Forage Voyage

It doesn't quite rhyme... but this is my next project and I'm eager to share it.

The purpose of the Forage Voyage is to collect information for and make substantial progress towards the completion of a book. Recently, a flurry of books (e.g., Omnivore’s Dilemma, Food Fight) and films (e.g., Food Inc., Fresh) have emerged. These works have attempted to link together problems in our modern-day food system with their associated consequences on human life. In some ways, the problems defined by previous works have been narrow in scope, focusing on specific ways that our food system affects health, the climate, or the relationship between politics and agribusiness. However, what we choose to eat has widespread implications, and previous works have failed to demonstrate the interconnected nature of food and the consequences that consumption has on global health. So, I will venture into the wild, foraging meals along the way, to write a book in hopes of making those connections more clear. In the book, I plan to frame our food system in its historical and psychological context. Specifically, I will discuss events that helped shape our modern-day food system, from evolutionary adaptations psychological preferences to public policies that have both worked and failed.

Food is essential for human life, and the progress we have made in designing a food system aimed at reducing hunger and malnutrition has been successful in some key ways, but limited in others. At the same time, modern-day agriculture has adverse impacts on health and the environment. Perhaps the most obvious impact of our food choices is on physical health. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) claims that obesity has been steadily increasing since 1985, when rates were less than 10% in most states. By 1997, most states had obesity rates between 15-19%. As of 2010, obesity rates were greater than 20% in every single state, and in 13 states, were greater than 30%. Only 20% of Americans get enough exercise, however, that figure has not changed since 1986, suggesting that our food environment is the cause of increased obesity. As a result, 4 out of the 6 leading causes of death (heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes) in this country are diet-related. This is not an American problem, the consequences of obesity are spreading; diabetes is projected to increase by 75% in China and 135% in India by 2030.

Obesity has been attributed to the consumption of highly processed foods, which are calorically dense and nutritionally poor. According to the USDA guidelines, only 5% of our daily calories should come from fat and sugar. However, the average 10-year old reports consuming 46% of their daily calories from added sugars and fats. Processed foods are more convenient than fresh fruits and vegetables, and appear more affordable at the register. However, the true cost of food is not reflected in its price tag because some crops are subsidized by tax dollars, such as corn, which is used to make unhealthy foods like corn syrup, rather than to fresh vegetables. In fact, in 2007, 74% of our government-sponsored farm subsides were allocated to meat and dairy, which should comprise only 20% of our diet.Whereas, 35% of our diet should be based on fruits and vegetables, but less than 1% of the farm subsides went towards those crops. Hence, a salad costs more than a McDonald’s Big Mac. Moreover, chronic diseases account for 75% of U.S. healthcare costs, another cost that is not reflected in the price tag.

Beyond the health of our bodies, food choices are environmentally costly in other ways. For example, agriculture is responsible for nearly 70% of all water usage. It takes a lot of water to grow and produce the food that we consume, with some foods, such as meat and dairy, being thirstier than others, such as vegetables. The type of agricultural system we have perfected in this country is also polluting water essential for life. In fact, agriculture is responsible for 70% of all water pollution, and 97% of all rivers and streams in this country tested positive for agricultural pesticides, 20% contained 10 or more different pesticide compounds, and 95% of edible fish, mollusks, and freshwater aquatic life test positive. Some individuals are affected by pollution more than others, contributing to social injustices. For example, farm workers exposed to occupational chemicals, often poor minorities, have high rates of prostate cancer.

These statistics are not new, but the analysis will be. As a Psychologist, I have a unique perspective on and understanding of our food choices. If the demand for real food, over food-like (highly processed) products, were to increase, then we could eliminate many of the problems associated with our food system. So, why do individuals choose to consume certain foods over others? This is the story of my book, and has been the aim of my research and the foundation for the classes that I have developed over the past 4 years. My research has been funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), and I have been privileged to work directly with some of the leading food researchers in the world. In my book, I plan to discuss evolutionary preferences for salt, sugar, and fat; food addiction; how packaging, labels, and facts affect our choices; and, very importantly, how disconnected we have become from our food and the land on which it is grown (topics grounded in the field of Ecopsychology). I will propose a number of solutions, something that the previous works have largely failed to do, which involve reconnecting with the land—putting a new twist on an old ideal. I will draw from research examining how natural experiences impact psychological wellbeing and consciousness. In addition, I will use my experience as a forager and urban gardener to tell the history of food, and to describe how being disconnected from the land on which our food grown results in a devaluation of our bodies (leading to obesity and health issues), a devaluation of each other (leading to social injustices and greed), and a devaluation of this planet (leading to pollution and a loss of biodiversity).

