Salt, Sugar, Fat

Posted on June 6, 2013 by smellincoffee

Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
© 2013 Michael Moss
480 pages




 Between the fresh produce, meat, and dairy sections that ring the perimeter of the average supermarket,  millions of unique foodstuffs are offered and advertised. But their apparent variety is a lie, for the bulk of these food products are nothing more than combinations of  three additives: salt, sugar, and fat. In this book named after the unholy trinity,  author Michael Moss  offers a history of how these additives came to dominate so much of the American, and now global, diet, one which also examines the nutritional consequences of each. Its combination of dietary science, history, marketing, and politics signals out a few products in particular (Lunchables take a beating) and pose the question: if the creators of these products avoid eating them, why shouldn’t we?

I developed an avid interest in this topic after my doctor urged me to reduce my salt intake, a bit of advice that led to me avoiding supermarket interiors in general, preparing most of my meals from fresh produce and meat. Avoiding salt meant avoiding almost everything else, from obvious junk food like potato chips to ‘health’ food like cereal and canned vegetables.  I started losing four pounds a week, eventually a little over 120 after four months. The lesson that processed foods are a health catastrophe, evidenced in the book, needs no further development for me, but Salt, Sugar, and Fat was doubly interesting for given so much attention to how these foods were marketed. Although companies like Coca-Cola whine about consumer choice when government entities attempt to regulate them with a view towards improving the public’s health, their self-serving defense of free choice is given the lie by their deliberate attempts to cultivate cravings for their specific products,  both through advertising saturation and by adding ingredients which light up the pleasure centers of our brain and compel us to see more, even at our own demise. Can a nicotine addict really say his continuing purchase of cigarettes is one made freely?  The 20th century has turned this trio of elements, each healthy in the right proportions, into narcotics. (Fittingly, many of the food companies featured in the book are owned by a tobacco company, Phillip Morris.)

But these companies — General Mills,, Kraft, Pepsi, and others — depend on these additives for more than enticing customers to come back again and again.  They need food that can stay on the shelves for weeks and months, surviving trips across the  globe on ship and truck,  and taste and feel exactly the same way time after time.  That means preservatives like salt and sugars, and it also means denaturing the foods so they don’t go and rot, and then applying more stable fat to make sure no taste is lost.  Salt, sugar, and fat not only alter the taste of foods: they change their appearances and how they feel in our mouths. Moss is given the opportunity to try name-brand products offered without the additives, and never records a positive experience: one might as well be eating soggy cardboard for all the pleasures these ‘foods’ bring.   In the light of such experiences, one can’t help but agree with Michael Pollan, who refuses to call things like Cheez-Its  food, and who instead refers to them as edible, food-like products.   If these items taste so abhorrent without the inclusion of ingredients harmful to our health in these amounts, why exactly are we eating them?

While the  aggressive marketing of these goods and their physically addicting nature is largely to blame, it helps that they’re convenient and  cheap, far cheaper than ‘real’ food.  Although on the whole Salt, Sugar, and Fat is a robust book, it misses a step when Moss tries to work out the solution: he never mentions the subsidies that allow additives like high-fructose corn syrup (featured in the Sugar section) to be so cheap on the shelves to the consumer, and thus more enticing to parents with a tight budget than bunches of red-leaf lettuce and broccoli. Considering that Moss spends time demonstrating how parts of the national government are at odds with one another — one urging us to consume more of the same product to help “American farmers”, while another urges us to consume less for health reasons — it would have fitted in there nicely. Another answer to the mystery of our eating trash is the magic of branding: Naomi Klein’s excellent No Logo demonstrated how certain companies have gotten rich not by producing quality products, but by effectively mystifying people, by associating their products with good feelings, popularity, or wealth, and the importance of brand loyalty pops up several times through this text.

Salt, Sugar, and Fat  makes a powerful case against processed foods, one which those with an interest in health (or marketing) will find fascinating.

Related:
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
Why We Get Sick, Nesse and Williams
American Mania: When More Isn’t Enough, Peter Whybrow
No Logo, Naomi Klein
In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan

Mmm, dopamine!

