Farmer 'N The Dell

The Power of Volunteering

March 10th, 2010

As many of you know, I returned a few days ago from a week in Guatemala performing anesthetics for those too poor to pay. It was my first medical mission abroad, and although I scoffed when the organization with which I travelled called it a “Life Changing Medical Mission,” in the end, I had to admit that they were right. My life is changed, and I am grateful.

: Trying to Figure Out How These Old Anesthesia Machines Work

It’s easy as an American to become reactive. You are constantly bombarded by information and images: the internet, TV, radio, billboards. It can be dizzying trying to process all that stimuli, to rank it in terms of its importance, to try to form cohesive thought and not just spend your time intellectually sorting and discarding. The internet always has one more thing to offer, one more image to flash– a 24/7 bounty of choices that seems impossible to resist.

But when in Guatemala, when my access to the internet was dramatically reduced, my thoughts slowed to take in the work before me, and I slowed. I felt as though my heart rate dropped, my breath came in deeper, more regular intakes. In the central square of Antigua, I felt the relaxed pace of the place wash over me. I wanted to take a siesta, to let the Land of Eternal Spring wrap its unhurried arms around me in sleep.

But we didn’t sleep; we worked. And while working, I saw the work of others: the padre who had overseen the growth of the Catholic charity hospital in which I performed anesthetics, the nuns who cared for the orphans day in, day out, the caucasian woman (was she Canadian? American? European? I don’t know) who went from toddler to toddler patiently brushing teeth. The place was packed with volunteers: Guatemalan, American, European. It felt good to make the transition from reactive to active. It felt healing to shift my focus from myself to others. And it felt uplifting to share this sense of mission with other volunteers and patients. There are plenty of generous people in this world. The 737 in which I returned from Guatemala City was loaded with them.

: Guatemalan Mother and Child Before Surgery

Of course, writing this and truly understanding this are two different things. But I do encourage you, should the pace of American life leave you overwhelmed and fatigued, to try to find the community and solace of volunteer work. It just might change your life, too.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Calories on the Menu–Coming Soon!

February 25th, 2010

If you’re a Californian, you may have noticed that restaurant chains are now offering nutritional and caloric information about menu items, usually in a brochure shoved off to the side. That’s great, if you’re like me and are curious about what you’re eating. But does nutritional information actually change food purchase decisions? Up to now, the answer has been unclear, but an intriguing new study from Yale suggests that, yes, in the right context, people definitely eat less when they know more.

The study, published in December 2009’s American Journal of Public Health, divided study participants into three groups. The first group was given a regular menu at a restaurant and told to order dinner. The second group was given a menu with caloric information and was similarly told to order. The third group was given the caloric information menu that also contained the statement, “the average daily caloric intake for an adult is 2000 calories.” Not surprisingly, the two groups with the caloric information menus wound up eating less calories at dinner than the regular menu group. But did they wind up eating less calories overall during the day? The answer, surprisingly, is no. The group with the caloric information menu but no daily caloric intake statement went home and had an after-dinner snack, overall ingesting the same amount of calories as the regular menu group. However, the caloric information menu group that also had the daily caloric intake statement, did not snack after dinner as much, and on average ate 250 calories less than the other two groups. The take home message: context matters. Remind a diner of their daily caloric needs and not only will they eat less at dinner, but they will likely eat less when they go home.

Now, what do you do if you want to make smart choices, but the menu doesn’t show caloric counts? As of January 1, 2011, all chain restaurants in California will be required to list caloric information on menus and indoor menu boards. You won’t have to hunt around for brochures. That means when you order your reduced-fat banana chocolate chip coffee cake at Starbucks, the sad facts will be up front and center: reduced fat doesn’t mean reduced calories. That delicious thing has nearly 400 calories!

As for the daily caloric intake statement, there are no requirements that it be included on menus. Although maybe it’s not a bad idea given that 16 million Californians are considered overweight or obese…

Posted in Health, Nutrition and Diet | No Comments »

Three Books For The Educated Eater

February 22nd, 2010

I’m still compiling the list of recommended books that you all so graciously submitted. There are a lot of them–which is reassuring given that books must now compete with so much electronic media for our precious free time.

But before I proceed with that all-inclusive list, I wanted to jump ahead to recommend three must-reads for those interested in food production (which should be everyone, since food is one of the most basic human needs). They are, in no particular order:

1) The Omnivore’s Dilemma–Michael Pollan’s 2006 bestseller is probably one of the trendiest books around. Pollan recently showed up on Oprah to discuss his latest book, Food Rules, which is a follow-up to this book. Basically, Omnivore’s Dilemma examines food production in America–the most shocking of which is the intrusion of corn into almost everything we eat, whether it’s corn-fed beef, high-fructose corn syrup, or even the chicken nuggets we love to feed our kids (which are bits of corn-fed poultry glued together with modified corn starch, covered in corn flour-containing batter, fried in corn oil…you get the picture). After reading this book, you will look at food labels a WHOLE lot closer.

