thank you. what do you eat? no, what do you really eat? it's a wednesday night, by the time you get out of here,it might be eight o'clock.
easy unprocessed foods, you stop at the store on the way hometo see if they have kale. but, is it organic? is it local?is it in season? do you even like kale? (laughter) i get it. it is overwhelming,all of the choices we're faced with today.
all of the things we're askedto consider about our food. a little over two years ago,i set myself a challenge: one year without processed food. the first questions you might ask are,"why would you do that?" and "what makes a food processed?" and i'll get to those. but tonight, i want to focuson that choice of a wednesday night, when you're wondering what to eat. i am a food writer, so on some level,i'm paid to think about that choice
- i'm the editor of edible baja arizona, a local food magazinebased here in tucson - but i also happen to believethat these choices matter, that they impact the food system, and we have the powerto unprocess the foods we eat. so what makes a food processed? of course, all foods are processed. agriculture is a kind of process, so iscooking, fermenting, dicing, preserving. all foods are processedand often, they are better for it.
but increasingly, they are not. study after study has shownthat it less important what we're eating than how we're eating it. think about the differencebetween corn on the cob, versus corn chipsversus high fructose corn syrup. same source, three very different foodsbecause of their level of processing. i spent a lot of timewrangling over the particulars, over the many things that we findon our ingredient labels these days. but for me, what is processed,comes down to a quote
from of all people,mr. rogers, which says, "there is a difference between thingspeople make and things that are made." there is a differencebetween foods people make with hands, or could bake, and foodsthat are made by machines. people can make corn into corn tortillas. people can't really makehigh fructose corn syrup without access to a laboratoryand an advanced chemistry degree. i spent a year thinking aboutprocessed food, i wrote a book about it, but tonight i want to focuson just three processes.
the first is the process of how a foodgets from its source to your table. how vegetables get from the ground,in mexico for example, to a grocery store in arizona. the second process is what happens to youwhen you actually eat that food. how your body responds when you drink a glass of apple juiceversus eating an apple. the third processis a little more complicated, it is the process of how the foodswe buy impact the communities we live in. often this process revolvesaround money; it is the economy of food.
and it is this last one,that of consumer spending that i find the most potentialfor un-processing. how does a food getfrom its source to your table? this is the mariposa port of entryin nogales. it is the largest inlandport of entry in the u.s. in the winter, 70% of produceon supermarket shelves comes from mexico,and most of it comes through here. i like to say that it is the ellis islandfor mexican produce. a watermelon.
how does a watermelonget from the ground in hermosillo to a safeway in tucson? it starts on a farm, a really big farm,1,000 acres of watermelon. a migrating field crew goes in thereand harvests them within a day, they pack them up,put them on a semi truck, 40,000 pounds of vegetables,and send them north to the border. there's a flurry of paperwork,the border patrol, fda, usda, and finally, it arrives hereto a 35-degree warehouse in nogales. there are about 100 of them there,
and i spent a few dayswandering through these warehouses. and let me tell you,the scale is staggering. at this particular warehouse,during their high season, every single day, they might movein and out 150,000 melons. i remember standingin this warehouse full of mangoes, and it being inconceivable to me, how this mass of fruitmight ever just become one mango in one person's kitchen. the system is vast.
and its survival depends on pesticides,refrigeration, and semi trucks. compare that to this. this is what i eat. this is one week sharefrom the tucson csa, the community supportedagriculture program that i'm a member of. this produce comes from a farmowned by a guy named frank. yes, we call him farmer frank. farmer frank sendshis two employees out into the field, they harvest enough producefor about 150 shares,
wash it, put it on a truck,and send it to tucson. there's not a lot of storage,and there are no pesticides. according to a study by usda,almost 60% of conventionally grown produce is still contaminated with pesticides,even after it has been washed. if that's not processed, what is? you have these two watermelons,one from hermosillo, one from near tucson. what makes onemore processed than the other? well, the first differenceis how they are grown. conventionally versus organically,
on a monocultureor on a diversified field. and the second is the processof how that food gets to you. on average, 91 centsof every dollar we spend on food goes to the middleman. it doesn't go to the peoplewho grow our food. so, when you buy food that's gonethrough this vast system, you are supporting that 91 cents. on the other hand, when you buy foodfrom a csa or a farmers market, you are helping to ensurethat people who grow your own food
get more than 9 cents on every dollar. let's go to the second process. once that food has gotten to you, what happens to your bodywhen you actually eat it? sugar is a good exampleof how the what of a particular food is less important than the how. a lot of people ask me,"is eating unprocessed hard?" and the answer to that question is sugar. sugar is in everything.
before i go there,i will say i love sugar. i have such a voracious sweet tooth,that when i was a kid my mom instituted a rulecalled "one sweet a day", on which i was allowed one sweet everyday instead of all the sweets, all the days. but sugar is in everything,apart from that. it is in, for example,in the blueberry-flavored flax seeds. the spinach of breakfast confections.high in sugar. this particular brand of mustardis evidently a mix of sugar, honey,
and a little high fructose corn syrupthrown in for good measure. grape-nuts, a seeminglysensible solution to breakfast, has four different kinds of sugarhidden on the ingredient label. and that's what makes sugar so tricky. it comes in so many different formsit's really had to avoid. but what's important to know,is that for your body, sugar is sugar. all sugar molecules, no matter the type, are eventually digestedinto glucose and fructose.