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Brilliant Harry Potter fanfiction

Posted on June 5, 2013 by smellincoffee

Last while I heard a fanfiction series, “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality“, mentioned on a podcast. In it, Harry is raised not by the abusive and smallminded Dursleys, but by a scientist, and thought to think critically. For him, the world is run by rules, and they can be sussed out by observation and experimentation. You might think that getting a letter from Hogwarts inviting him to a school of witchcraft and wizardry meant an end to that, but it isn’t: instead, he realizes that the fundamental rules of the universe must be different than current thinking. And so he decides to figure out the rules. Not only is the quest is side-shakingly funny, but the characterization and writing are captivating so far. Harry is strides the thin line between madness and insanity, and his ambition to conquer the magical world with science is interpreted by some as the sign that he might well be the next Dark Lord,  a position the reader might well sympathize with given his penchant for hanging around Draco Malfoy.  The story as written so far is a charming combination of the familiar — an eccentric Dumbledore, the stern McGonnagal, the fun of exploring an entirely new world — with  intriguing twists.  Harry and Draco’s first meeting, for instance, begins in conflict, but ends with them being intrigued by the other instead of loathing him. Their tête-à-têtes are perversely interesting.  While the author gives parts of Rowling’s world much more depth — the three “other” houses, Quirrel, Malfoy, and Hermione so far — other parts are ignored completely (Quidditch) or taken down a peg (Gryffindor). The characters are also a bit more self-aware and make sly references to gaming culture (“Fine, I’ll put my quest items in my inventory“) and literature (wherein Dumbledore quotes Gandalf, with a twinkle in his eye and reveals that Mugglborn students insist on giving him copies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

If you’ve a mind for some good laughs, interesting conversations, and some tantalizing development of characters of the Harry Potter universe, do look it up…but be revised, it’s hard to stop reading.

“In any case, Mr. Potter, you have not answered my original question,” said Professor Quirrell finally. “What is your ambition?”
“Oh,” said Harry. “Um..” He organized his thoughts. “To understand everything important there is to know about the universe, apply that knowledge to become omnipotent, and use that power to rewrite reality because I have some objections to the way it works now.”
There was a slight pause.
“Forgive me if this is a stupid question, Mr. Potter,” said Professor Quirrell, “but are you sure you did not just confess to wanting to be a Dark Lord?”
“That’s only if you use your power for evil,” explained Harry. “If you use the power for good, you’re a Light Lord.”
“I see,” Professor Quirrell said. He tapped his other cheek with a finger. “I suppose I can work with that. But Mr. Potter, while the scope of your ambition is worthy of Salazar himself, how exactly do you propose to go about it? Is step one to become a great fighting wizard, or Head Unspeakable, or Minister of Magic, or -”
“Step one is to become a scientist.”
Professor Quirrell was looking at Harry as if he’d just turned into a cat.
“A scientist,” Professor Quirrell said after a while.
Harry nodded.
“A scientist?” repeated Professor Quirrell.
“Yes,” Harry said. “I shall achieve my objectives through the power… of Science!”

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The Long Emergency

Posted on June 2, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
© 2005 James Howard Kunstler
336 pages

Well, we’re in for it. Such is the lesson of The Long Emergency, which predicts that the end of the 21st century will resemble the end of the 18th far more than the 20th. In it, author James Howard Kunstler posits that the systems that run our society are about to run out of the very fuel that  keeps them going. Oil is about to peak, leading to global disruption, resource wars, the total collapse of civilization, and all manner of unpleasantness. And that’s before climate change wreaks havoc.

But last week The Atlantic ran an article that said we’ll never run out of oil! It even had a smiley face! Surely a smiley face couldn’t be wrong?  Perhaps it’s true that we’ll never wring the Earth completely dry of its sticky, black goodness — but without a steady stream of oil to keep the global economy well-fed and lubricated, like any machine with moving parts it will seize up and die long before the last drop has been siphoned. We don’t just use oil to get ourselves hither and yon — we use petroleum for everything.  Your refrigerator and pantry are stocked with oil, not food — from the pesticides to the tractors to the transfer trucks and ships that got the food (along with virtually ever other consumer good) to your door,  every morsel you eat is dripping with petrol.  They’re literally covered in it, given the amount of petroleum-derived plastic wrapping that so many of the goods in the grocery come in. The entire system of globalization depends on oil to keep commerce flowing.

