gastropoda

I slogged all the way to the last word of Time’s cover story on the end of ocean fish and just Tweeted, then sort of gave up. But my first reaction keeps coming back to me. Why would that huge feature (by weekly magazine standards) miss the whale in the newsroom? It kept hammering away at the idea that fish farming is essential because the global population keeps growing. And it never once paused to say, “Hey, you know what? Fewer mouths to feed would solve this problem before nature has to bring out even bigger guns than earthquakes and tsunamis.” On a planet running out of water, multiplying the loaves and barramundi is not enough. But I’m just being silly. I’m sure it won’t be long till they run a huge cover story on advances in in vitro.

In other petrified newsstand news, I’m seeing some buzz over Red Bull starting a magazine. My consort trash-picked an issue from the recycling bins in our back hall, though, and you would need a case of the stuff to get through it. . .

Which smarter-than-thou food magazine is sending out subscription entreaties that could veer vertiginously close to the old Publishers Clearing House? I’m not talking the old nag that has poor saps somewhere in Middle America cheerily calling me twice a week to check up on my subscription, the one I let lapse many years ago. Nah, this is the one that seems to be stealing a page out of the Taste of Home playbook, with its “no distracting ads” and “free gifts.” “Rate adjustment alert” is just another way of saying “bend over — you’re still paying too much.”

Almost as depressing was hearing that a once-unique food magazine has decided to drive down a very potholed highway. Do the car-free Amish really care about eating crab cakes by the freeway lights?

The onetime home of the Human Scratch N Match also ran a silly story, on produce prices rising, that actually quoted a woman stupidly musing that it might be “the economy” to blame. Not bad weather and diminishing water, of course. As I noted over on the Twitter, anyone complaining about the price of tomatoes in March is cooking it wrong — this is the season of “better dead than red” in the produce aisle, at least if you want flavor and fair prices. But then there was the way a protest at the newish Upscale Aldi’s was covered elsewhere. Most shoppers interviewed thought it was all about those softballs next to the flown-in blueberries, not the fact that so much processed crap is cheap because tomato pickers in Florida are paid slave wages. Really, if a chain can’t Shetland-pony up a penny a pound more, you really have to wonder how exploited its grape harvesters are. Two bucks might be more than a price.

Apparently I don’t get out much, because I’m way too obsessed with print fud. So I noticed the erstwhile Mr. Cutlets’ ode to margarine in Time magazine omitted a key detail. Sure, the other yellow stuff is still hugely popular even after the trans fat hysteria. And you know why? The shit is a lot cheaper than real butter. Five bucks for Land O’Lakes or $2-something for suspending disbelief? Your food stamps decide. . . But at least no Spam was harmed in the nostalgia fest.

I’m reTweeting myself to say magazines should be ticketed for running recipes calling for blueberries in February. Especially when they’re for “chilled gazpacho” while the snow’s piled high from Minneapolis to Manhattan.

Over at the Twitter, I got some “ra-mens” for expressing my wish for a Super Bowl shelter where I could hide from any mention of that idiotic spectacle. But if I had one, I would have missed the most astonishing concoction for an idiotic spectacle known for astonishing concoctions: “Oreo truffle footballs.” And even the Semi-Ho could not have dreamed this one up — smashed Oreos mixed with cream cheese, covered in chocolate melted with Crisco(!) and decorated with Betty Crocker icing. Forget the fact that even Deen’s gorge would seize up at that mess. USA Weekend was so skinny from so few ads that the actual food story and other recipes only appeared online. Why should Big Food spend when it gets all that brand recognition for free?

No one is more aware than I am that 90 percent of food-world success is just pretending to show up. But I still find my jaw dropping every time I read anything about “Hungry Girl.” For the longest time I didn’t believe this corporate tool actually existed. Now it doesn’t matter. Print-age media has been so thoroughly co-opted that the original hometown daily can run a huge recipe piece without ever stopping to think how many ads it lost by giving away all those brand names for free. I’m so old I remember writing for a newspaper editor in Norfolk, Virginia, who would not even allow us to use “Tabasco” in a recipe; it had to be “hot red pepper sauce,” so we didn’t appear to be shilling. But I guess there probably is no substitute for Jell-O Sugar-Free Fat-Free Vanilla Instant Pudding Mix. And thank the food gods for that.