2) Fast Food Nation–Eric Schlosser’s 2001 cult classic examines the social, economic, and environmental impact of fast food. The thing that will absolutely turn your stomach, however, is Schlosser’s portrayal of the meatpacking industry. You won’t eat at McDonalds for a year.

3) The Jungle– Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book about the Chicago meatpacking industry is a classic and still reads grippingly today. Exposing not just the hidden horrors of meatpacking (agh– rats in your sausage!), the book also portrays the ineluctable downward spiral of immigrants ensnared in an inhumane industry. Sinclair originally intended the book to illustrate the plight of powerless and exploited workers, but The Jungle’s lasting legacy has been better food safety laws.

The beauty of these books are that they are both eye-opening and good reads. If you’ve got any other must-read food books, please share. Transparency in food production should be a right to which we are all entitled– after all, don’t you want to know what you are really eating?

Posted in Books You Gotta Read, Nutrition and Diet | 4 Comments »

World Ag Expo 2010

February 12th, 2010

Sorry I haven’t posted recently. As with all of us, life sometimes just gets busy! But I did want to share a photo and some thoughts about the World Ag Expo 2010, which just ended yesterday. For the uninitiated, the World Ag Expo is an enormous three-day agriculture show that takes place in Tulare, California. If you’re curious about tractors, ploughs, high-tech irrigation systems, or dairy management software, this is the place for you. More than 100,000 visitors, many of them from overseas, converge on the expo to see the newest and slickest stuff in ag.

: Dad and I at World Ag Expo 2010

I went down with my mother and father to check out “Big Ag” and found myself a little overwhelmed. The scale of the expo, the scale of the tractors, the scale of the farms in the San Joaquin Valley just dwarfs Northern California. As my father said, “Compared to these guys, we’re just gardeners.” But nonetheless, all that scale is pretty impressive.

I signed up for a Citrus Tour, in which a citrus grower took a bus-full of us on a tour of a packing plant, juice facility, and orchard. And I have to say, it was pretty enlightening. I’ve said before that we live in a food “black box” society. Most Americans have no idea how their food is produced; they just buy it at the store and eat it. So checking out the packing and juice plants to find out how that navel orange in the orchard is converted into the the slick shiny thing you buy or into the premium juice that takes up a huge refrigerated space at Safeway opened up the black box for me a little.

Yes, your navel oranges are washed, dipped in fungicide, and waxed before they head to the grocery store. They may be gassed with ethylene gas, although only if there is green still left in the peel. They are routinely subjected to pesticide while still in the orchard to protect against pests that attack the peel (but not the fruit underneath). All this is done to make the fruit look good, because as one farmer said, “People like pretty fruit.”

While in the orchard, I sampled one of the oranges off the tree, and it was delicious. But it was a dull sort of orange with a tiny bit of green in the peel. No gas and no wax yet. Definitely not as pretty as those on display in the grocery store. The farmer assured me it was safe to eat, because the last application of pesticide was a month earlier. I listened to him chat about ”nitrogen” he added to the irrigation water to fertilize the trees.

It wasn’t an organic tour; that’s for sure. But the manipulations were pretty small if you compare it with juice production. It takes millions and millions of dollars to buy all the technology to make orange juice. I’ll save that for a later post, though…

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Food and Farming–The Debate Rolls On

January 20th, 2010

Many thanks to my brother, Chris, for forwarding me Joel Kotkin’s Forbes article, America’s Agricultural Angst. I have to admit I smiled when Kotkin referred to Michael Pollan as an “agri-intellectual.” A new breed has been born! But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Pollan and similarly-opinioned food and farming journalists question the status quo, which is useful in any freethinking, progressive society. What’s also important, however, is dialogue and equal coverage of divergent viewpoints. Kotkin’s defense of the real accomplishments of modern American agriculture is overdue and definitely worth a read.

What do you think?

On an unrelated note, here’s a follow-up photo of the Great Freeze of 2009. As you may recall, we abandoned the Rumsey mandarin crop after the oranges froze on the trees. This photo taken two days ago shows how the frozen mandarins rotted on the branch. A real shame.