People have been predicting peak oil since the 1970s, but Kunstler’s argument that we’re approaching the critical mark begs some consideration given how intensively the wealthiest entities on Earth are combing the globe for any trace of anything that be converted to oil. Demand for petroleum products is ever-increasing as billions more in the developing world demand cars and shrinkwrapped food, the blessings of civilization. We’re already experiencing diminishing returns, working hard to obtain the oil that used to come out of the ground all on its own, and the more energy we put in to extract oil, the more expensive the product will be. Considering that we’re been reduced to smashing rocks to look for fuel, the fact that we’re increasingly desperate for energy can’t be overlooked.
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Unfortunately for us, there are no real energy alternatives. Natural gas is finite as well, and its price is already rising;  biofuels and hydrogen are energy losers, and even renewables like solar and wind depend on oil for their parts and manufacture. Nuclear energy and electrified rail lines are our best bet, in Kunstler’s view, but even that is limited by  the fact that a cheap-oil economy produces what they’re made of .  Instead, Kunstler predicts catastrophe: contraction, not growth, will define the world to come (contraction referring not only to the amount of economic activity, not only to traffic, but to the human population as well; Kunstler expects a massive die-off though he never dwells on such morbidity).  Kunstler predicts that local agriculture will soon become the only viable kind, that cities placed on waterways will suddenly reexperience their golden ages,  that much of our energy will soon be provided by animals and humans.  Writing chiefly for Americans (who, thanks to car-centric urban policy, are going to be up peak oil creek without a paddle), Kunstler divides the country into different cultural and environmental areas and speculates on how they might adapt to the world to come, the world made by hand. The “Old Union, all but the southern  of the original 13 colonies, are best poised for survival: the topography is well suited to water mills,  there are many cities built to a traditional walkable pattern, and the people don’t have a history of going outside the law to settle disputes….unlike the South, which will be taken over by crazy religious militias driven to madness by the summer heat once the air conditioners quit. The Pacific Northwest may cope, but it all depends on how much abuse they take from the refugee hordes swarming in from California, for the southwest and “old west” are doomed.

It’s a daunting picture, one I first heard painted five years ago when Kunstler gave a lecture on ‘the long emergency’ at my university. I’ve since heard elements within it constantly, through regular listening of Kunstler’s podcast and reading his articles online. Yet I’d never read the book properly until now, and I rather expected something World Altering.  I must have read The Geography of Nowhere  over ten times in the three years I’ve owned it: it delivers.   Perhaps the impact of Long Emergency was lessened for me because I’ve been hearing its arguments consistently for the last five years and take part of them for granted.  I suppose it doen’t hurt that the book is edging on dated now, Kunstler issued an update in the form of Too Much Magic, released last year, in which he declared that we can’t just rely on  throwing money around or technology magicking up a solution, where he uses fracking as an example of both.  As far as presenting the case for peak oil, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet  does a better job of presenting data and exploring global consequences. What that book misses, though, is Kunstler’s prose and scathing commentary, which for me are a ball to read.  Kunstler steadfastly maintains what Americans lack, most of all, is a “coherent narrative” about what has happened to us, and this he spins here, with a story of how cheap energy allowed for high levels of entropy to manifest themselves in our system, increasing the nation’s fragility.  Kunstler’s chief weakness is his enthusiasm for urgent predictions that never quite come true: here, Kunstler predicts peak oil by 2008, and that hasn’t quite happened. The only room for uncertainty he gives is that we may not know we’ve peaked until after the fact.  

Although not as potent as The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency carries sting enough to merit the attention of Americans concerned about the country’s future.


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Never Done

Posted on June 1, 2013 by smellincoffee
Never Done: A History of American Housework
© 1982 Susan Strasser
365 pages

Every time I turn around there’s something else to do
Cook a meal or mend a sock or sweep a floor or two…
(“Gonna Be an Engineer”, Peggy Seeger)
Never Done: A History of American Houswork is a history of the American home, focusing on the work done within it, one which demonstrates how households became centers of consumption, instead of production.  It’s a marvelously meaty work, divided into sections that not only show how chores evolved, but other elements within the household – like the now abandoned practice of taking in boarders.  But more than a history of the home, it’s the story of American housewives, whose labors used to provide material value, not just aesthetic comfort;  their  chores carried meaning beyond keeping the carpet free of dust and the dishwasher full.  

