Thanks for sharing these and for your continued championing of food writing and of the importance of food in human culture.
I’ve worked in restaurants, grocery stores, grocery category management, distribution purchasing and on the ground in sales for cheesemakers and other specialty food makers. Every experience has shown me the layers of social, political, environmental importance of our food , food systems, hunger and wealth.
We humans are “what we eat” in much more profound ways than we generally know.
It’s awesome to see you brining up these subjects long before many other people began to broach it.
Thanks for sharing the speech- I've been sat at my computer for the last couple days a little paralyzed. How could I write about squash at a time like this?!
I'm also in awe of the old menu- I wish I could have visited the steakhouse back in the day.
I enjoyed reading your paper on Why Food Matters. It reminds me of a book I found in a library in the mid 1970's. It was an argument for people giving up meat in their diets. The authors described the costs of raising cattle compared to farming vegetables. They predicted that using more of the arable land for growing crops to feed people instead of cattle, could make a significant dent in world hunger.
The authors did not envision how factory farming would evolve - your description of the mistreatment of animals and pollution of the environment was sickening.
I became a vegetarian in 1976 and have stuck with it ever since. If you have any ideas about what everyday people can do to reform our food system, please share.
I also read Diet for a Small Planet but I can't remember the name of the book I mentioned. It may have been self-published, and was in a spiral binding.
Apologies to everyone. The type has faded on those old pages, and I worked with them as much as I could to make them more legible. This was the best I could do. I find it easiest to read on my phone.
Americans have such a bizarre relationship with food—we have so much of it, and yet so much of what we eat is junk. Worse, we grow up LOVING junk, and not knowing how it's affecting us (or often caring if we have some faint idea!):
For a few years when we lived in a luxury high-rise on the Upper West Side, my then-wife's doctor got her to a nutritionist who demanded we lower the fat, sugar and salt in her diet, so after initially buying her "low-fat" microwavable foods (which are SUPER-high in sodium!) I start cooking dishes which were low in fat, sodium and sugar, using other herbs and spices to compensate and substituting chicken for beef and pork whenever possible, and using beans and lentils for non-meat proteins. (My wife hated cooking because she was forced to do it growing up for her younger sisters and mother—since Mom taught all us boys to cook because as she put it, "I doubt any of you yardapes are EVER going to find wives!", and moreover I enjoyed cooking, I took it over.) She lost sixty pounds in less than a year, and her blood pressure normalized and her breathing eased for the first time since I'd known her.
Then we bought a house upstate, and the time it took us to move and settle in meant we were apart for a lot of time, and by the time I'd settled in our house she no longer wanted me cooking for her most of the time, and preferred to order out or eat microwave dinners....
Wishing I could convince my family to swap out turkey for that ham. Someday.
For now, and for those on the West Coast, can anyone recommend a great place to order our turkey? Looking into LA's Autonomy Farms, La Bahn Ranch, or Standings.
Sorry, Ed Sullivan Novelty Act—I don't take medical advice from Trump-supporting anti-vaxxers with brain worms, nor people stupid enough to take them seriously.
I was really enjoying this Comments section before you vomited your Trump Nazi Bar bile all over it, too....
A couple of minor tips. Please take them in the spirit intended. To start a sentence, I think you normally capitalize the first word. So perhaps consider capitalizing “you’re” and “why”. The second sentence seems to be a question, so maybe end it with a question mark? Either way, it should have some sort of punctuation. The last sentence is good in that “Bigot”is capitalized to start the sentences (and kudos on using “you’re” instead of “your”!, This informs me you are a human who knows a lot of things and certainly not an AI generated bot)but again it should have some sort of punctuation at the end. With regard to content, I’m sure you are right that she is definitely a coward and bigot, but I’m not sure how that relates to RFK since he died in 1968. Maybe you are referring to RFK Jr. ? But even so, it seems quite ambitious to require Ruth to know and report upon RFK Jr.’s plans for 2025 and beyond when she wrote the speech in question 33 years ago. On an unrelated note, Topogeejo was my favorite guest ever on the Ed Sullivan Show. Even better than the Beatles!
Thanks for sharing these and for your continued championing of food writing and of the importance of food in human culture.
I’ve worked in restaurants, grocery stores, grocery category management, distribution purchasing and on the ground in sales for cheesemakers and other specialty food makers. Every experience has shown me the layers of social, political, environmental importance of our food , food systems, hunger and wealth.
