Free veggies anyone? More than 40,000 people showed up to pick free vegetables left over from the harvest at a Colorado farm about 37 miles north of Denver. The farm owners expected about 5,000 to 10,000 people to pick a few carrots and potatoes last Saturday. Instead, more than 11,000 cars showed up and the people picked the fields clean. Owner, Ms. Miller, told the Denver Post, “Overwhelmed is putting it mildly. People obviously need food.”

And in Los Angeles recently, Mayor Villaraigosa revealed his long-range plan to generate “enough solar power to meet one-tenth of the city’s energy needs by 2020.” His goal could be achieved if solar panels are installed on public and private energy generating facilities as well as on residents’ homes. This initiative will also help the city’s Department of Water and Power reduce its use of fossil fuels, like natural gas and coal, and benefit global warming reduction efforts. If the Mayor’s plan were successful, Los Angeles would become the “hub of the solar-energy industry.”

The White House may become a “green” house. In the recent Barbara Walters interview with President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, Obama said that he wants to make the White House green. He plans to work with the chief usher for house and evaluate his new home’s energy efficiency. When asked why the focus on greening the house, Obama said, “Part of what I want to do is to show the American people that it’s not that hard.”

Global warming is a global concern. Although the global economy is in the pits right now, HSBC bank’s second annual global poll found that 43 percent think climate change is a bigger problem than the financial crisis. And 78 percent of those polled want their countries to do their “fair share” of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Although the global citizens polled want their governments to fight global warming, invest in renewable energy (55 percent), and participate in climate talks (27 percent), as individuals, these people are less willing to change their own lifestyle than last year (47 percent in 2008 vs. 58 percent in 2007). Have they ever heard the expression that change begins with YOU?

So if you are a big greenie, where can you meet like-minded individuals? Funny you should ask. There is a new social networking site called Greenwala. The site is designed to help people learn more about being green, brag about their green works with family and friends.

Perhaps those thousand of bankers and financial folks who were laid off in this economic fiasco can flip their skills into a “green” job. According to a study released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors Thursday, the new shift to renewable energy and efficiency is expected to create a whopping 4.2 million jobs. Currently, there are about 750,000 folks who work in green jobs. Hey, there’s hope for the unemployed yet.

Forget hybrids and low emissions vehicles. And we all know gas prices and constantly filling up at the pump are a bummer. Daimler’s new tiny Smart ED car may be the answer. This new all-electric vehicle debuted at the Paris Auto Show today. It goes about 90 miles without recharging and barely makes a sound.

What do greenies and Goldman Sachs have in common? They are a part of the Senate’s bailout bill that passed yesterday in a 74 to 25 vote. Although the legislation was primarily designed to aid the nation’s financial system, the bill has incentives for renewable energy use. Environmentalists regard these cuts as essential for promoting growth in wind, solar and other alternative energy industries.

Many of us can remember our parents telling us to eat all the food on our plates. Now kids and grownups in Los Angeles don’t have to. They can give their food scraps to the City of Los Angeles “recycling ambassadors” under a new pilot program.

Houston, there appears to be a problem: SMOG. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the city tops the list at #2 (LA is numero uno) for severe smog problem.

How deep do mortgage-backed securities go?

Good morning, party people! It’s probably not quite time to tune up the violins, à la the Titanic, but if we haven’t actually hit an economic iceberg, we’re in awfully cold water.

AIG has (seriously, thankfully, even for those of us without any actual “investments” or “money in the bank”) been floated a lifesaver by New York State and the Feds.  And Bank of America ate Merrill Lynch.  I hope it was tasty.

If you’re interested in what happened to Lehman, this is a good Google answer (link courtesy of New York Mag).

Russia has shuttered their market early two days in a row.  On Tuesday, after the market dropped 11 points, Putin was confident the Russian market would recover.  On Wednesday, the market dropped 6.4 percent in the first two hours and was closed before any more “recovering” could happen.

I said, hey, it’s cold in here… A near-miss for a real-life SNL moment.  I’m actually not sure why Clinton wouldn’t appear in public with Palin… oh, wait… are Americans shallow? Eh, whatever. I’m over her. Please, won’t someone join me? I guess not.

