.
Pollan adequately addresses the issue of people in lower socio-economic standing purchasing organic, healthier food. His target audience, likely food fans and middle class parents, has easier access to the foods he mentions and thus, he does not spend much time on presenting a solution to the inner city issue. However, this question wrongly assumes that inner city people don’t have the ability to join the “localvore” movement. While the cost remains a barrier to inner city people purchasing high quality food everyday, farmers markets are present in many major metropolitan areas now. Those in lower socio-economic standing may not be able to purchase quinoa and asparagus everyday but surely, through the proliferation of farmers markets, they could buy it from time to time.
I agree with Kevin.
This book does not seem to be written with the aim to appeal to all audiences, but more to the middle class and food enthusiasts/gourmets. A good example of this would be his urgings to depart from the Western diet by departing from “the realms it rules: the supermarket, the convenience store, and the fast-food outlet” (158), which aims mostly at the majority who favour convenience over substance. I am glad that he still touched on the subject, but too try to reach possible solutions for everyone would be stretching too thin. In other words, Pollan does not completely disregard limits of the “localvore” in impoverished areas, but it is in no way his focus.
I definitely agree with all of those who mentioned above how Pollan’s idea of buying all locally is wonderful but not completely realistic. Pollan did mention how this ideology does not work with lower socioeconomic communities but he does provide a plan for how to make it work in these areas. I believe that this way of life could be seen in the lower income neighborhoods but a plan would need to be in place.
At my high school this was a problem many of my classmates wanted to tackle. We went to a private school in the middle of an impoverished neighborhood and hated seeing all the elementary school children at the McDonalds getting dinner. In our social justice department we created a program where we partnered with a community garden. Then, a couple days a month we would hold a farmers market at our school and invite the neighborhood. I think one idea to help alleviate this issue is for cities to invest in creating community gardens that are open to the public so that everyone has space available to them. Along with providing space for gardens, they should provide certain seeds so that communities can start to grow their own vegetables. These gardens can be maintained by community centers where they sell the products at low prices and then use the profits to pay youth to work the gardens. This could provide a safe activity for disadvantaged youth as well as promote a healthy lifestyle.
I think the word ‘disregarding’ is a pretty narrow-minded. No, he does not completely ignore the fact that some people do not have the ability to adapt to a ‘localvore’ lifestyle. But, I do think he should have suggested ways to go around issues like that. He preaches about eating healthy and how Americans give little priority to it, but gives no solutions on how to combat the poverty that make it impossible for some people to attune to his teachings. What I believe Pollan should have added in his book are solutions, to focus on the positive. He basically wrote a two-hundred spiel on how nutritionism is evil and how we as Americans are poisoning ourselves with are so-called Western Diets. He only focuses on the negative. And he may have given readers the rules at the end of the book, but I feel he could have gone more in-depth and could have been more optimistic in turning around our unhealthy habits.
Supermarkets are simply unavoidable in this day and age. Not everyone can afford to buy all of their products at a farmer’s market, and not everyone has the time or knowledge to pick and prepare all of the fruits and veggies needed to sustain your average American family. For a single mom with three kids, working two jobs, living in the inner city, and living paycheck to paycheck, all she can afford to feed her kids is frozen dinners and processed, sometimes fast, food because it is cheaper and easier to come by than growing vegetables and tending to them every weekend. Do we blame the mother in this case for not raising her children on “the right food”? Absolutely not. This is where I do agree with Pollan: why is it that the worst food for us is the cheapest, and the right foods (all-natural fruits, veggies, free-range meats) are more expensive and harder to come by in the modern consumerism age? This should not be the case. At least once a week there is a program on television on obesity and people around the United States and the world all recognize that America is the “Fast Food Nation.” Many people in the inner cities are stuck in a trap that has been laid by consumerism, big business, and politics. People living in the inner city do not have the yard space, time, or money to grow lush, organic gardens in their backyards.
For a government and society so concerned about obesity, this situation is the epitome of the crisis we are facing in America today. Pollan did us readers a favor and exposed many of the issues in the nutritionism business and backed all of his claims with legitimate sources, but he did not provide any examples on how to fix these problems. He complained about modern science and portrayed nutritionism and those who promote it as the “big bad wolf,” yet he wrote nothing about how to fix the issues he exposed. His grand advice for dealing with nutritionism was unrealistic: avoid supermarkets, buy and freeze half of a cow, eat mostly organic and all-natural plants you grow yourself, and never, ever eat processed food. These pieces of advice serve no purpose in the inner city. Our government, businesses, and policy makers need to abandon some of their current dogmas on nutritionism and begin tackling some real problems. Instead of companies spending thousands on a new commercial for their all-new triple-patty hamburgers with supersized drinks and sad excuses for lettuce and tomatoes, they could fund gardens in local schools, promote legislature that is trying to reverse the obesity crisis, hold exercise days for local child-care centers, build playgrounds, produce educational videos, and more.
I admire your criticism of this author’s work. Very insightful. I concur with your standing on the issue and was wondering, are there any ideas that you have that people in low-income families could utilize to make a difference in their diet? Despite your observations regarding to how big businesses should spend their money, how should the afore mentioned, low-income individuals spend theirs?
I agree with others that Pollan’s target audience does seem to be the middle and upper class. However, he also references several times how the organic and local movement has grown and evolved in the last few years. Perhaps he never came out and said it, but I imagine he would encourage us to support organic and local wherever it is available, in the hopes that our support will lead to its expansion.