We humans are “what we eat” in much more profound ways than we generally know.
It’s awesome to see you brining up these subjects long before many other people began to broach it.
Thanks for sharing the speech- I've been sat at my computer for the last couple days a little paralyzed. How could I write about squash at a time like this?!
I'm also in awe of the old menu- I wish I could have visited the steakhouse back in the day.
I enjoyed reading your paper on Why Food Matters. It reminds me of a book I found in a library in the mid 1970's. It was an argument for people giving up meat in their diets. The authors described the costs of raising cattle compared to farming vegetables. They predicted that using more of the arable land for growing crops to feed people instead of cattle, could make a significant dent in world hunger.
The authors did not envision how factory farming would evolve - your description of the mistreatment of animals and pollution of the environment was sickening.
I became a vegetarian in 1976 and have stuck with it ever since. If you have any ideas about what everyday people can do to reform our food system, please share.
The book sounds like Diet for a Small Planet. I first read it in 1976 -- it made a profound impression that apparently lasted a lifetime, LOL.
I also read Diet for a Small Planet but I can't remember the name of the book I mentioned. It may have been self-published, and was in a spiral binding.
My copy was a spiral-bound version! I also had Recipes for a Small Planet, same era, same binding.
I think I get your gist, but the speech itself is not readable. Far too light and faded to show up on my screen.
Apologies to everyone. The type has faded on those old pages, and I worked with them as much as I could to make them more legible. This was the best I could do. I find it easiest to read on my phone.
🤍🤍🤍
Americans have such a bizarre relationship with food—we have so much of it, and yet so much of what we eat is junk. Worse, we grow up LOVING junk, and not knowing how it's affecting us (or often caring if we have some faint idea!):
For a few years when we lived in a luxury high-rise on the Upper West Side, my then-wife's doctor got her to a nutritionist who demanded we lower the fat, sugar and salt in her diet, so after initially buying her "low-fat" microwavable foods (which are SUPER-high in sodium!) I start cooking dishes which were low in fat, sodium and sugar, using other herbs and spices to compensate and substituting chicken for beef and pork whenever possible, and using beans and lentils for non-meat proteins. (My wife hated cooking because she was forced to do it growing up for her younger sisters and mother—since Mom taught all us boys to cook because as she put it, "I doubt any of you yardapes are EVER going to find wives!", and moreover I enjoyed cooking, I took it over.) She lost sixty pounds in less than a year, and her blood pressure normalized and her breathing eased for the first time since I'd known her.
Then we bought a house upstate, and the time it took us to move and settle in meant we were apart for a lot of time, and by the time I'd settled in our house she no longer wanted me cooking for her most of the time, and preferred to order out or eat microwave dinners....
Wishing I could convince my family to swap out turkey for that ham. Someday.
For now, and for those on the West Coast, can anyone recommend a great place to order our turkey? Looking into LA's Autonomy Farms, La Bahn Ranch, or Standings.
you're a coward. why don't you mention all the amazing things RFK is planning to do. Bigot
Sorry, Ed Sullivan Novelty Act—I don't take medical advice from Trump-supporting anti-vaxxers with brain worms, nor people stupid enough to take them seriously.
I was really enjoying this Comments section before you vomited your Trump Nazi Bar bile all over it, too....
A couple of minor tips. Please take them in the spirit intended. To start a sentence, I think you normally capitalize the first word. So perhaps consider capitalizing “you’re” and “why”. The second sentence seems to be a question, so maybe end it with a question mark? Either way, it should have some sort of punctuation. The last sentence is good in that “Bigot”is capitalized to start the sentences (and kudos on using “you’re” instead of “your”!, This informs me you are a human who knows a lot of things and certainly not an AI generated bot)but again it should have some sort of punctuation at the end. With regard to content, I’m sure you are right that she is definitely a coward and bigot, but I’m not sure how that relates to RFK since he died in 1968. Maybe you are referring to RFK Jr. ? But even so, it seems quite ambitious to require Ruth to know and report upon RFK Jr.’s plans for 2025 and beyond when she wrote the speech in question 33 years ago. On an unrelated note, Topogeejo was my favorite guest ever on the Ed Sullivan Show. Even better than the Beatles!