I'm heading out of LA on a diesel powered bus, which I'll live in for 6 months. I'll forage all my meals (hopefully), and trade what I can't find for goodies like red wine. I made my first batch of mugwort beer this week, but I can't go without the red wine... it's healthy, after all. My boyfriend, Andre, will be joining me, filming, collecting, setting up meals and events, and helping me write field guides and contributing to this book in various ways. The Forage Voyage departs at the end of May, and will follow the rain that feeds the mushrooms. This is just the start of many more posts to follow... stay tuned and spread the word. If you're interested in helping, please contact me!

The Consequences of our Food Choices, Part 1

I'm about to fly out to Washington DC where I will give an invited talk at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. I'm quite thrilled and honored to be presenting at this conference, and I'll be discussing my most recent studies on food choices. I almost didn't post today, but I don't want to start that trend again... so, here's a little something based on the work that I will be discussing.

For the past couple of years, I’ve become increasingly interested in understanding how and why we choose to consume certain foods over others. I believe this research is important because our food choices are both personally and socially relevant to issues such as our physical and psychological health, the environment, social justice, our economy, and our political structure.

Perhaps the most obvious impact of our food choices is on physical health, and this tends to be what most people focus on. In the past 25 years, we’ve seen huge changes in obesity rates. In fact, less than 10% of our population was classified as obese in 1985, and nearly 30% falls within that category now. Nearly 7 out of 10 American adults are classified as either overweight or obese. Everyone likes to pick on Americans, perhaps because we started the trend, but obesity is a global crisis. And obesity in children is even more alarming, because we form many of our food preferences and eating habits during early childhood, and rates in the Americas exceed 30%.

So, what’s going on? Well, it’s a complex issue but I think we are gaining some insights. While it’s certainly the case that we’re not getting enough exercise, that fact hasn’t changed in the past 25 years. Approximately 20% of adults got the recommended amount back in 1985, and that figure hasn’t changed. So if we’re not expending fewer calories, we must be taking more in than our bodies can use. We’re eating more processed foods, which are calorie dense and nutritionally poor. And we’re taking in more sugar and fat than ever before. The average 10-year old is consuming 46% of their daily recommended calories from added sugars and fats, when only 5% is recommended by the USDA.

This lifestyle is reeking havoc on our bodies, with 4 of the top leading causes of death being attributed to our diets, or lack thereof. In fact, obese individuals are 2-3 times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than their slimmer counterparts, and are at a much greater risk for developing Type 2 diabetes.

Let’s move beyond health, which is something we don’t often do. Our food choices are depleting essential resources necessary for maintaining life and are environmentally costly in a number of ways. For example, agriculture is responsible for nearly 70% of all water usage. It takes a lot of water to grow and produce the food that we consume, with some foods like meat and dairy requiring substantially more than others, such as peas.

And the type of agricultural system that we have perfected in this country is creating a toxic environment. What water isn’t utilized by our crops and livestock is often polluting the water we need for drinking—97% of our waterways contain detectable amounts of agricultural pesticides.

Let’s talk social justice for just a moment. Often the farm workers growing and harvesting our food suffer the most, and many of these workers are poor minorities. Research funded by the National Institute of Health blames occupational chemicals for increases rates of prostate cancer in farm workers.

Food also requires a great deal of energy to produce and transport. I heard Michael Pollen say that it takes 7 liters of oil to produce 1 Big Mac, and we’re certainly using more than our fair share of oil. In fact, we use nearly twice the amount of oil as other developed nations.

We fight wars for black gold so that we can create food-like products that require much more energy than we get out of them. It takes 2200 energy calories to produce 1 calorie of a diet soda. Does this make any sense? Is anyone else asking themselves this question right now? What do we do… stay tuned!