            Those who complain about the chore of laundry today – “Put the clothes into the washer! Take them out! Put them into the dryer! Take them out!! When will it ever end?” are, in a word, wimps.  Maintaining a household’s laundry- – clothes, towels, sheets – used to entail an entire week of labor, beginning with extended soaks before laborious hand-washing period, which included a separate ‘bluing’ phase to preserve the whiteness of said sheets. And at the same time, mother laundress would be cooking full meals from scratch, often tending a fire to do – and depending on where she lived, usually fetching entire tubs of water per day to do the washing, cooking, and cleaning with. And the cleaning! Cleaning meant more than washing the dishes and dusting the tables. Cooking with fire or oil meant soot, and processing food from scratch produced grease, and this soot and grease got everywhere; little wonder spring cleaning was seen with such dread. And at the same time, household materials had to be produced – preserves for the winter, candles for the night, clothes for the children. And we complain about vacuuming!

            Such labors were eased first by fundamental innovations – the introduction of indoor plumbing,  gas lines, and electricity – and then by convenience appliances (washing machines, which in their first stages still required an awful lot of work)  gadgets (which did most of the work) and still later by completely processed goods (ready-made meals, disposable utensils) that took the work out of it completely.  After having witnessed the demands of household labor prior to the late 19th century, the appearance of such aides is welcome….but the avalanche of consumer goods that appears in the final chapters gives one pause.  As industry left the home – as the services that ran it became things to be purchased –   the home and housework lost its meaning;  decaying into chores,. Strasser covers the response of women to this, the attempt to elevate Home Economics to the status of business and industry by making it more ‘efficient’’ – but ultimately, the home was abandoned as women chose instead to pursue careers, and in fact had to help pay for all the new services and products they were being acculturated to expect. After growing up on canned biscuits, after all, who wants to start making dough by hand? 

            Although our lives have plainly become easier, there’s a certain wistfulness to the author’s writing; in some of the interviews, mothers express regret over some of the way their lives have changed. One in particular misses the time she spent with her kids washing dishes after supper; such moments of togetherness are increasingly hard to find, and emphasized the importance of the family taking care of one another’s needs; a childhood chore like keeping one’s bedroom straightened doesn’t make that connection.  Strasser is more distinctly uncomfortable with the reduction of wives and mothers – of people in general – into consumers, something she presumably explores further in Satisfaction Guaranteed, and touched on  in Waste and Want.

            Never Done was Strasser’s first work, and it’s quite an introduction. It’s slightly more academic than Waste and Want, but considering how broad an audience Waste and Want was written for, that’s not saying much: this is still very lively, closer to narrative history than textbook — and yet it’s carrying as much information as a text, covering virtually everything that happens within its walls.  This is wonderful social and domestic history.


             

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Teaser Tuesday (28 May): Sugar, Sugar

Posted on May 28, 2013 by smellincoffee

First, the food companies themselves are hooked on salt, sugar, and fat. Their relentless drive to achieve the greatest allure for the lowest possible cost has drawn them, inexorably, to these three ingredients time and time again. Sugar not only sweetens, it replaces more costly ingredients — like tomatoes in ketchup — to add bulk and texture. For little added expense a variety of fats can be slipped into food formulas to stimulate overeating and improve mouthfeel. And salt, barely more expensive than water, has miraculous powers to boost the appeal of processed food.

P. xxviii – xxix, Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.

I just started this today, and upon seeing these words in the introduction they seemed worth sharing. I’ve become something of a pure-foods guy in recent years, though I do have a weakness for peanut butter and graham crackers. So far this book is making a decision to abandon processed foods completely look more and more attractive.

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The Invisible Heart

Posted on May 25, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance
© 2001 Russ Roberts
282 pages



The Invisible Heart is an oddly sweet argument introduction to the thinking behind classically liberal economics, taking the form of a dialogue between one Sam Gordon, an economics professor, and Laura Silver, an idealistic English instructor who has just begun working at the same private school as Sam. The two hit it off immediately, even though Laura thinks economists are soulless cretins obsessed with money at the expense of the noble expressions of the human spirit, like art and safety regulations. Sam is a lonely, embattled man, and he wants desperately to be understood by Laura, who — despite not sharing Sam’s  views — finds his earnest passion fascinating.  And so as a year transpires, the two chance to meet time and again; first accidentally, and then as their friendship develops, deliberately. Their relationship is fed by argument, for the book is an extensive argument for libertarianism.