what matters to your body insteadis quantity and speed. how much sugar you eat and how quickly it arrivesthrough your system. think about the difference between eating an appleand drinking a glass of apple juice. in the apple, you have to workto get that sugar, you have to bite it, chew it, swallow it,it's all bound up in fiber and cellulose. so it trickles into your body slower. apple juice, on the other hand,is immediate.
and that immediacy stresses your body out. but the problem with sugar isthat i'm not alone. we all really like it. it pulls our triggers in waysthat makes us want to eat more. and food companies know that,that's why it is in everything. unfortunately, there has beena lot of research in recent years that says sugar is simply not good for us. what do we do? what is the alternative? one alternative is to eat less sugar,
the other alternativeis to eat fake sugar. diet desserts. the way that food companiesmake desserts diet is they process out the sugar and fatand replace them with chemicals so that your body thinksyou're still getting the good stuff. that you're still getting your dessert. but anyone who's ever been on a diet,knows that simply doesn’t work. eat one brownie made with splendaand you'll want five more before you really feel full.
compare that to the sweets i ateduring my year unprocessed. home-made chocolate made with raw honey. cookies made with wholegrain flour,and molasses, and butter. these sweets satisfymy sweet craving, they filled me up, and because they were all bound upin the foods with substance, that sugar trickled into my body slower. a lot of people ask when i tell themabout my year of eating unprocessed food, "how do you feel?do you feel differently?" and the easiest answerto that question is simply, "i feel full."
for me, this is no small thing. i have dieted on and off my whole life: i've counted calories,i've done weight watchers, really, i've been through the wringer. but unprocess is not a diet. when i eat unprocessed, i eat when i'm hungry,and i stop eating when i'm full. during my year,i didn't gain weight or lose weight, but i ate a lot of delicious food.
if there is one take away from sugar, it is that if you're going to eatsomething sweet, make it count. savor it. make it your one sweet a day. don't waste your sugar on mustard. let's move on to that last process. how do the foods we buyimpact the communities we live in? let's go back to tonight. wednesday night,you're wondering what to eat. most of us assume if we wantto have a healthy, sustainable meal,
we need to spend more money,and we need to spend more time. when i started my year un-processed,i was a very busy graduate student, earning a graduate student salaryof about 18,000 dollars a year. i lived in this tiny little apartment without enough shadeto grow a basil plant. throughout my year, i saved every grocery receiptfor every run in and run out purchase, and at the end of the year,i sat down, and i tallied them up. the grand total, the amount i spentto feed myself in my year unprocessed,
was about 4,900 dollars. what that means is the amounti spent to feed myself three, mostly organic, largely local,totally unprocessed meals for a year, was about 4 dollars 50 cents a meal. i am aware that there are peoplefor whom 4$ 50c a meal is simply unaffordable. it is out of their reach. i'm really interested in that,i dedicated the last chapter of my book to the endeavor of eating unprocessed
on the amount of moneythat food stamps recipients receive which is about 20 dollars a week. but the fact of the matter is most of us have a few dollarsthat we could spend differently. this is the hide of a sheep that i spent two dayshelping to slaughter, butcher, and process using nothingbut an 8-inch craftsman knife. before i'll go there, i will sayi was raised by two vegetarians. i've been a vegetarianon and off my whole life,
problem always being,i actually kind of liked to eat meat. but i read what we have read:how destructive industrial meat is to the environment, water,our soils, how animals are treated. how can i eat meatin a way that seemed responsible? i spent two daysin very close quarters with this sheep. and, here's the surprise:it didn't turn me off meat. instead, it made me so grateful,that i could go to the farmers market and pay to a local rancherwho had gone to the same process with the same reverence respectas i had and give me meat in return.
i could pay moneyfor mindfully produced meat. indeed, if there is one takeawayfrom my year unprocessed, it is simply that the moneyyou spend matters. i'm not sayingwe should all butcher our own meat, and grind our own grains,or grow our own food. what i'm sayingis that when you do it yourself, you realize it is so worth the moneyto pay someone in our community who's doing it well. according to a studyby local first arizona,
if everyone in a communitythe size of tucson shifted 10% of their spendingto a local business, together we would create 140 million dollarsand new revenue for the city. spending money locallyhas all sorts of multiplier effects. spend 100 dollars at tucson's food co-op, and 73 dollarsof that will stay in tucson. spend 100 dollars at safeway,and only 43 dollars stays here. the importance of the moneythat we're keeping here
is also that we are withholding it from the balance sheetsof those multinational corporations who are then, using it,our money, to influence politics, to grow unsustainable food,to waste energy. in short, to process and sell us foodsthat aren't good for us. but apart from all that, the reason for eating unprocessedmakes sense to me is that it is simpler. i don't have to worry aboutwhere my food is coming from because i know where is coming from.
i don't have to worry what is doingto my body, because i feel good. i don't have to worry aboutwhere my money is going because i know who's getting my money. it's one rule, and theni don't have to think about it. i can do what i've always wanted to dowith food which is simply enjoy it. after all, the point of foodis not to stress us out, it is to bring us together. we have the powerto un-process our food system. of course, we don't do anything.
you do things, and i do things. you go home to make dinner,i go home to make dinner. it's only when you and i decideto make small changes in our own lives, that big change begins to happen. join the csa, read ingredients labels,go to the farmers market, ask questions of the people and companiesthat sell you your food. what do you eat? that's up to you. but you have the powerto make it a little unprocessed. (applause)
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