Venice Harvest Xchange, a movement towards food sanity

The VHX is a movement, not merely an event. Last Sunday my friends and I held the first "official meeting" of our new food club, the Venice Harvest Xchange. Modeled after the San Francisco Underground Market, backyard gardeners, urban foragers, and food producers who cannot afford a commercial kitchen license, now have a venue at which to offer their goods. Sunday brought out 12 food producers and over 100 attendees, who tasted, traded for, and purchased whole foods like kale, rainbow chard, salad greens, lemon verbena, hummus, celery and apple cardamon soup, an assortment of dried mushrooms, spinach and feta quiche, raw chocolate raspberry bars, roasted peppers preserved in garlic infused oil, plum butter, chocolate flourless cake, cilantro pesto, cabbage wraps topped with cashew cream, fresh fruit smoothies, and the most delicious and healthy granola that I've ever had the pleasure spooning into my mouth (thank you, Andre!). The hit of the day was the wood-fired pizza, baked in a hand-built earth oven (designed by Andre and built by he, Nicolas, and yours truly), which was loaded with heaps of fresh vegetables, basil, and a hint of mozzarella. What a joy it was to see this event finally come to fruition, after living it out only in my mind for the past 2 years.

Consuming locally produced and sourced food (as opposed to food-like products) should not be a privilege, available only to those who can afford to stroll the farmers markets or the isles of upscale groceries that claim to offer "whole" or "conscious" foods. That said, I don't take my privileged food access lightly, especially here in the United States, where our food is literally killing us. The over-consumption of food is to blame for 3 of the 4 leading causes of death, making our water toxic, and contributing to serious changes in our climate, not to mention reeking havoc on our social and political reputation. Ironically, the problem with our current food system is a direct result of its success. In fact, we have been so successful at industrializing agriculture that we now produce about 3,800 calories per person per day, leaving nearly 70% of all Americans either overweight or obese and costing society billions of dollars in healthcare costs annually. Retired military officials recently claimed that food has become a threat to national security. In a report entitled “Too Fat to Fight,” it is claimed that “being overweight or obese turns out to be the leading medical reason why applicants fail to qualify for military service.” At the same time, many Americans live in “food deserts” and struggle to obtain food. Something has gone terribly wrong, and what can we do to fix it?

Return to VHX. I am not such an optimist, or perhaps such a fool, that I believe the VHX is the ultimate solution to our food crises. It is a start--giving freedom to those who want to speak to the chef, know where their food comes from, and support a local economy that promotes bartering over buying. I do hope that it continues to be educational, fun, community oriented, and most of all open to anyone who wants to participate. Other markets, including the San Francisco market that gave rise to my idea to form VHX, have been shut down for fears of "food safety." Did you know that the FDA inspects less than 1% of all food imports, down from 8% in 1992? Ask me how I made my hummus, now that's food safety.

On Being a Freegan

I don't like labels, but I'll take this one. For the past few months, I've been living off the waste of capitalism. Without a doubt, I eat better than most of wealthy American. I certainly eat better than I used to, even when I restricted myself to shopping only at the local farmers markets and the amazing Co-Opportunity in Santa Monica. These days, my diet consists of blueberries, strawberries, bananas, pears, apples, oranges, fancy salads and packaged greens, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, celery, artichokes, eggs, the occasional melon, and other surprise treats like coconut water, lychees, roasted pistachios, and apricot walnut tarts. Much of the food I haul out of dumpsters parked behind nearby grocery stores is organic and consists primarily of fresh produce, bread, meat, and eggs. lt must be sorted, bits of it composted, and typically comes wrapped in packaging that needs to be recycled. Dumpster diving is less convenient and a little more time consuming than shopping just for what I plan to consume over the course of a week, but the food is free and I can't stand by quietly knowing that so much quality food is going to waste, especially given how much energy it takes to produce what we put onto our plates.

In Los Angeles alone, there are 1.7 million food insecure people living with hunger and malnutrition. At the same time, millions of pounds of food are trashed each day, translating into 3,000 pounds per second! Put simply, the quantity of food waste and packaging that ultimately ends up in a landfill, taking hundreds of years to decompose and producing harmful greenhouse gases, is an atrocity on multiple levels.

My friends have taken to eating the food I bring home from dives. They look forward to their weekly deliveries, and I'm working on setting up a specified delivery point at a friends house where we've stashed a spare refrigerator to store our loot so that I can eliminate the work of delivering (as if it's work to visit with friends). Ultimately, what I'd prefer is to see this food going to people who need it, not that my friends, many of whom are artists and earn very little money, don't fall into that category. But with so many people living with hunger just in my city alone, there should be a better way of distributing what grocery chains deem waste. I know many organizations are working on trying to foster 0-waste food policies, so hopefully my days of freeganism are numbered. In the meantime, I'll happily perch myself on my front stoop devouring a baby spinach salad laced with goat cheese, cranberries, and candied pecans. One woman's waste is another woman's treasure. Yum!

no-poo shampoo

My partner has been using "no-poo" for about 3 months and I joined the crusade against polluting our streams with chemicals, even "organic" ones, a couple of weeks ago.

