For this battle, the chefs meet on the White House lawn where they are joined by First Lady Michelle Obama. She tells the assembled chefs that their secret ingredient is anything from the White House garden and to take whatever they need. The chefs pick some vegetables and herbs and return to their fancy kitchen in New York where they have an hour to produce 5 dishes (as a team) highlighting the secret ingredient. They are given some traditional American proteins all raised within 100 miles of their current location (New York City, though they never say that).
So far we've hit upon a couple liberal hot-button buzzwords. One, I mentioned - food produced locally (explicitly called out was the proteins). The other is "organic," which all the White House produce was. As you might guess, I'm going to start taking issue now:
First, was the overwhelming propaganda for the White House. OK, maybe not health care takeovers or porkulus bills, but the whole theme of the episode could have been handled without the giant advertisement for the current administration. Most annoying to me is the White House's constant reference to its own historic value (in its own eyes, at least). The most notable use is the President's constant reference to "the failed policies of the last eight years." Look, you're from a different political party; you disagree with your predecessor; I get that. You're the first African-American President. That's pretty historic. You are not, however, the end all and be all of America. "The first garden at the White House since the Victory Gardens during World War II" isn't really a big deal. The First Lady got bored one day and decided someone else should build her and garden, maintain her garden, and let her pose for pretty pictures in the garden. While I admire the historical irony, this garden serves no real purpose other than liberal feelgoodedness (yes, I made that up).
For my next target of opportunity, I'll take on locavorism. That is, eating food grown nearby, usually defined as 50 or 100 miles. First, as an engineer, let me say that any round number like that is complete BS. "Local" food can only be defined in terms of a local ecosystem. And as such hasn't mattered to humans ever. Humans have always defined their own ecosystem. It comes with being at the top of the food chain. Second, let me take issue with the whole concept. It's mind boggling stupid. By definition, it means most of the world can't have citrus fruit, a critical part of nutrition, because citrus isn't grown everywhere. Bananas? Not unless you live in the tropics. And it's cheating if you skate the rule by creating unnatural environments (hot houses, etc.) and grow food in an area where it could never survive naturally. Why is this a liberal issue? Liberals, for some reason, feel bad that they don't really care that much about nature. Sure, they talk about the importance of wild salmon and migrating water fowl, but they've never seen one. They might get dirty. On the other hand, people who work for a living, like farmers, hunters, and fishermen, know the real value of working with the land, taking what it gives, giving back, and not overworking it this year when they need crops for the next several generations. These are the people in "flyover country" who balance out the coasts to make elections close. Liberals try to reclaim this made-up heritage by promoting locavorism. Real people know that you grow what you can locally and trade for other things. Trade routes were the lifeblood of even ancient man. It's what we do. For the record, I haven't worked a day in my life on a farm. My grandparents (both sets) did, and my parents were raised working on farms with gardens (vegetables) and cash crops (cotton).
The other big liberal buzzword is "organic," which they define as "meeting some criteria we dreamed up" (yes, I'm sure there's a real definition, but try getting the same one twice from any two liberal "experts"). Organic, in general, means not using any chemicals and by God (sorry, by Gaia) no genetically modified food. This is another one of those connections to the land the liberals dreamed up to make themselves feel better. In the past, no one used the modified products (herbicides, fertilizers, and crops themselves), so we, great and modern man, shouldn't either. You know why we didn't use them in the past? We hadn't found or made them yet. If they'd been available, you can bet every farmer who could afford them would have used them. But don't liberals have a point? It can't be good to use this stuff. It's not exactly natural. Fair point, but reference what I said before. Farmers aren't just worried about what they get this year. They worry about this year, next year, the next generation, and the next generation. Corporate farms (the evil entities that they are) are focused on profits. But if they get 110% this year and 50% the next 10 years, they're going out of business. Then there's the question of yield. There are well over 6 billion people on earth. They all need to eat. As my dad likes to say, they aren't making any more land. Which translate to: we need more food from the same (or less) space. We HAVE to fertilize, spray for weeds and bugs, and use whatever other tricks we can find to produce enough food so that people don't starve. We aren't out of land yet (mostly because so much good land is wasted in Africa as wars and fighting kill entire crops year after year), but we haven't stopped the population growth, either. We need food. Organic is fine for your little feel-good garden. When your arugula doesn't produce, you go down to the store and buy some. When the corn in Iowa doesn't grow, not only do you not get corn, you don't get beef, pork, or chicken. (Please don't get me started on ethanol, either.) Organic sounds good, and I don't have a problem with your little organic garden, but it's not something to aspire to. It's just a liberal pipe dream.
