The problem with Pollan and other foodies of his ilk is that they ignore the daily reality of the average working schlub. Supermarkets thrive because they are convenient and cheap sources of the food. The average working schlub does not have the time drive out in the country and forge for salad greens, they are too busy wrangling the kids, fighting their way through traffic back and forth to work and trying to carve out a few small minutes for themselves. Supermarkets are open when they get off work, while the local farmer’s market is only open 6am to 11am on Sat. There is a supermarket on every corner in the ‘burbs, but most people would have to drive some considerable distance to find local farmers. Gas is expensive and the light bill must be paid.

And there is the issues that not every neighborhood in a urban setting even has a good supermarket handy. Recently, UC Davis, known far and wide for it’s ag program, performed an experiment. In many neighborhoods in the city of Sacramento, there was no convenient place to buy fresh veggies. So they supplied some of the local mom and pop stores with some fresh veggies. They were a huge hit.

I think most people would like to eat the way Pollan and the Berkley folks advocate they should, but life gets in the way. Until that sad fact is addressed, people are going to continue to chow down on whatever is handy.

Or, you could just say straight out that you don't feel like making an effort to eat well. It ain't rocket science, as they say.

DragonflyToo:

... life gets in the way. Until that sad fact is addressed, ...

How do you address that "sad fact"? Life will always get in the way, if you let it.

The fact is, food choices are part of life, a big part, with a big effect on health and happiness.

Of course convenience plays a big part in our choices. Experiments like the UC Davis one you mention should be better publicized. If veggies are a "huge hit" then surely the mom & pop stores will be looking for vendors. Politics play a part in getting the food distributed, but consumer awareness and choice is the main driver for commercial decisions. As more people demand the good stuff, more stores will tend to carry it.

Even if it's hard to buy the good stuff, it's not very hard to lay off the crap. Eating better tends to be an incremental process, starting with eliminating fast food and junk, and paying more attention to what goes into your body. As life goes on, it doesn't have to stop people from paying attention. That's their choice.

and if your choice is to eat crap, then life is all about "choice" isnt it? my right to choose..........you fill in the blank.....

oicuateonetwo:

and if your choice is to eat crap, then life is all about "choice" isnt it? my right to choose..........you fill in the blank.....

I'm having trouble finding a coherent thought in there.

If you're worried that I want to take away your ability to choose ot eat crap, you can relax. I just don't like people to blame their poor choices on outside forces beyond their control.

If you're worried about those who choose to eat crap, and want to force them to eat better, then I can't get on board. Ultimately people are responsible for their own decisions.

There is so much blame to go around that no one will leave this table without being full of it. (1) Wholesalers and producers who supply national grocery store chains and the broad market have been slicing and dicing, and continue to cut coners on quality so that they can reach an impossibly low price point and still make a profit; (2) Many buyers in the chains don't care enough about the trust and goodwill of their customers to really understand the difference between quality, value and hype (3) the "Berkley folks" and the "Foodie" crowd who dishonestly insist that high quality food must cost a fortune and be produced as inefficently as possible in order to be considered authentic or worthwhile; (4) and the apathetic consumer who allows him or herself to be abused and misled on a regular basis.

Anyone involved in the food industry from the production side of things can attest to the gulf that persists between what passes and what should be. What passes for high quality in most grocery stores, including the Natural and Health Food industry, is usually laughable but at times it's an outrage. When high quality is offered, it is often by accident or is invariably so overpriced as to be either an insult to the intelligence of the buyer or as reinforcement to the delusional who persists in believeing that quality and price are directly proportional; (usually because it takes too much talent, time and effort to find out the truth.)

There are exceptions, and they are rare. The American market and consumer is in transitition. We are a work in progress. As this market matures there are only two ways that it can go in terms of quality and value: UP & UP !

Eljem

You are the one who has the power to vote with your dollars. I never buy meat or produce at chain grocery stores. I can't stand the smell of their meat departments, to tell the truth.

You get out of food only what you are willing to put in. If you eat crap, you have only yourself to blame.

Andsomeone with limited food budget and no real choice in transportation "chooses" to be unable to get out to the country store?

Explain how someone with inadequate resources chooses to travel into the country or at least to a better part of town to spend money they do not have. Are you suggesting these people steal a car and go rob a farmer?

The mythical "someone with inadequate resources" will never be able to do anything to help themselves, because you have defined this person so.

Real people have real resources and choices. The "best" choices are not available to all people in all places, but all people in all places do have some choices. Awareness of this fact, and acceptance of responsibility for the choices, is the first step.

The next step is to stop wasting money on crap, and direct your limited resources more wisely.

Politically driven changes to the infrastructure are also desirable, but individuals can and should make changes in parallel with this process.

I guarantee you that I could feed you for pennies in any metropolitan area and you would be a happy camper. I know all about "limited resources" as you put it.

I know what it's like to sit on the subway for an hour to get the cheapest deal on meat, go home, then get back on the subway for another hour to get veggies from another market.

Being poor should make one creative. Put it this way, even the nastiest corner grocery has cabbages, carrots and apples. You can get enough of those simple veggies for the cost of a single large bag of chips and a soda to easily feed four people. The Boy can make a dish from those ingredients that would make you clean your plate and beg for more.

If you can't make a decent meal from a bag of potatoes, some assorted veggies and a tough cut of meat, then you aren't thinking at all. When you have no money, that's what you cook with, and when you get some, you'll still make the same things, because they really do taste that good.

