Occam’s Razor

Save a human life and eat less meat

Rising food and gas prices have been much on my mind lately. Unlike many Americans, rising gas prices do not bother me that much. I feel like we have been getting discount rates for gasoline for far too long. The effect has been counterproductive, encouraging urban sprawl and environmental degradation. I would like to see gas taxes raised to encourage conservation and to fund research into clean transportation solutions. It sure will not happen if we suspend federal gasoline taxes, a harebrained proposal that was endorsed by both presidential contenders John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

Rising food prices though do bother me. As I am one of the more economically fortunate Americans, I am not personally put out much by the rising cost of food. However, I do know that rising food prices are affecting many Americans. It has reached the point where some are going hungry who never went hungry before. Community food banks are running low, affected by both increased demand and fewer contributions. The drop in donations is due in part to the rising cost of food.

Cross our borders and the rising cost of food is not a minor cause for concern, but a major problem. In some poorer countries, it has morphed into full-blown crises. In Mexico, the cost of maize has increased 30% since the start of the year, making the simple corn tortilla almost a luxury item, and beyond the budget of many of Mexico’s poorest. Food riots in Haiti last month forced a change in government. The Washington Post documented the malnutrition and starvation occurring now in Mauritania, one of many poor countries with this problem. In Egypt, ten people died recently in fights in bread lines. The Philippines, which imports much of the rice it needs to feed its burgeoning population, is finding the supply of foreign rice scarce. What rice is available is far more expensive and unaffordable to many. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called the rising price of food a global crisis.

What is driving up the cost of food? As you may know, there are two primary factors. One is that more of the world is becoming industrialized. With more money in their pockets, these newly emboldened consumers are consuming more food. Principally they are eating a lot more meat. In addition, rising oil prices are “fueling” the growth of renewable energy sources like ethanol. Biofuels that come from food sources mean that there is less food on the market to be consumed, which is contributes to the fast rising price of food. If these factors were not enough, rising oil prices are also contributing to the increased cost of growing food. It costs more for the gasoline to till the soil, plant and harvest crops. It also costs more to transport crops to market.

There may have been times in our past when food prices were this high, but I cannot recall them. In my memory, American farms have always produced far more food than could be consumed. Billions of metric tons are still shipped overseas to feed a growing world. The U.S. remains the world’s biggest food exporter, but that is changing. Now, with 6.5 billion humans across the world to feed even our surplus is not quite enough. Moreover, world demand for petroleum seems unstoppable. It appears that the world is in for a turbulent and hungry period, with hundreds of millions if not billions of people at risk of malnutrition or starvation.

I know that I will survive largely unaffected. I have the income to weather any food or energy crisis. Yet, my lifestyle also has the indirect effect of causing other people to go hungry. When I fill my gas tank with 5% ethanol, I am encouraging this industry. If people are going hungry, I would rather pay higher prices for gas without ethanol in it. I would prefer to divert these crops into food for consumption by my fellow human beings. If we are going to make the choice to use renewable fuels, then we must make sure these crops go to feed hungry people first. I have no problem with using open space that is currently not being farmed to grow non-food crops like switchgrass that can be made into renewal fuels. However, the lives of hungry people must first. If we need to expand food production in order to keep people from starving, we should choose this over cultivating crops for biofuels.

In addition, we in the developed world need to rethink our addiction to meat. I mentioned in an earlier post that vegetarianism is good for the planet. It is not only good for the planet; it is good for anyone who values human lives. The majority of corn and soy grown in our country goes not to feed humans, but animals, who we then slaughter for their meat. According to this New York Times story, it takes two to five times as much grain calories to fatten livestock for slaughter compared to humans consuming the grain directly. In the case of cattle on feedlots, the ratio goes as high as ten to one. While we need protein to survive, Americans typically consume about twice as much protein as they need. The protein we do need can just as easily come from plant sources as from meats. Despite high grain prices, grains are much cheaper per calorie than meat.

I do not plan to give up meat altogether, but I do feel the ethical imperative to start consuming less meat. My steaks, which are already rare treats, will be fewer and smaller. I plan to go without meat one day a week for a start, and then see if I can make it two days a week. Perhaps I can take some wisdom from my daughter, who eats comparatively little meat, but consumes plenty of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. There is ample protein in peanut butter, and it is loaded with the good kinds of unsaturated fats, not the bad ones. If I feel the need to consume an animal product, an egg or a slice of cheese is a better ethical choice.

Now I am more aware that by driving down the demand for meat, I am helping animals of all species. However, most importantly I am helping my fellow human beings survive. It is not much, but it is a start.