Things do not look good in Galveston. Too bad we’re all busy snarking the next VP and shoving cash under our mattresses. Don’t worry, though. FEMA and Chertoff are there. Whew.

Seriously, it’s okay: In the future, we’ll all be eating superfoods, anyway! (Here’s hoping for a nutritiously-complete Bloody Mary mix.)

And, finally, the Mets are out… of first place. You’re shocked, I’m sure. LA and Chi-town are still riding high, as is Tampa Bay and, now, Philly. Tick tock, tick tock…

South L.A. faces some of the most serious economic challenges in the county, and “poverty is the strongest socio-demographic determinant of obesity,” says Dr. Antronette Yancey, an associate professor at UCLA’s School of Public Health and co-director of the Center to Eliminate Health Disparities.

Yancey writes in an e-mail interview that she agrees with the moratorium because it “brings widespread attention to the obesity and chronic disease disparities in southern L.A.”

If the city council succeeds in its long-term goal of rezoning South L.A. to attract new businesses, residents there may get access to healthier shopping and dining choices on par with the west side, and though many franchisees and restaurant associations don’t agree with the council’s method, it’s hard to see how better city planning in poor neighborhoods is a bad thing.

However, a report in 2007 by the Los Angeles County Department of Health (the same one cited by city council members) suggests that children in South L.A. experience only a slightly higher rate of obesity than the city average. A quarter of Angeleno children are overweight with or without healthy food options, so leveling the playing field won’t do much to solve the broader problem.

Americans overeat, favor unhealthy foods, and don’t get enough exercise. That much seems clear. But changing these habits at the societal level could require a fundamental overhaul across a variety of sectors both public and private, from farming to infrastructure.

“We are surrounded by a smorgasbord of highly palatable, pervasively marketed, inexpensive, readily accessible, nutrient-poor but energy-dense foods,” Yancey wrote in the April 2007 issue of the journal Obesity Management. “Coupled with seductive sedentary entertainment and transportation options and re-engineering of the built environment to favor automobile transportation over pedestrian or mass transit, our genetic ‘hard-wiring’ [to avoid exercise and eat salty, sweet and fatty foods] easily explains the occurrence of the small caloric excesses and energy expenditure deficits necessary to produce the epidemic.”

Even culture plays a part in overeating. According to Yancey we’re just as likely to stop eating when our favorite show ends or our date finishes her meal as we are when our bellies are full.

So turn off the television at dinner time, sit around the table with your family, and dish up smaller portions. Simple enough. But how do you unravel something as politically tangled as, say, farm policy?

Michael Pollan, director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at UC-Berkeley and author most recently of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” boils the epidemic down to a stupidly simple equation: overproduction of food equals overeating.

Government subsidies backed by powerful food industry lobbyists allow farmers to get paid whether or not there’s a market for their crop, Pollan argues. So they overproduce. Overproduction devalues the crop, so restaurants and food suppliers maintain their revenues by adding value to the end product (more highly processed foods) or by beefing up the portions (supersize it).

Pollan:

“Cheap corn, transformed into high-fructose corn syrup, is what allowed Coca-Cola to move from the svelte 8-ounce bottle of soda ubiquitous in the 70’s to the chubby 20-ounce bottle of today. Cheap corn, transformed into cheap beef, is what allowed McDonald’s to supersize its burgers and still sell many of them for no more than a dollar. Cheap corn gave us a whole raft of new highly processed foods, including the world-beating chicken nugget, which, if you study its ingredients, you discover is really a most ingenious transubstantiation of corn, from the cornfed chicken it contains to the bulking and binding agents that hold it together.”

Pollan argues in the same article in 2003 that attacking the food suppliers directly won’t work because they’re only playing by the government’s rules. His proposed solution is that we rewrite agricultural policy so it doesn’t subsidize overproduction and in turn overeating.

“Until we somehow deal with this surfeit of calories coming off the farm, it is unlikely that even the most well-intentioned food companies or public-health campaigns will have much success changing the way we eat,” he writes.

