5
How political history influences what's on your plate
What do Prohibition, World War II and immigration policy have to do with your food? Exploring the hidden side of American cuisine.
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
Kai Ryssdal: Time now for a little Freakonomics Radio, that moment of our lives -- every couple of weeks -- where we talk to with Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and blog of the same name. The subject matter is the hidden side of everything.
Dubner, it's good to talk to you my friend.
Stephen Dubner: Good to talk to you Kai. And I have a question for you if you don't mind.
Ryssdal: Of course, that's kind of how these things go, isn't it?
Dubner: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate America's food -- I'm curious to know?
Ryssdal: OK, big topics. Uh... 7.3.
Dubner: Yeah, all right. So... um...
Ryssdal: So is there a right answer?
Dubner: No, there is no right answer. I was just curious. You know why? Because we love to complain about our food.
Ryssdal: Yes.
Dubner: And for those who like to complain, there's a new book coming out called "An Economist Gets Lunch," by Tyler Cowen. And he explains -- how he puts it -- "How American Food Got Bad." And some of the explanations are really interesting. For starters, he blames Prohibition.
Tyler Cowen: A lot of good restaurants, they make a lot of the profits on the drinks. When you shut down their ability to sell wine, beer, other drinks, basically it put them all out of business. Those quality restaurants, within a period of year or two, they vanished.
Ryssdal: Yes, but Dubner, Prohibition was like 80 years ago, man.
Dubner: It is true but many profound effects have distant causes -- as I've tried to teach you, grasshopper. Anyway, we did bounce back -- but what we did was we bounced back in volume of restaurants. But a lot of them were diners and cafeterias. Cowen says we began to cater more than any other nation to our children's palates.
Cowen: Compared to a lot of Asian cultures, or European cultures, when it comes to the food scene, very often in America the child is in charge, and that again means soft, and sweet, and gooey.
Dubner: So you've got soft, sweet and gooey food taking center stage -- plus, Cowen argues, a lack of new flavors. Can you guess why we didn't get any new flavors?
Ryssdal: A lack of new flavors? No, I got nothing.
Dubner: Immigration. Or, really, the lack immigration. The Immigration Act of 1924 set quotas that weren't lifted until the 1960s. More immigration generally means more food innovation. New -- you know, everything -- spices, ingredients, know-how strategies -- and we weren't getting a lot of either of those.
Ryssdal: OK, but let me throw another one at you, though just for the heck of it: What about convenience? We were in the '40s and '50s a more mobile society. We wanted convenience wanted frozen, we wanted drive-thru and all that good stuff.
Dubner: That's exactly right. Cowen, he says that -- this is interesting -- it's kind of a byproduct of World War II. Which is that during the war, out of necessity, we had to learn to can, package and transport food on a much bigger scale than ever before. And when the war was over, we liked our Spam. We hung onto it, and all those processes that came along with it. What's interesting though is that in Europe World War II had the opposite effect.
Cowen: It shut down a lot of transportation, it shut down a lot of borders. So people ate very locally. They would grow things in their gardens. You know, they might even eat the family pet. Do things that we might not find that tasty or that pleasant. But the result in Europe was to make it more local, not less.
Ryssdal: OK, so now that I think about it, the family pet is probably like a cow or a pig -- not Fido, right?
Dubner: Depends on your family, Kai. I can't speak for your family.
Ryssdal: And local makes sense too, right?
Dubner: It does and you know American food now, Cowen -- and just about everybody else -- argues, is on the upswing. And a big part of that is this local movement -- the idea that we should all eat more local food, maybe all local food, which might taste better often. But as a solution to the food future -- the idea of feeding more and more people around the world nutritious and affordable food -- Cowen argues that the locavore movement is a little bit snobbish and a lot impractical.
Cowen: The biggest food problem in the world today is that agricultural productivity is slowing down, and for a lot of the world food prices are going up. And for that we need more business technology and innovation, not locavore-ism.
Ryssdal: You are going to get such hate mail, can I tell you?
Dubner: Well, I think we should direct the hate mail to you this time after the turkey breast incident.
Ryssdal: Oh man, I'm still hearing about that! Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics.com is the website. Couple of weeks, huh?
Dubner: Talk to you soon, Kai. Thanks.
There are several ways in which locavor behaviors are bennefitial to the goal of providing nutritious food to the worlds population. Rising food prices are not related only to supply and demand of the crop in question. They are highly tied to the costs of distribution (oil), spoilage, and speculaton. There is not a world food shortage that is pushing food prices. There are highly volitile cost associated with getting said food from where it is produced to many places where it is required. This is exacerbated by the fact that in many of the places where food prices are too high for people to afford, food agriculture has been replaced with cash crop agriculture (It is not the field workers who are seeing this cash). This means that food needs to be shipped from places further away and causing the cost of food to fluctuate with the cost of oil and gasoline than with the actual world wide supply/demand for the crop. Locavorism is not a magic wand, and I am infact not a locavore, but keeping food production closer to point of consumption is likely a major key to solving the problem. I also agree with the commentor above that more organic methods of farming are a good model for growing the economy. Organic food production does not have a significantly lower yield than agribuisness production, but it does have a higher cost. The cost savings in non-organic methods is largely associated with removing labor costs from the production. Meaning less people with less money to spend on things like food, therefore driving the relative cost up.
Kai, your comment about Europeans eating cows or pigs was making light of the reality over there. I met a Frenchman one time who said that food was extremely scarce after the military had gone back and forth taking and eating everything that was available. He admitted to me as a young boy toward the end of the war, they found a soldier's arm and brought it back for the stewing pot. I would guess, yes, they were eating all the dogs, cats, or anything that was available just to stay alive. We were very much sheltered here in the U.S. from the awfulness of what was happening. Please don't make light of it.
Wouldn't people with less resources eat what they can get their hands on, whereas people with lots of resources eat what they want? Given that the US is the economic power house one would think that Americans have the greatest amount of freedom, chose and develop the food they want. Unless of course people are inclined to not pick good food when given the choice.
Our food choices are influenced by government policy too, specifically the chain that Michael Pollan identified. Cheap oil > cheap fertilizer > cheap corn > cheap and unhealthy, fatty beef and vegetable oil > cheap burgers and fries... If beef was only allowed to feed on grasslands, the price and healthiness would go up and obesity might go down as well as our children would gain better habits into adulthood. Since government controls federal lunch policies, I don't know why we don't make bold moves here.
The locavore movement has never presented itself as a solution to world hunger! It is supposed to help be a solution for America's obesity and lack of nutrition problems. (And not to mention having some food that is fresh and tastes good.) I hear this snobbery thing ALL the time and it's so easy to toss off but has little merit. As with many "benefit to society movements", they are often first supported by those with more money. But I don't fully believe that local food is just for people with more money or those who want a little snob appeal on their plate. There are ways to cook great local food inexpensively. But even if what Cowen says is spot on....good. By all means....yes, let's tax the rich by selling them expensive local food because purchasing local food directly benefits some of the people at the lowest of all income levels....small farmers. Local food is also great for our flagging economy as it is one of the fastest growing small businesses in the country right now.
So Cowen's point is that locavore-ism can't co-exist with more business technology and innovation? Well as my small farmer grandfather used to say...."Aw horseshit!"