: Rotten Mandarins

Posted in Farming, Organic Mandarin Oranges | 4 Comments »

The Facts About Food and Farming

January 11th, 2010

Back in October I attended a dinner to promote Michael Pollan’s documentary, The Botany of Desire. Not surprisingly, conversation drifted away from the film and toward Pollan’s more famous work, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The author graciously answered questions from the group, discussing the hazards of monoculture, the agri-industrial complex, and the ubiquity of cheap processed food. I listened quietly and was struck by a strange thought. Nearly every one at the gathering (a major donors event for KQED) seemed to agree with Pollan and talked about agriculture as though they owned the issue, while not a single farmer, around whom the whole discussion revolved, was present. It was one-sided to say the least. And that to me is at the heart of the often acrimonious food and farming debate. There is no dialogue between the ag-reform-minded, often urban, ”food” crowd and actual farmers. Instead the two poles of the farming debate spend their time “debating” with like-minded people, preaching to the converted, talking right past each other.

So it was with great pleasure that I stumbled upon a recent article by Los Angeles Times food columnist, Russ Parsons. Finally a nuanced look at the food and farming debate! What immediately won me over was his first point: farming is a business. It’s not altruistic. Most farmers don’t make a whole lot of money anyway. To begrudge them technological advances that might increase their income is to expect a degree of self-sacrifice that is not only unrealistic but also unfair.

This struck home on a personal level this winter when a freeze wiped out part of our mandarin crop. As I’ve said before, there are so many things beyond control in farming: freezes, drought, market conditions. One can understand why a farmer wants to even the odds by using whatever he or she can to boost production, to try to insulate income, as much as possible, from income-killers over which there is no control. In medicine, we call such technological advances progress. In agriculture, they’re called short-sighted or morally wrong.

Now I’m not saying I advocate the status quo, but ag reform is a tough, complex issue. And if some ground rules for dialogue, like those suggested by Parsons, are established, maybe we’ll move beyond acrimony into something more like progress.

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Simple Pleasures–Fresh-Squeezed Orange Juice

January 7th, 2010

Sometimes when I read about the processing of food in America I find myself overwhelmed. Michael Pollan’s exposure of the cornification of our country in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Eric Schlosser’s descriptions of the perverse manipulation of food flavors in Fast Food Nation make me look at food with an anxious, uncertain eye. What am I eating? And does it bear any resemblance to what I really think it is?

As a farmer’s daughter, I grew up knowing where my food came from. We had our own cattle slaughtered and stored the packaged meat in our freezer. My mother laboriously prepared green beans straight from the field, which we packaged and froze for the coming months. I never had a jar of jam that didn’t come from our own produce. But now? I live in the city, and my father, though he still produces multiple crops, doesn’t grow the diversity necessary for a well-balanced diet. Both of us are patrons of supermarkets and all the brightly packaged products there.

Like many others, I yearn for a clearer, more transparent vision of one of the most basic aspects of life–eating. I guess I’ve reached the point where I don’t care if there’s a pound of butter in the recipe. I just want to know what the ingredients are. And if I don’t know what half the ingredients in a processed food are– then why am I eating it? It might as well be Soylent Green.

Which brings me to the topic of fresh-squeezed orange juice. I’ve never been a big juice drinker, but I love fresh-squeezed orange juice. The taste is unmatched. And I’m lucky, as the daughter of a citrus-producer, to have access to as many organic mandarin oranges as I want. My father hooked me. He drinks fresh-squeezed mandarin juice every day in season, squeezing it with a simple old electric juicer ($20.99 at Target!).

The beauty of fresh-squeezed juice is that not only does it taste so outrageously good, but you also know exactly what it is. The processing is simple and done by you. Not only that, the nutrition is outstanding. An 8-oz glass provides 100% of the RDA for Vitamin C, as well quality amounts of thiamine, folate, and potassium. It’s good for you, it tastes great, and it’s pure. What’s not to like about that?

If you contrast that with some of the reconstituted orange juices in the store… well, I won’t go into that beyond to say there’s nothing local about that juice (think Brazil) and some of the ingredients aren’t listed on the container. So again, as mantra for 2010, I keep coming back to Keep It Simple. There’s something really lovely about going slow, knowing where you’re going, and savoring the steps along the way.

Posted in Nutrition and Diet, Organic Mandarin Oranges | No Comments »

Books You Gotta Read?

January 4th, 2010

When I first started this blog back in September, I originally envisioned a blog about food, healthy lifestyles, farming, and good books. I think I’ve covered most of those topics, except where are the books? 2009 was marked by lots of action– crop-destroying freezes, new olive tree plantings, the swine flu epidemic. With so much to write about, who has time for books?