I mentioned waste before. That's another big deal on any Food Network show. They use things like truffles and saffron, which I'm sure are delicious, but they could buy enough food for half the homeless in America with what they throw away. Consider re-takes, hot lights, and staged food (food half prepared to be swapped with what the chef is preparing on screen). All that gets tossed. On a different Food Network show, I saw a chef comment (in fairness, a trainee who didn't know better) that they just trashed $40 worth of saffron. $40 will buy a basket full of canned veggies (and a semi-truck of Ramen). It's TV; there are costs. I'm not saying they shouldn't be on the air. Keith Olbermann wastes more money on hair products for a single segment. But don't lecture me about my food buying habits, which fit within a much smaller budget. Food Network, all through December, was urging people to support their charity, Save Our Strength, which helps families afford food, especially around the holidays. I'm glad to see Food Network doing that, and I don't even mind asking others to help (you've got a soapbox, let your voice be heard for a good cause), but to air a show where they spent more on food in an hour than I'll spend this month, then lecture me about people not having enough food just leaves a bad taste in my mouth (pun intended).
Local, organic food is a fine concept when you're the leader of the free world with 20 personal chefs, but let's remember, organic means preservative-free, too (which is why it has to be local). I would rather see every American (and every human for that matter) eating imported fruits grown with some safe chemicals added than starve half the planet than letting food waste because it spoils before people eat it, or it can't be produced close enough to people.
You want to know the value of something, ask the people who do the work. Not the people who sit back and take the credit and cast the blame.
Update I: From Fox News
Ironic Chef America
And finally, for months the Food Network promoted an episode of "Iron Chef America" that took place at the White House. The First Lady made a cameo, and the famous "secret ingredient" used in the competition was produce supposedly picked from the White House garden.
But it turns out, the fruits and vegetables used on the show were stunt produce, not actually harvested from the garden. Politics Daily reports the Food Network cited a production delay as the reason for the use of the ringers. One reader comment on the story from someone who believed the veggies were the real deal, and from the White House garden: "I feel like such a fool. Oh the humanity."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583073,00.html
And the lovely and intelligent Michelle Malkin:
Hold on to your hoe. It turns out that the fruits and veggies used in a
special edition of the popular Food Network TV show “Iron Chef America”
featuring first lady Michelle Obama did not, in fact, come from the White House
garden. Could there be a more deliciously fitting symbol of Obama White House
fakery than Garden-Gate?
Some may shrug at this tempest in a colander. But as we approach the
one-year anniversary of the Hope and Change inauguration, the first lady’s
little horticultural hoax serves as a handy metaphor for a cornucopia of Obama
fraud. They’ve stocked health care town halls with partisan goons and
benefactors. They’ve provided lab coats to doctor donors to make their health
care lobbying look more authentic. And they’ve treated soldiers, in President
Obama’s own words, as “pretty good photo ops.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2010/01/15/phony_fruits_in_the_obama_white_house_garden
I don't really have much to add to what the wonderful Ms. Malkin says. Not only do we get the preachy-ness, but it's not even true. And on the show, everyone was in on it. All the chefs lied. They all talked about the wonderful food they cooked from the White House garden when none of the food they cooked came from the White House garden.
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