That’s bad news for city council members and activists alike. Even worse news—Congress had its chance in late May to tackle the problem at the national level when it passed a new farm bill, but it appears they opted for the status quo instead. It was a show of force for the Big Food lobby, which, according to The Economist, may be more influential than the oil industry (Big Food includes tobacco).

It’s hard to tell whether Pollan’s solution would work, and we may not get to find out anyway, with such political muscle swaying our elected officials.

So what can an ordinary citizen do to influence the outcome of this epidemic when we’re up against the titans of lobbying?

“Citizens can become involved with grassroots advocacy groups to chip away at the food industry’s hold on our politicians and locales, much as they ‘pecked Big Tobacco to death’ initially with smoking bans and restrictions, gradually changing social norms and building political will,” says Yancey.

She says reframing the issue “as addressing the paucity of options rather than controlling people” can help. If you want to get involved, she suggests, protest the pervasiveness of junk food advertising in your community, attend city council and board of supervisor meetings to demand funding for community gardens, and find out what foods schools are offering and advocate for new restrictions or better options.

In the meantime, your own health might best be served by heeding Pollan’s advice, summed up as a simple slogan for his latest book: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

The Food and Drug Administration ruled Thursday that it is safe for humans to eat meat and milk from cloned animals.  Although the meat and milk from cows, pigs, and goats will probably not hit supermarkets until 2008, I must say I am a little weirded out.

Okay, so the likelihood of me ever eating beef or pork from a cloned animal is highly unlikely, says USA Today, because a clone is too valuable to butcher.  Instead, most likely carnivores like myself will soon experience eugenically produced meat.  That means ranchers can improve their livestock “by replicating their prized animals, preserving valuable traits such as high meat or milk production capacity, fertility or disease resistance,” the Wall Street Journal writes.  I guess that means better quality meat and milk for consumer…right?

Now I’m no vegan, I definitely like a good burger or steak.  But what does this cloning mean to the animals themselves?  In a few years we are going to see a race of livestock that comes straight out of a Mary Shelley novel.  I find it strange that what would be deemed unacceptable amongst humans is so easily given the green light with farm animals.

The movie, directed by Richard Linklater and based on Eric Schlosser’s best-selling book, is funny and sad, entertaining and disturbing. The low budget film features Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and pop rocker Avril Lavigne, all of whom worked for next to nothing to see the movie completed, Schlosser said at a recent screening.

The drama skillfully interweaves the lives of people who service, often with robot-like obedience, America’s love affair with drive-thru convenience, examining the public health issues and social injustice under the surface—or in the meat—of the industry.

“This is realism, depicting the world as it really is. It’s about discomfort,” Schlosser said.

In the movie, Mickey’s is America’s most popular fast-food chain. “The Big One” is the hamburger that hit a home run with the help of marketing whiz kid Don Henderson, aptly played by Greg Kinnear.

Don travels to Cody Colorado to inspect a little problem at the meatpackers: independent tests show that the frozen Big One beef patties, Don’s brainchild, contain dangerously off-the-chart levels of fecal matter. That’s right—Mickey’s beef is the shit.

Linklater—director of Slacker, Dazed and Confused, School of Rock—has consistently delivered politically subversive comedy with a crafty, anti-elitist intellectualism, and he pulls no punches once the Fast Food characters converge on Cody, an anywhere American town with a main drag featuring McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Papa John’s and, of course, Mickey’s.

Cody is a site of hopeless compromise and tragic entrapment. Undocumented meat laborers avoid working the “kill floor” and endure a gruesome mishap with a “cattle max” machine. Audiences will cringe.

The movie is visually colorful and thematically grim, respectfully translating Schlosser’s meticulous investigative reporting into cinematic storytelling.

Perhaps expecting a documentary adaptation, some Schlosser loyalists have become detractors, calling the film “too watered down.”

Though difficult to imagine, Schlosser concedes that the cattle industry is actually bleaker than portrayed in the movie.

“The plants I visited slaughtered about 350 cattle per hour. The one in the film slaughters only 175 per day,” he said.