Laura is, by virtually everyone’s meter, a liberal:  she’s very much concerned about the poor and oppressed. She believes firmly in safety regulations, minimum-wage laws, environmental protections — the state exists to right the wrongs created by capitalism, to curb the abuses of the free market. Sam, in contrast, is a “classical” liberal who believes the freer the market, the freer the people. He takes Adam Smith’s notion of an invisible hand at work in the marketplace for granted: let the market work, and things will sort themselves out. Companies that produce bad products will go out of business; businesses that don’t pay well enough won’t be able to find workers.

Although Sam’s view is partially pragmatic –letting things flow naturally is considerably easier than trying to engineer everything —  he’s also driven by principle. People shouldn’t meddle with the lives of others, and they certainly shouldn’t try to justify their interference by using the state to do the meddling. Sure, seatbelts are a great idea — but making it illegal not to wear a seatbelt is an abominable one.  What right does the government have to tell people how they may or may not use their own property?  Sam also points out that meddling always has unintended consequences: when the Baptist ban drinking on Sundays, the moralists may cheer — but so do the bootleggers, because now they can charge a premium for hooch that day. By the same token, when the state mandates the use of scrubbers to clean factory emissions,  the manufacturers of those scrubbers give a cheer.* Why not simply fine companies that emit noxious fumes and let that be an incentive for them to find their own best way of eliminating emissions, rather than forcing them to buy a particular product, and thus enrich only a few?  Spread the wealth around — embrace competition.  Environmental protection, incidentally, is the one area where Gordon isn’t so much a free marketeer, but still manifestly libertarian. He believes firmly in personal responsibility, which is why he wears seat belts but hates the idea of making other people wear theirs. But whereas a driver choosing comfort over safety only endangers his own life, a company dumping waste into a river or into the air hurts everyone. They should take care of their own messes — but care should be taken in making them do it, as with the scrubbers example.

It’s hard not to like Sam, even if you disagree with him, as Laura does. He’s a nice guy; like Laura, he wants a better world, but unlike he thinks he should be brought about in an organic way — that it should emerge from the bottom-up, from the marketplace, rather than being forcibly constructed by states, from the top down.  His arguments sometimes seem counter-intuitive;  he defies expectations. Although an economist primarily concerned with self-interest, Sam isn’t himself particularly focused on wealth. One of his arguments with Laura is over the question: are teachers underpaid? Sam thinks not. Yes, their salary is considerably less than most others, but they’re compensated in different ways. They have the summers off, for instance, the work becomes easier with time, and they have the chronic joy of seeing “lightbulbs come on in students’ heads”. If they were truly underpaid, the school would be unable to find people to fill the positions. Besides, he says; it’s so much easier to be content with what you have.   Epicurean simplicity isn’t what I would expect from an advocate of capitalism, the ethos of which seems to be MORE!

Although I, like Laura, don’t quite agree with all of Sam’s arguments, it’s difficult not to find his earnestness compelling. His principles are outstanding, but it’s easy to argue for the free market when you are protected from the fray. The Invisible Heart‘s author, Russ Roberts, is essentially Sam Gordon: a genuinely nice and fantastically interesting fellow who teaches economics, though at the university level. How can a university economist, safely ensconced in an ‘ivory tower’, feel comfortable telling people struggling to get by on a minimum wage that said minimum is a bad idea, as it prices those willing to work less out of the market?  And it’s easy to say that a factory that didn’t pay enough won’t find workers, but that’s preposterous: when unemployment is high and people are desperate for food, they will accept despicable conditions because they have no other options. There isn’t competition for employment in a one-factory town.

And yet despite these reservations, The Invisible Heart stirs me. I wish I’d purchased it instead of borrowing it through the interlibrary loan system, because it’s one I’m going to want to revisit. If you want your assumptions questioned, if you want your mind to be provoked into thought by someone who disagrees with you but who is so nice about it that you feel more invigorated  by the challenge than insulted, this is a book to read.  Although about economics, the ‘dismal science’, Invisible Heart is anything but dismal, freely using poetry, literature, and philosophy to explore the meaning of life.

* For a more real-world example:  I couldn’t help but think of reading about a politician who advocated mandatory drug testing who turned out to be bankrolled by the manufacturers of the testing supplies. Baptists and bootleggers…

Related:
EconTalk, the author’s podcast.