The answer is: we all do. Books are long slow drinks in a gulping internet-fed information age. When I feel barraged by all the short-clip information blasted at me by my web browser and iPhone, I stop and remember why I always return to the bound volume. In this frenetic and crazed world, books offer developed thought. Tell me how you get that in a 140-character Tweet?

So what long-form, anachronistic printed item am I reading? Don’t laugh. I’ve gone rogue and am reading Sarah Palin’s new book. There’s much to laugh about Going Rogue, from the glammy cover portrait of a smiling Sarah looking upwards and off into a shining maverick future, to the down-home plain-spoken writing style, which somewhere, somehow must have had a ghost writer’s imprint. Yet, I cannot deny, the book is somehow very interesting to me. It’s a monstrous spin on a very conservative woman’s actions and viewpoints. I find myself putting the book down, searching the internet for another tell-all about Sarah to balance this portrayal. There isn’t one that I’ve found– I wonder where all those New York Times reporters have been?

Now, I didn’t buy this book, so I have no guilt about padding Sarah’s pockets as I read it. But I have to admit, I’m glad I’m reading it. There’s no point having a viewpoint if you can’t face exposing yourself to someone else’s. It’s the only way to understand others, and Sarah Palin, much as some of us don’t like it, represents a huge segment of the American population.

That being said, if you want to be like me and dabble in the opposition without shelling out a cent for the view, you can always get a copy at the library– or you can borrow mine.

Posted in Books You Gotta Read | 8 Comments »

New Year’s Resolution–Avoiding Portion Distortion

December 27th, 2009

It seems we’re doomed to be fat. I know this might not be what you want to hear when you’ve just come off a Christmas caloric binge, but a recent article in the Annals of Internal Medicine shocked me. Just when you thought the only safe nutritional path left was to make your own food, it turns out that even our old beloved cookbooks have been betraying us, packing more calories into old-time favorite recipes.

According to the article, which examined 18 recipes in successive editions of The Joy of Cooking published over the past 70 years, calories per serving has increased by two-thirds, from an average of 268 calories in 1936 to 437 calories in 2006. These are for the same recipes! The difference was attributed to portion size and to the actual ingredients. For example, the same amount of ingredients that formerly made 12 waffles now only makes 6. And recipes today might include more sugar, butter, and add-ins, such as raisins and nuts, to assuage our increasing cravings for sweetness and fat.

Throw in the increasing size of plates and utensils and you’ve got even more danger of portion distortion. According to a July 2007 article in the the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, plate size has increased by 36% since 1960. With bigger plates, there’s a lot more room to pile on those bigger portions. Even well-meaning experts aren’t immune to the deception of the bigger dinner plate. In a September 2007 article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, nutrition experts, when given bigger bowls, unknowingly upped their food consumption by 31%. Similarly, bigger spoons led to a 14.5% increase in serving size ingested.

So is it any wonder that average daily caloric intake is up? It is, and it’s awful. According to this month’s edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Americans ate an average of 500 calories more per day between the early 1970s and the early 2000s. Children’s caloric consumption increased by an average of 350 calories in the same time. This might explain why Americans gained, on average, 19 pounds in the same period, while children gained nine.

So how about those New Year’s Resolutions? Smaller plates, bowls, and spoons? And watch for the good old cookbooks. Those calories are coming at you from everywhere!

Posted in Nutrition and Diet | 4 Comments »

Aftermath of the Freeze

December 16th, 2009

I went to the farm this weekend and walked the mandarin orchard with my father, pulling small oranges off trees and tasting them, trying to see which were still good and which had been ruined by last week’s sub-freezing temperatures. It was heartbreaking. At the Rumsey farm, more than 75% of the fruit has spoiled on the tree. With numbers like that, it doesn’t make sense to harvest the remaining mandarins. The workers would be forced to sort good from bad, and the yields wouldn’t warrant the labor expenses. As a consequence, we’ve decided to abandon Rumsey’s mandarins.

Fortunately, the damage is less severe at the Dunbar orchard. It looks like we’ve lost maybe 25% of the mandarins to the freeze. This may seem awful, but that means at least three-quarters of the fruit are still marketable. The only problem is that there isn’t a big market right now. It’s been a bumper crop for organic satsuma mandarins this year, and even a freeze hasn’t been able to correct an oversupply of marketable mandarins.

Which points out the always changing fortunes of the farmer. If it isn’t Mother Nature–wind, freezing temperatures or drought–it’s market conditions. I’ve always thought a farmer needed a stomach of steel to weather such uncertainties; there is so much beyond his or her control. By contrast, my job as a physician, with all the certainties afforded by modern medical technology, seems like a relative walk in the park.

Posted in Farming, Organic Mandarin Oranges | 3 Comments »