My Foodprint

It was only a matter of time before Stumptown Coffee came to the East Coast. When I lived on the West Coast, in the home city of the now fabled roaster, I was well acquainted with Stumptown and its beans. I worked for a coffee magazine for Christ sake and went to all the coffee events and trade shows. I met Duane Sorenson, the man now known as a “coffee messiah,” at these events. Word is that he has now relocated to has relocated to Brooklyn even. And the press has followed him, with articles coming out every few weeks it seems, all wondering with amazement about the coffee companies successes. Now, the New York press has gone and done it, they’ve published the official Stumptown take-down piece. Enjoy, but be warned, most of this article is bullshit posturing and ranting. There are some interesting points made about Fair Trade, however, and they should be noted, though Stumptown is by far not the best example to position for the firing squad.

Remember last year when we were paying 5 bucks for a loaf of bread, when eggs were a dollar or two above what we were used to? Well, hopefully that does not happen again, especially while we find ourselves in the throes of a recession. But, as the New York Times reports today, food prices unexpectedly rose 1.5 percent in April.

For those of you who live in New York City, as I do, the idea of rising food prices is a nightmare scenario. Anyone who has a backyard, I encourage you to invest now in chickens and making your own bread. Build a cement bunker while you at it. No one knows if Pakistan will be able to keep its nuclear arsenal safe from terrorists.

–Nick

This latest news about obesity should be filed under least surprising study findings ever.

In other news, and just to drive the point home, there’s this, a pictorial guide to the findings above.

–Nick

After all the pork is still safe to eat talk and all the protect the pork industry maneuvering, it seems maybe the common ol’ scared off its ass public was onto something. The Wold Health Organization just issued a new statement saying that maybe it’s not such a good idea to eat that pork infected with Swine Flu.

Maybe Egypt was right after all?

–Nick

The pork consumption panic continues today with a new story in The Independent about how Russia is banning the import of pork from Great Britain. A little further down in the article, though, it is added that the ban is a formality, as Russia has already banned pork imports from Great Britain due to fears over foot-and-mouth disease. I’m confused, Russia?

Great Britain is the latest addition to Russia’s growing list, which includes Spain, Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and the country of Spain. Russia has cast an even wider net when it comes to other countries: All meat, including pork, beef, and poultry has been banned as an import from Mexico, Central America, Caribbean countries, California, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. The country has also banned imports of live pigs and pork that have not been heated above 176 degrees F for no less than 30 minutes from Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, New Jersey, and Ohio.

To counteract these moves, the pork industry has enacted a campaign to reassure pork consumers that the meat is safe to eat. Russia claims that since the H1N1 virus is so new, and since it is an evolved strain of several other viruses, there is too much uncertainty not to play it safe.

So Egypt is killing all its pigs and Russia doesn’t want any pigs. The saddest victim in this flu game is of course the pig, a smart, sweet animal that has, like other domesticated, feed lot livestock, been abused since industrial farms became the norm. The Swine Flu outbreak is yet another call for clean farming practices, for a national body that oversees all farming conditions on food determined for export.

–Nick

When the Swine Flu began in Mexico and it was clear the virus was going to spread across the globe, the first thought I had was about how pork, the other white meat, will suffer greatly. And, true to form, human beings prove to be neurotic and illogical. Despite the news saying that eating pork is fine and perfectly safe, that one cannot get swine flu from eating pork, the demand for the meat has cratered. Imports and exports have been thrown into a near standstill and Egypt slaughtered 250,000 pigs, an astounding knee-jerk action.

But there is one exception, according the The Smart Set. Pork consumption in the Philippines has remained steady. Citizens there have treasured Lechon, the Philippine term for a pick roasted whole over open coals, as a sort of national dish for a long time, and the Swine Flu has not dented this gustatory habit. The Philippine government has done an effective job to inform citizens that one cannot get Swine Flu from eating pork; most Lechon is locally grown and not imported (even before Swine Flu, this was true); and plus, from what we hear, the pork is too good to give up.

-Nick

Eater.com is a good place to find all sorts of information about NYC restaurants. They post in a lot of reviews and reservation items and they post some items about what’s happening on the ground in the NYC restaurant scene. Recently they did an interesting little piece of investigative journalism when they looked into the mysterious surcharges that pop up on some NYC restaurant bills. They looked into the laws and regulations that actually exists and found out that the surcharge is more of a “rule” rather than a law.

–Nick

There is an old question that no one ever gets tired of asking, and a blogger on seriouseats.com has asked it again. Would you eat human being? The Donner party did it; The survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 did it; William Golding more than implied it in The Lord of the Flies. The question is posed on seriouseats.com after the blogger saw an episode of No Reservations, the Anthony Bourdain show in which he travels the globe eating whatever is traditionally served in that region. It has seen him eating nearly anything and nearly any part of anything walking this earth. But human? Bourdain did not eat human on his trip but stories abounded of how missionaries who braved the French Polynesian islands often became soup ingredients.

The fact of the matter is that cannibalism exists today, surviving as a ritual act and an act of extreme desperation. It has been recorded in Indonesia, in Liberia, in Brazil (which has a long history of cannibalism, see The Manifesto Antropófago), in Tanzania, and in Colombia, among other countries.

Asking this kind of question, sheepishly as it was posed, jokingly as it was posed, in seriouseats.com does no justice to the site. It only treats the act of cannibalism as some version of a squeamish, teenage taboo, and it overlooks the fact that cannibalism is something that more often that not occurs in the most horrific of environments.

–Nick