I jokingly Tweeted that no one in the food world appears among Time’s candidates for “person of the year,” but when followers started asking who I thought should be I realized it wasn’t funny. I’d been obtusely mocking the silliness that has broken out over the holiday windows at Barneys, with some in the food coven upset that other old legends are not honored with a severed head on display. But why shouldn’t Michael Pollan be considered for the cover? (Aside, of course, from the fact that his last book came out early in the year and fame now lasts 15 seconds on the teevee.) Or why not Mrs. O, who really has stirred up the organic hornets’ nest by going all Jamie Oliver on America’s ass rather than sitting in the White House and smoking and reading as her predecessor did? But maybe the best choice, given Time’s contrarian bent and its inclusion of the Wasilla Snowbilly on the ballot now, would be the greedy fuck responsible for the recall of more than 380 million filthy eggs. Did anyone else in 2010 do as much to raise consciousness of a broken food chain?

And speaking of Pollan, I was underwhelmed by Newsweek’s clumsy take on food as a class issue. But I have been paraphrasing him nonstop since reading it: In this country, wealthy farmers grow cheap food for the poor, while poor farmers grow pricey food for the rich. Of course the story is more complicated than that, so I was glad to see dueling pieces in two newspapers on one Sunday on food as the new culture war. The first, in the hometown daily, took the long view, from the ivory tower, and concluded we just have to submit to the market’s power. Smoking, after all, was wiped out organically, her expert insists — apparently having forgotten the whole Joe Camel push-back to stop marketing targeted at kids. The second essay was much more persuasive because the authors are actually putting their money where their mouths are, having moved to one of the most nutritionally hopeless cities in America and started cooking and eating well, with dinner for less than the price of a McRib even with ingredients from those hopelessly elitist, ridiculously expensive farmers’ markets. Getting a book out of it is smart, too, because I’ll go to the crematorium wondering how Big Food persuaded so many that cheap garbage is a birthright. Maybe they should call it “Stupefy Me.”

Also to be filed under “this didn’t have to happen,” I spotted the most depressing title ever while killing half an hour in a magazine store the other day. Apparently there’s a market big enough to support Diabetes Living — which means a disease that was once rare is now so thoroughly accepted that advertisers are lining up to cash in. Which, as I’ve noted before, is probably not a coincidence. First you make people sick with cheap crappy food, then you have a drug customer for life. But let’s just argue about Happy Meals.

Maybe I have no faith, but one quote in the Bon App profile may have given it all away: Could it become Lucky for food? Sell stuff, not ads. Works for the Brits.

Just because I’m a cynic, I Tweeted a link to Time’s piece on the new project by one of the world’s most starred chefs, training poor immigrant women in Paris to become cooks. I carefully phrased my reaction by calling it “interesting” and “small,” just to watch the reaction. And I think it might have been RT’d almost more than any of my 12,000-and-counting other 140-character outbursts. Only one follower, who not coincidentally is a restaurant critic in Brussels, had the right reaction: “Nice PR operation.” Because if you poke that story too ungently, you see that 15 women is the proverbial drop in the bucket with a problem so pervasive. And as the piece noted, some of them are too old ever to make it into a professional kitchen, let alone one as male-dominated as those in France. With such a huge empire — 27 restaurants alone — his heart is in the right place, I guess. But his wallet is stowed somewhere even safer.

Speaking of which, it’s been entertaining to watch the high-fructose corn syrup marketers contort themselves to shed the scary name rather than the crappy ingredient. Turns out “corn sugar” is taken already, so it’s back to the obfuscation table. But at least they’ve accomplished something: They have totally redeemed sugar’s reputation, maybe even polished it. Which is wild considering I came across a clip on my desk from USAWeekend, from March, titled “Healthier alternatives to sugar” (raw honey, agave nectar and stevia). I had had some crazy idea of pitching a story contradicting that. But now that we know the white stuff’s not so bad, I guess it’s not surprising the same magazine is still peddling the biggest lie in food equivalencies. The latest issue has a tout for yogurt as a substitute for sour cream. Yeah. Right. And espresso granita is as richly creamy/satisfying as coffee Haagen-Dazs. But consider this message accomplished: All the blather about cutting calories and fat was balanced by the full-page ad for microwaveable French toast sticks, with sausage, as a great choice for children. Breakfast of fatties.

I can’t remember where the list was, but Buffalo was ranked among the “10 worst American cities,” written off as “irreparably damaged.” Whoever compiled it was looking only at the loss of population and industry. And showed a rather impressive lack of understanding of how cities can not only survive but regenerate these days, thanks to the most essential essential in life. Slums can be razed and converted to urban farms. Artisanal producers can take over abandoned factories (can you say Chelsea Market?)  Ambitious chefs can take advantage of low rents to open quality restaurants with affordable prices, supporting those local farms and producers. Not sure when old media, itself heading for obsolescence, is going to wake up and smell the coffeehouses. A country that doesn’t make anything anymore still has to eat. And the future is in food.