Schlosser, who co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater and gave the filmmaker full creative license, said the meatpacking plant used in the film is in Mexico and that the owners consented to filming to draw attention to immigrant working conditions at U.S. plants.

Schlosser said he has no idea how the movie will do at American box offices, but he expects a positive reaction in overseas markets.

“Let’s see if America can deal with it,” he said.

————
Ian Thomas is a San Francsico-based reporter and videographer, executive editor of the Golden Gate [X]press, San Francisco State’s student press, and a correspondent for the Oakland Tribune. Thumbnail image courtesy Drew at toothpaste for dinner.

Also being released in the States this month, though, is Our Daily Bread, a so-called “silent” movie made by Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter on the manufacturing of food in Western Europe.

Geyrhalter is one of the most subtle of unsubtle filmmakers. His topics are outsized and chilling. He’s best known as the director of Pripyat, for example, the award-winning documentary about a town near Chernobyl, site of the worst nuclear accident in history. Geyrhalter let his camera simply linger on the townspeople there, watching them contemplate the enormity of the disaster, its epic consequences. As director he felt no need to comment. The facts and the camera did the work.

Our Daily Bread takes this approach to the extreme. It’s being called “silent” not because there is no sound but because there are no words. In fact, the sounds in the movie are as powerful as any dialogue that could possibly have accompanied the images.

Geyrhalter takes us to dairy farms, vegetable fields and cattle ranches, introducing us to a world of chemical treatments, whirring machinery and steaming guts. Although not as overtly political as Fast Food Nation, the precise filming technique and lack of narration underlines the director’s true topic: the nature of industrial life— the efficiency on one hand and the coldness on the other.

Over the constant humming of machines, sounds of the natural world come through. A slaughtered cow is hung upside down, blood rushing from its nose and splashing onto the floor. Young pigs are placed on their backs in metal cuffs while women handlers appear to snip off the tails. The pigs cry hysterically the entire time.

One of the most unsettling visual elements of the film is the expressionlessness of the faces of the men and women involved. Many of them chew gum as they blankly slice open bodies and separate guts.

These images are particularly disturbing because they force the viewer to self-examine. The film doesn’t make out the workers as villains. We understand that they are an integral part of the process that brings food to our tables. The methodical way they do their jobs illustrates a larger issue.

Geyrhalter has said there was a general wariness on the part of food companies to grant him access, that there was a justifiable low-level fear of scandal among executives. Exposing incompetence, however, was never his aim. On the contrary, he says, the places in the film were amazingly well run, which he thinks is the thing best to contemplate.

“If you believe there’s any scandal on display here, then you have to think it through,” he says. “If there’s a scandal, it’s how we live, because the economic, ’soulless’ efficiency [of the places in the film] is in a reciprocal relationship with our society’s lifestyle. What makes the topic fascinating is the machinery and the sense of what’s doable, the human spirit of invention and organization… There’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘Buy organic products! Eat less meat!’ But at the same time it’s a kind of excuse, because we all enjoy the fruits of automation and industrialization and globalization every day, which affect much more than just food.”

We have made it possible to live disconnected from the forces of production across industries, including the industry that puts food on our tables. Whatever your discomfort with that industry, this is what it looks like.

Our Daily Bread has won awards at various international film festivals. It opens in the U.S. in limited release on November 24.

—-
Sabrina Ford is a freelance journalist who has contributed to national outlets including Wired magazine and National Public Radio. She lives in New York.

There are a lot of restaurants in America; there’s a lot of food waste; and there are a lot of hungry people. In lieu of paying taxes, we’re supposed to take private initiative to help our fellow Americans. So, if you wanted to, you could dumpster-dive food in the alleys and parking lots of any major city, cook up some “risque gourmet” at home with love, and then bring it out to the streets and serve it up to the community. Oh, wait, some serious people are already doing that crazy-brave shit! And regular P+P contributor Poh Si Teng and her crew got it all down in a multi-media package right here for you. Delicious!

“Dumpster”
Photos: Gena Lindsay and James Adams
Production: Poh Si Teng
Design: Dian Angelov

——
Poh Si Teng edits The Cicak.