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A Chain of Thunder

Posted on May 25, 2013 by smellincoffee

A Chain of Thunder
© 2013 Jeff Shaara


‘Twas at the Seige of Vicksburg,
Of Vicksburg, of Vicksburg,
‘Twas at the Seige of Vicksburg,
When the Parrott shells were whistlin’ through the air…

 July 4th, 1863 was an unfortunate day for the Confederate States of America. Even as Robert E. Lee limped away from the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, where some of his finest, long-victorious troops were butchered and turned away,  General John Pemberton was preparing to surrender the City of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant. With it, the Mississippi river would be controlled entirely by the Federal army, and the western rebelling states cut off from the rest of the south.  Chain of Thunder is the story of the battles and the siege that led to that surrender, the story of the fall of Vicksburg as told through the generals and soldiers of both armies…and usually for for Shaara, through the eyes of a civilian woman. The follow-up to Blaze of Glory, which covered Shiloh, it’s second in Jeff Shaara’s new Civil War trilogy, covering the western theater.

 Although I generally expect a good tale from Shaara, a novel about Vicksburg gave me pause; how exciting can reading about one army waiting for a city to grow tired of starving be?  After a slow start, though, Chain of Thunder proves a worthy sequel.  The book is not entirely about the siege; Shaara covers both armies as they maneuver and fight in a series of skirmishes around Mississippi, as the Federal army moves doggedly toward Vicksburg and the Confederates try time and again to thwart their progress. The skirmishes are all one-sided, in part because the rebels are cursed by a divided command:  Pemberton, commanding on the ground, is subjected to opposing orders from Jefferson Davis and General Johnson, Pemberton’s superior.  But whereas Jefferson has given Pemberton a general order (“Defend Vicksburg at all costs”) and leaves the decision up to him how to do it, Johnson insists on trying to command the battle from long-distant Tennessee. Not only does Pemberton have to figure out whose orders to obey, but his own subordinates have opinions of their own, and by golly if Pemberton isn’t going to do what they think is best, they’ll take their troops and go home.  Pemberton had the misfortune to be born a Yankee, and is thus regarded by all of the characters as suspect. His wife may be a southern belle, and he may claim to be fighting for her honor and defense, but the only people south of the Mason-Dixon who believe him are her and Jefferson Davis.

 Once the rebels are pushed back to Vicksburg itself, the tempo changes; the city is a fortress, and not even Grant can take it.  He thus digs in for a siege while anxiously looking behind him in case Johnson wanders in with another army. Pemberton’s only hope is the possible arrival of Johnson, and it is that hope that prompts him to try to endure the siege. The action doesn’t disappear during these long weeks of waiting:  in addition to scenes from the home front through a young society lady turned nurse (think of an orphaned Scarlett O’Hara, but considerably more pleasant), readers are treated to a duel of sharpshooters. Chain of Thunder is less dominated by combat than Blaze of Glory; instead, Shaara follows up on the stories of his characters as introduced in the Shiloh novel; the conflict between Johnson, Pemberton, and Davis, for instance, and the evolution of William Sherman’s total-war thinking. The book defends the characters of both Pemberton (dismissed as an faithless incompetent) and Grant (regarded as a sometimes drunkard) while making a few attacks of its own, like unexpected swipe at the modern anti-vaccine movement.  I found it rather enjoyable on the whole.


Oh, well will we remember
Remember, remember,
Tough mule meat, June sans November,
And the minie-balls that whistled through the air!



(“Twas at the Siege of Vicksburg”, ACW song performed by Bobby Horton.)

Related:
The Most Glorious Fourth

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1984

Posted on May 18, 2013 by smellincoffee

1984
© 1949 George Orwell
326 pages

1984 needs no introduction. Written in 1949, it envisioned a world of constant surveillance, perpetual war, and a state with  complete control over people’s minds. Concepts from it – “Big Brother”, “thought police”,  and “doublethink” —  appear in pop culture from time to time.  Written as a warning, it has gone unheeded. Today, systems of surveillance are more sophisticated than ever, featuring “SmartCameras” that  track automatically and signal if they exhibit ‘aberrant’ behavior; meanwhile, SmartPhones like the iphone from Apple allow anyone’s location to be tracked – and governments like that of the United States engage in widespread warrantless wiretapping.   Such rampant invasions of privacy are condoned in the name of National Security or convenience, and one wonders when people will say “Enough!”