May 5th, 2008 at 08:47pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008 | one comment

The sinful lure of dark chocolate

Surely, chocolate is the work of the devil, since a taste so divine is too good for us mortal and sinful human beings. I can go a day without chocolate, but I do not like to. I figure as long as I am abstaining from so many of life’s other vices, such as whoring, drunkenness, gluttony, smoking, snorting cocaine and voting Republican I am entitled to one modest little sin: chocolate. Were I a good Catholic I would feel obliged to report my sinful behavior to my priest because frankly, there is not much else to report. I would have to hope that penance did not consist of a week of chocolate withdrawal. All I can say is that for this lapsed Catholic of more than thirty years, all the Pope has to do is require priests to distribute chocolate communion wafers and I’d go back to Mother Church in a heartbeat. I’d be humming “Nearer my God to Thee” on my way to the communion rail.

Chocolate, like most things American, has become cheapened and bastardized. I came to this realization this week here in Denver. A few times a week to satisfy my chocolate craving, I have been discretely dropping in on the snack bar where I work. There I engaged in my sinful 240-calorie habit: a bag of Dark Chocolate M&Ms. This week though because I am on business travel I have not been able to satisfy my Dark Chocolate M&Ms Addiction. None of the vending machines carried it. So yesterday, I thought I would try those old fashioned M&Ms. You know, the ones so loaded with sugar the chocolate is almost ancillary.

What a mistake! Regular M&Ms, once my ideal way to satisfy a sudden chocolate craving, became nearly inedible. Had it really this sweet all along? How could I have ever eaten this stuff? Dark Chocolate M&Ms indicated to me that I had been selling myself short all these years. The Dark Chocolate M&Ms at eight five cents were the exact same price and size as the regular M&Ms. However, the dark chocolate M&Ms were 1000% tastier.

People on the continent have understood for centuries that dark chocolate is the real chocolate. The overly sweetened stuff served to us in our candy bars is more sugar than it is chocolate. In short, it is inferior. For years, I ate the sweetened applesauces. Then one day I tried the unsweetened version and discovered that I could actually taste the apples. I never went back.

That is the way it now must be with chocolate. Chocolate is too rich an experience to cheapen it by loading it with excessive sweeteners. The real prize is the chocolate flavor itself. Admittedly, real unadulterated chocolate such as used in baking is inedible to most of us. However, by sweetening chocolate just a bit, so it is semi-sweetened, you can appreciate chocolate without having to deal with its bitter natural taste.

Allegedly, dark chocolate is something of a health food. Like any candy, it should be consumed in extreme moderation. Nevertheless, I feel better knowing that consumed in moderation it may have a few health benefits. It can lower blood pressure. Since I do not have a blood pressure problem, this is probably not a reason to consume it. Yet it can also be an antioxidant, providing it was manufactured without milk. What is dark chocolate’s secret? It is something called cocoa phenols, which is a compound known to lower blood pressure.

As best as I can tell, Dark Chocolate M&Ms do not have any dairy products mixed with them. However, even if it had no health benefits, it does not matter. It is by far the best brand of M&Ms on the market. It is inspiring me to try a host of other dark chocolates, both foreign and domestic. With less sugar in it than regular M&Ms, it is also less likely that I will feel the need to consume more chocolate.

Whatever. I predict that within a few years Dark Chocolate M&Ms will overtake regular M&Ms in overall sales. America will discover that it prefers the chocolate to the sweeteners and the added milk.

It is amazing how much more endurable my life has become because I indulge in a few small bags of Dark Chocolate M&Ms over the course of a week. I have discovered I can endure a lot of crap in my life for the compensation of the taste of this ambrosia. Lord, I am not worthy to receive this elixir, but if you cut down all our chocolate trees, I’ll come after your head.

April 3rd, 2008 at 10:51pm Posted by Mark | Life 2008 | one comment

The Wegmans Effect

Last year I wrote about the Wegmans grocery chain, which opened two stores within ten miles of me. Shopping at Wegmans, a grocery chain that is just now starting to expand out of its northeastern roots was a real eye opener. Mainly, I had not realized that I had settled for grocery mediocrity for so long.

We continue to visit Wegmans regularly, even though it is hardly our closest grocery store. No other grocer in our area comes close to delivering its variety of products. The quality of its store brands often exceeds those of the national brands. For example, their Country Wheat bread is a staple in our house. My wife will only reluctantly eat something else. Since I do not necessarily visit Wegmans once a week, when I do go I make sure to stock up on their Country Wheat bread. I typically buy a half a dozen loaves at a time, much of which ends up in our freezer. In addition to superior store brands like their excellent strawberry jam, their meat, much of it served by actual butchers from behind a butcher counter, is truly a cut above the competition. Add their excellent store layout, their friendly clerks always happy to serve you, their bountiful and fresh produce, their in store food courts (which amounts to being a restaurant in a store) and the fact that they actually pay their employees a living wage then Wegmans is your logical grocery shopping destination. It seems counterintuitive that their prices should be competitive with the discount grocers, but they are.

In the Washington metropolitan area where I live, communities are clamoring Wegmans to open stores near them. Largo, Maryland recently became the first predominantly African American community to get a Wegmans. (It presumably got this honor because it is likely also the most prosperous African American community in the country.) Baltimore wants a store. Frederick, Maryland wants one too. In addition, rich, upscale Montgomery County Maryland has been petitioning Wegmans for a store too. Why, they wonder, does Fairfax County, Virginia across the Potomac River get one and we have none?