Baking soda paste applied directly to the scalp. If desired, you can follow with a watered down vinegar solution (1 part vinegar to about 10 parts water). I stopped using the vinegar and will try a touch of lemon, since they're in season. I was also told about using yucca flowers instead of baking soda. Since they're blooming all over the hills right now, I will try it and report back. They smell much nicer than vinegar. So... more to come.

How to be Happy: Part 1

Get old.

We've known this for years, but new theories explaining the phenomenon have renewed interest in the finding that, as we get older, we get happier.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/05/04/1003744107.abstract

This, my friends, is something to look forward to. After all, our cognitive abilities decline with each passing year after our mid to late 20's: we forget more, it becomes harder to learn a second language, our attention shifts more slowly; and I don't need to tell most of you about the physical effects of aging... what now takes months to heal used to take weeks, if I heal at all. Yet, we become happier and happier.

Thankfully, we have no choice but to get old. Here are a few other predictors of happiness, of which we actually have control over:

1. Political affiliation: Republicans are happier than Democrats. Republicans seem to resonate with ideas such as, "people get what they deserve" and "if you work hard, it'll pay off," whereas Democrats believe social injustices occur in the world every day, disparities exist, and Democrats suffer when others suffer.

2. Being married: Married couples, but only happily married couples, are happier than unmarried couples or singles. Research has shown that being married and unhappy, though, is actually worse than being single. So, fix that troubled relationship or get out if you're looking for bliss. Ironically enough, married men live longer than unmarried men, but married women live less long than unmarried women. So, chose your goals (happiness, longevity) wisely. Maybe I should consider marrying a woman... hmm...

3. Income: Money does buy happiness, to some extent. The research is conflicting, though, with some studies showing no effects of income (past the ability to meet basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, etc.) and others showing no real differences until one becomes very wealthy. Accumulation of wealth past a certain point, to me, seems problematic for any society. I'll save this discussion for another post.

For more, go here:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-happy-yet

Psychological Spillover Effects

From an evolutionary perspective, our bodies were not designed to climb mountains for fun, to run so fast and hard that it risks our physical and psychological health, or to bike 80 miles per day gaining thousands of feet of elevation. We were designed to run from things, like pumas (danger), and to things, like deer (food).

So, when my best girlfriend decided to let me choose the route for our annual bike ride, of course, I chose to fight evolution. I did not intend the ride to be such a challenge, but profiles are abstract and difficult to imagine in the absence of action. At least I can only assume that's why she agreed.

After picking her up from LAX, we drove immediately to San Simeon, stealth camped, and tried to mentally prepare for what the morning would bring. Our plan was to bike from town to Big Sur, then back, totaling roughly 120 miles with more than 5000 ft of elevation gain, and we accomplished our goal in only 24 hours. The ride was challenging, particularly for Miranda who was coming from St. Louis where there are few training hills.

There are many aspects of the trip I could discuss, but I want to focus on the spillover effects that permeated our journey since understanding these effects might actually benefit humanity, whereas writing about the ride is of little societal importance. Spillover effects are emotional reactions to an experience that "spill over" into some other experience not associated with the cause of the experienced emotions. For example, driving in traffic might cause stress and anxiety and anger, making it more likely for that driver to argue with his or her partner upon arrival at home. The partner might have done nothing wrong, nothing at all, and yet, fighting and blame ensues.

Exercise is a common cause of spillover effects. Our brains have not yet evolved to realize the difference between running for fun, which we weren't designed to do, and running from or to something of importance. So, we experience a heightened sense of arousal during exercise (get your mind out of the gutter) - our heart races, we sweat, our breaths become shallow and rapid. Our brains interpret those physical responses as the need to fight or flee. Subsequently, we are more likely to argue or become angry either during or shortly after a hard workout. Test this idea for yourself.

Needless to say, on our bike trip, my friend and I spent a great deal of our time fighting, bickering, snapping at each other. We biked hard and our machines were amped up to conquer the beasts, or in this case the hills. Of course, in the moment it is difficult to remember that exercise and exhaustion causes crankiness, so for about 24 hours we hated each other. Thankfully, after a couple of shots of tequila and some karaoke with Elvis (who looked more like Johnny Cash), we were best friends again. We're already planning our next trip... this time, it's her choice.

Thanks Miranda. Thanks Elvis.