Alyssa, I couldn’t agree more with your comments about the “trap that has been laid by consumerism, big business, and politics.” So while those of us who can should continue to support organic and local food, we should do everything we can to make it available to everyone. And while that might not be a change that the people can cause, we can try. Like I said in another post, imagine the change in food culture in the US if the government suddenly switched from subsidizing corn and soybeans to organic, local products. I too wish Pollan had been a little more insistant that the government be the source of change, but I understand that he perhaps didn’t want to drag politics into his book. He did, however, give us all the information we need to make a good argument for the importance of government action on this issue. In many ways the government got us into this mess, and at this point I think it’s time for them to acknowledge their errors and begin to reverse them.
In Michael Pollan’s book he does point out that it is more expensive to eat by the food rules. However, while access to a local farmers market may not be a reality to everyone, community gardens can help people in urban areas eat locally. Another thing to consider is the book is about changing how people think about food. While it may be that this book is written for an upper-middle class suburban audience the change has to start somewhere. If more and more people become localvores it could lead to increased accessibly to people in urban areas through the proliferation of farmers markets and urban gardens.
I think that Pollan’s advice on being a “localvore” falls apart when applied to persons of low income or those living in inner-city areas. Some people simple do not have the extra money necessary to spend on whole foods, and others are constricted by limited access. While Pollan argues that the extra cash is worth it, I think that he’s more of an idealist than he’s willing to admit in certain areas.
Pollan seems to have some disregard for the environmental effects if people ate entirely local food. The idea is good in theory, but it falls apart if desert areas are considered. The amount of water it would take to support a garden in areas like Vegas or LA would not necessarily be worth it, where as in areas such as the Willamette Valley or central California not only the cost but the environmental impact to grow food is less and it is easy to grow an excess of food it would make more sense to grow it there and ship it to other places. The same reasoning can be applied to inner city areas. Unless people move to nicely spaced out living in ecologically productive areas this will always be a problem with no good solution.
As many have pointed out, Pollan’s target audience in this book is definitely the middle class person and the food movement enthusiast, and this can be seen through the “food rules” that he provides the reader at the end of the book. Although he does have a point when he says that “spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority,” that really only applies to his target readers whom can afford to spend more on their health; the “localvore” movement undoubtedly has added costs that make it inaccessible to the inner-city or economically impoverished citizen. Small farmers that provide goods at local farmers markets simply cannot produce the yields of the big, industrialized, multinational corporations that compete in American supermarkets, whom make food fast, cheap and easy. Therein lays a fundamental problem with the food industry. Alyssa Bjorkquist nailed it on the head; there is an issue when “the worst food for us is the cheapest, and the right foods (all-natural fruits, veggies, free-range meats) are more expensive and harder to come by in the modern consumerism age.” With that in mind, it is foolish to expect this movement to catch on in all households in society. Pollan’s guidelines are more idealistic than can be expected of all classes in the economy, but I wouldn’t say that he is necessary disregarding the lower classes who genuinely can’t afford the better food. For the change he wishes to see in the food industry occur, he has to start somewhere. By encouraging the middle class to take steps in the right direction, it starts positive change in the right direction, which can change opinions of society towards the real cost of food and provide more assistance to the lower class.
While becoming entirely a “localvore” may be more of a plight for impoverished people, it is not completely unachievable. Planting your own garden (no matter the size) can be cheaper in many ways. Yes, this can be more complicated in places with severe weather conditions, but the physical landscape of an area should not play a factor. In another novel I’m currently reading, Farm City: The Education of an Urban farmer, a woman begins with a garden and graduates to a full-on farm, right in the middle of a sketchy and rough part of Oakland, California. With determination and persistence she accomplished an unprocessed, fresh and healthy diet despite the obstacles of city living. If people want this lifestyle and truly embody its values, they will work hard enough to have it.
Pollan also writes this sapient, yet terse, advice: “eat less, spend more”. This goal may not attainable for all, but it may help people put in perspective the amount of money they put into they many processed items, when they could be putting it into the quality, fresh ones. I don’t think this book was written for people of the same financial background. Pollan wants awareness; there is a necessity for people to become conscious about the decisions they make when it comes to food and the health of the world.
Hi! I am from Slow Food, a group of UO students advocating for good, clean, fair food. Eating local is important to me because I like knowing where my food comes from and what better way than to be able to visit the farm where it is grown. I like talking to local farmers because they are so passionate and knowledgeable. Many of the farms I have been to in Eugene are small and family-owned. They don’t make much money from the business, but they take so much pride in the way they farm. This Wednesday is the Farm to Fork meal at Carson dining hall. Please come to this event, everything on the menu is sourced from a local farm. Not only is this a delicious meal, it is a way to support local business and brings our community together. The menu is on our blog: http://www.slowfooduo.wordpress.com Please check out our website. We are so passionate about food and want to share our recipes and thoughts with others. Subscribe to our posts- we would so appreciate your support.
I have to agree with some comments above about the fact that we cannot always get fresh product when living in city. Since the urbanization and boom of population are contributing to reduce living area, each even doesn’t have enough place to live, how can they make fresh products to support themselves?
In addition, when people have to spend most of their time to earn money to exchange other products, how can they learn skill to make those products?