            I read 1984 back in high school, and it was the first work I ever read without an encouraging ending. I found it depressing, and it had that same effect this week, even though what was coming.  If you have never read it, or if it has been a while since experiencing the story,  it’s one of a man named Winston Smith, who thinks he is the only sane man in the world. Like many others in Airstrip One, an area of a global empire once known as England, he lives a bleak, depressing life. The buildings around him are decaying, the food is terrible, and  most manufactured goods are shoddy if available at all. And there are no arts to feed the soul, to give the mind relief from the universe – no culture, no science, not even honest laughter.  Smith is miserable, and so is everyone else – but he’s seemingly the only man who knows he is miserable, who knows that life can’t be this bad on accident. But then he chances to find a kindred spirit, and his spirits begin to soar…until they’re captured again, and ground up like so much beef chuck.

            What strikes me most about 1984 is the utter inhumanity that people are subjected to.  Every aspect of life is Controlled:  there is no spontaneity. Even the English language is being steadily reduced, a mighty oak turned into a utility pole stinking of resin. English in its altered form, “Newspeak”, is an engineered tongue, crafted carefully with the intention of making seditious – free and expressive – thought impossible.  Virtually everyone live under the constant view and orders of the Telescreen, which not only spews forth propaganda, but issues orders. Under such scrutiny, people live behind masks, constantly managing their faces and preventing any kind of expression, even unguarded eyes, from betraying them to the telescreen. Everything sacred to the human experience – music, family life – is broken and its remnants put to use: children, for instance, spy on their parents.  Little wonder that Winston’s greatest acts of defiance comes in having sex in a field:  such passion is impossible to govern, which is why the Party seeks to destroy it completely.

            How, in 1949, did Orwell manage to predict such supremacy of institutions and machines over men?  He had witnessed elements of both already, at work both in totalitarian and democratic states during World War 2, but considering how primitive television was in those days the domination of the telescreen in his work is remarkable. What would Orwell make of the dominance of computers and the internet in our lives, wherein we expose so much of our private selves thinking we are safe…when in reality,  every search query into a Google box, every click of the mouse, can be monitored and saved into a database?

            1984 is a short work, barely three hundred pages, but it speaks volumes about the human condition. It’s never been more important to read than this day and age.

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The Botany of Desire

Posted on May 17, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World
© 2001 Michael Pollan
256 pages

     Meander through your garden and ponder the meaning of life; such is the advice of Michael Pollan, who in The Botany of Desire asks what four domesticated plants (apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes)  might tell us about ourselves. Although he describes his subject as human-plant coevolution, the final result is more philosophical than scientific. In truth, it’s a little of both – a surprising read that makes the average garden even more interesting.

            Pollan’s four chosen examples allow him to explore the subjects of sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. The first section on apples is the most ‘scientific’, as he establishes fruits’ sweetness as not some happy accident, but an evolutionary strategy: animals that eat fruits swallow their seeds – and later deposit them in a pile of fertilizer. That sweetness appeals to us because it’s a signal: here lies energy-giving glucose, lots of it. Pollan’s treatment of each subject isn’t a straightforward “The relationship between plants and human evolution is THIS and THAT” —  Pollan strolls,  exploring side roads that somehow connect to one another. The section on apples introduces Johnny Appleseed,  praise for the merits of apple reproduction (each apple contains five radically different seeds: that great variety has allowed apple trees to thrive in different climates), and the introduction of a dichotomy that becomes a running theme: that of Apollian order and Dionysian wildness.

            Tulips inspire a discussion of beauty, with a history of tulip mania in Holland thrown in; Holland is also the stage for much of the discussion of marijuana. In that section, readers are treated to the comic tale of Pollan growing marijuana in his home garden in pot-friendlier times, then acting like a panicked sitcom character when his firewood delivery man, who doubled as a police chief, stopped by the homestead. This section is the most philosophical, since Pollan uses it to muse on consciousness. The final chapter, on potatoes and control, will be familiar ground to those who know Pollan’s usual subject. Here he revisits a topic introduced with the apples, the problems endemic to monocultures, and examines both the Irish Potato Famine and GMOs.  Each account is a mixture of history, science, philosophy, and personal anecdotes, and in this final section Pollan records his attempt to grow a potato that was engineered by Monsanto to produce its own insecticide, the “New Leaf”.  That astonished me: both that an author who despised GMOs and nutritional science for taking over food  would allow such things in his garden, and that Monsanto would allow the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and a contributor to Food, Inc to play journalist with their magic potatoes. But Botany of Desire was written in 2001, possibly before Pollan had established his reputation as being critical of industrialized agriculture.