You don't get to make excuses about "having" to eat crap if you have even one bottle of soda, bag of chips, frozen precooked anything or box of mac and cheese in your home. If you have those things and you have them regularly, then you have enough money to eat well.

Don't be sorry. It's not your fault unless you are trying to defend the bulk of suppliers who sell crap. They outnumber those offering high quality by such a factor as to make hitting the lottery a more prudent bet. Certainly consumers need to take some responsibility but fraud, and cheating persist on a broad level and unless you are a chemist with a lab and are willing to spend a good portion of your time analyizing what is in the food that you consume or are a self-sufficent farmer producing all of what you eat you will be forced to trust someone. There's the rub. If you trust that what you are buying is high quality and are buying it from any of the following outlets (99.9% of all available sources)you are not going to consistently get what you trust you are getting if you assume that to be high quality : Wallmart, Whole Foods, any "natural " grocery store being supplied by either of the two dominat giant Natural Foods whoesalsers in that market, (UNFI, or Tree of Life), Safeway, Costco, Lucky, Albertson, Trader Joes, Kroger, Vaugns, All other chains on the East Coast including Wegmans. It would be far easier to list the miniscule number of the places where high quality is consistently, readibly and reasonably available. In the East there is Fairway Market in Manhattan. Highly successful market and buyer Steve Jenkins has been listed as one of the ten most influential persons in New York. In the West there is no single store that matches up to Fairway in terms of quality and price but there are a few that come close.

The large institutional suppliers like Sysco by and large carry the largest common denominator. Even if a restaruant is willing to pay a premium they will be hard pressed to find something decent there. Forget trying to find something exceptional. They don't have it and wouldn't know it if they did. The food industry sells what it wants to sell and what it can convince its customers to buy. When consumers, (consumers is not just the public but includes all buyers at every level of the food chain) have choices they generally make the right ones. A store like Faiway Market makes it possible to have choices, a life, to eat well, and not be a mark. I live in the West. If eveyone lived withing driving distance of Fairway you'd have a much stronger point.

I 'll take that bet. I guarantee you that you could not feed me and I be a happy camper for pennies a day. There may be food that is locally grown that is reasonably priced and "healthy" but that would not make me a happy camper. I don't eat any of the junk food that you list. Where would I find #1 Ikura, Piquillo peppers, Wild King or Sockey Red salmon, fresh single variety high polyphenol count extra virgin olive oil with ffa below .2 and a peroxide value of less than 7, real tomatoes not grown in a hot house, Serrano ham, etc. etc. for pennies a day.???

In Chicago, I can get you all that at places like Fox and Obel, various ethnic markets, and one particular fish market that's only open on Fridays. No worries. I'm still looking for a source of game birds, and I can't find grass-fed beef here. Apparently I'll have better luck in Milwaukee.

If you live in Texas, I'd send you to Central Market. Sadly, they have no plans to expand.

If you think what you require to eat well is $500.00 worth of groceries a week, then you got problems. I can do that, and I spend that more often that I ought to, but the art of good cooking is in making the oddball, the strange, and the tough into food that you can love. If you don't know how to do that, then please do us the courtesy of not calling yourself a cook.

Seriously, dude, if you can't do something with a few marrow bones (free, at the right butcher) or some nasty old tough short ribs, etc., enough veg to make a mirepoix (they can even be stale) and some cheap wine then I'm wasting my time here. I can feed you cheap and make you beg for more. All you need to have on hand is the basics.

I am happy for you that you have hours and hours to ride around on a subway. Not every poor person has hours of time to ride around. Not every town has one or even decent bus service. Your asumptions are quite large.

Also not everyone has been trained to cook or has access to a cooking instructor. Feminists killed home econmics in school where students without cooking skills could learn how to cook. They said the class was sexist. No one ever held a gun to anyones head and made only girls sign up.

In fact messyone, I took the class because it was full of girls and it was the smartest social move I ever made in high school. But back to the subject. Some people can't cook. That could be fixed easily enough.

Baloney. The secret to all great cooking is great ingredients. I don't care how talented you thing you are if you use defective stale ingredients you will not be feeding me. I ship oil from the West to the Chicago area to specialty stores because the oil at the places you mentions is, in many cases, defective, rancid, or adulterated. The number of places in the United states that carry an olive oil like the one I described are next to none.

The point is that finding decent or high quality food is a lot more difficult than you are suggesting. I recently had the private label olive oil from Central Market in Texas analyzed. ( along with 21 other popular and widely available brands) It was defective on at least two counts and failed the standards I laid down in all respects except one: The polyphenol count was above 200. Otherwise a very mediocre grade of olive oil. The truth is that most buyers don't know the difference between high quality EVO and defective olive oil. I've witnessed buyers reject fresh well made extra virgin olive oil in favor of "cheesy" off grade oil simply because they were so familiar with the crap that they believed that there was something wrong with the real thing. This is not unusual. I see it all the time. Really great olive oil is not necessarily expensive. It's just difficult to find because the buyers don't know the difference. Central Mart is a case in point. I have been in the seafood business at the fishing fleet level and produce high grade extra virgin olive oil today. I can tell you that I am certain that it is difficult to find high quality extra virgin olive oil at a decent price in the United States. I am not guessing about this.

The art of good cooking is presenting the best that Nature can provide without screwing it up. In other words, a good part of the art is in selecting the best ingredients. All great chef's will attest.
You can work your magic on the "nasty old short ribs" and rancid oil and I'll take the fresh fish and the fresh pressed EVO. I won't spend 500.00 a week but I'm in the business.