Daily Menu and the Farm Bill

Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" changed my life, really making me look at where my food comes from for the first time. If you haven't read it and are at all interested in food, I highly recommend it.

After reading it last year, I decided not to eat industrial meat, and have been industrial meat free for almost a year. The book put local eating into the spotlight for me, and because of that, my family eats fresher, more whole, tastier, more environmentally friendly foods, and we're all healthier for it. It would be easier for more people to make the eat local plunge if local, seasonal, sustainably and humanely raised meats and dairy and vegetables were available to everyone in the grocery store at prices comparable to conventionally grown, but with current farm subsidies, it is cheaper for big businesses to raise feedlot animals that destroy the environment, cheaper to produce high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated fats, cheaper to pump into our supermarkets all the things that make us unhealthy than it is to raise real, honest to goodness food.

Pollan recently wrote a piece about the farm bill in the NY Times that is worth reading.

Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn
syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among
children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with
subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too
often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has
raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize
precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to
make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also
for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on
the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers
in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico.

Daily Menu

Breakfast
2 egg omelet with 1 piece bacon (1 Point), bok choy, and red bell pepper
tea
orange

Lunch
Curried lentils with brown rice
steamed broccoli and cauliflower
2 c. milk

Dinner
Bean and barley soup (beans from Phipps in Pescadero, barley from grain CSA, veggies from Full Belly Farm)