            Botany of Desire is fun reading for a foodie: it doesn’t have the teeth that Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food had,  but it’s also happily missing the anti-science tint that marred both of those. As usual, he provides plenty of food for thought.

Related:
Reefer Madness, Eric Schlosser
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan

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Garbage Land

Posted on May 16, 2013 by smellincoffee

Garbage Land: on the Secret Trail of Trash
© 2006 Elizabeth Royte
335 pages

Where does the garbage go? In an impressive attempt to answer that most pressing question of modern life, Elizabeth Royte spends a year following her trash to landfills, incinerators, recycling centers, municipal compost dumps,  and even water treatment plants. As she learns how waste is handled, managed, and (sometimes) reclaimed, Royte puts the lessons learned into effect in her own household.  Subjecting her kitchen rubbish bin to a weekly weigh-in, she strives to emphasize the “reduce” aspect of environmentalism’s mantra: reduce, reuse, and recycle.  The result of her study is the best book on garbage you’ve never read, one that follows the entire waste stream and offers ways households and nations can stop wasting so many resources while  simultaneously producing so much garbage.

Royte opens with a chapter on the history of waste, quoting Susan Strasser’s Waste and Want: A Social History of Garbage. Strasser’s account demonstrated how, in an era where households were regarded as productive places themselves, and not just dens of consumption, people found uses for virtually everything — feeding scraps to chickens and pigs,  burning rubbish for fuel, using their sewing talents to repurpose aging clothing. The account also illustrated the trends that create such so much waste today, like the emphasis on sanitation that led to paper cups and pigless streets, as well as the rise of the consumer economy, fueled  by goods created with a short design life.  Royte’s account, however, is not a history of how waste came to be, but how we handle it today.

She tracks first her regular garbage,  tagging along with sanitation men on their route and learning the ins and outs of their occupation, before meeting with the corporate executives of waste management firms and getting an idea for the large-scale practicalities: how does one design a sanitary landfill, for instance? It’s not simply a question of digging a hole and throwing rubbish in: in fact,  modern landfill cells are elaborate, hermetically sealed tombs to our waste, horrifically expensive but still not quite up to the job of preventing noxious chemicals from leaching into the soil.  Although some garbage CEOs are proud of their dumps, others are secretive, and Royte’s attempts to get a first-hand look at them involve canoing around perimeters and sneaking through fences in the wilderness.

Royte next examines composting, both in households and by cities. Composting organic wastes like kitchen scraps (barring meat) not only removes them from the trash can, but puts them to use: if tucked away properly,  scraps can be broken down into garden soil and put to use growing more food. Royte adopted composting herself, with mixed results.  She then moves on to recycling: some cities and states have mandatory recycling, and others only encourage it. Recycling proved more problematic than she expected: while paper was a straightforward affair,  “recycling plastic” seemed to mean nothing more than “dumping plastic in another hemisphere”.   With the kitchen exhausted, Royte took on the bathroom, following the waste stream down the toilet, learning how liquid and solid wastes are reclaimed or otherwise dispose. Here she emphasizes the waste of using clean water to dispose of waste, and introduces the reader to people who are rethinking plumbing: one man has redone his pipes so that grey water (“gently used” water, the kind used when rinsing dishes and so forth)  collects behind his house for use in watering plants; another has constructed a toilet that turns our own biological waste into compost. The book ends with the rise of anti-waste movements, with sections on the “ecological citizen” and the zero waste idea.

Although most people consider garbage to be an ‘icky’ subject,  accounts like Royte’s should command our attention not only because of how much needless waste we produced, but because of how much more the human race is expected to produce as the ‘developing world’ continues to develop and demand the middle-class lifestyle of the developed world, with all the buying and throwing away that entails.  Garbage Land takes readers on an adventure, sometimes exciting and sometimes disgusting, and is commendable for its depth. Waste and Want was only a history; Gone Tomorrow only covered landfills. Garbage Land combines the best elements of both and adds to them inquiries into composting, recycling, and bathroom waste.

Related:
Flushed! How the Plumber Saved Civilization
Waste and Want: A Social History of Garbage, Susan Strasser
Gone Tomorrow: the Hidden Life of Garbage

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