As for the rest of the grocery business, they are belatedly playing catch up. With a few exceptions, traditional grocery stores are trying to turn themselves into something that resembles Wegmans. Our local Giant Food was one of the first to sense they needed to look like Wegmans. They apparently convinced the owners of their shopping center to move the renters next to them somewhere else. The wall came down and the store was expanded and remodeled. Now our local Giant bears a more than passing resemblance to a Wegmans. (The Giant also has a Starbucks inside, even though there is a Starbucks literally less than a hundred feet away in the same shopping center.)

I really knew that the times were really a changin’ when the Wegmans effect struck our local Food Lion. Food Lion is perhaps the stodgiest grocery brand out there and its least exciting. The Food Lion in our prosperous neighborhood always seemed out of place, as demonstrated by their parking lots that never came close to being full. Over the course of a couple months, the Food Lion turned into a Bloom. Bloom is apparently Food Lion’s new and trendier grocery store designed for higher income areas. There is however a wee problem. It is only about one-third the size of a Wegmans. Even after all that remodeling it still feels like a Food Lion. They have more of the gourmet foods but its harsh industrial fluorescent lighting remains. Moreover, rather than having a customer friendly staff like you expect at Wegmans, they staff it with mostly minimum wage high school kids. No wonder I cannot stop calling it Food Lion. Bloom is merely putting lipstick on the Food Lion pig.

Change is also coming to the discount grocer Shoppers Food Warehouse. Apparently, its management concluded that its stores, in addition to having such limited selection (which is presumably how they keep their prices low) are seriously ugly. The result is an improvement but it too is no Wegmans. Shoppers Food Warehouse is now where Giant was before it upgraded its stores.

Other smaller and newer grocers seem less affected. Wegmans may have studied Whole Foods or visa versa because their layouts seem similar. I found a Whole Foods in Denver that was so huge it was nearly indistinguishable from a Wegmans. Out here in the Washington metropolitan area, the Whole Foods stores tend to be smaller. Trader Joes continues to market itself as a less expensive version of Whole Foods, emphasizing natural foods but with a more limited selection.

Will all this catch up help these traditional grocers retain their customers? It remains to be seen if this will be the case. Many of us will always prefer convenience to variety. A Wegmans requires a lot of real estate, so they tend to build in emerging upscale communities. I doubt the District of Columbia residents will ever see a Wegmans even though if any community needs a top-notch grocery chain, DC does. Many of its residents depend on substandard produce from liquor stores.

It is clear who is leading the grocery business and who is following. Wegmans is a leader. It is a shame they expand so slowly, but it may be for the best. It could be impossible for Wegmans to replicate its success across the country too quickly. In any event, if you are fortunate enough to get a Wegmans in your community, you will be wondering why you put up with substandard grocers all these years.

November 25th, 2007 at 06:51pm Posted by Mark | Life 2007 | one comment

Kashi: It’s what I am eating for breakfast

First, a disclaimer. This is an honest product endorsement. I was neither solicited nor compensated for this review. In addition, as you can see by browsing through my blog, I am not one of these paid corporate or candidate bloggers. I speak my mind free of any overt external influences. Except from some spare change from Google Adsense revenue, which, at best, just pays my hosting costs, I do not make a dime off this blog.

I am not one of those whole food types. I do not go out of my way to eat organic or “natural

September 22nd, 2006 at 08:52pm Posted by Mark | Life 2006 | no comments

Competitive Eating: I Want to Throw Up

In the perfect world, certain sports would be everywhere illegal. Humanity would have fully ascended out of the primordial muck from which we evolved. We would have reached some sort of dignified plateau. Bullfighting would be banned not just for being cruel and inhumane to the bull, but also because no decent human being would want to see it. By implication, the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, to be held in a few days on July 7th, would also be outlawed. I personally find boxing very offensive. I hope in time that more of my fellow citizens will share my view and outlaw it within the United States. We should not encourage people to beat up on other people for money. From reading The Washington Post, I recently learned of this web site. On it, you can watch people inspired by the movie Fight Club beat up each other. It strikes me as odd that while we can get so upset by hardcore pornography, few of us have problems with the pervasive violence in our sports, movies and now online.

Alas, we are also a nation that believes in liberty. Although we have laws that put many things consenting adults do off limits, or make them at least heavily restricted (gambling comes to mind) we tolerate and even enthusiastically support sports like boxing that should have us feeling queasy in the stomach. I know I felt queasy in the stomach today watching a competitive eating event today on ESPN.

In competitive eating contests (incase you are unfamiliar with the “sport”) participants compete to try to ingest the largest amount of a particular type of food in a limited amount of time. Today Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, age 27, devoured 53 and 3/4 hot dogs in twelve minutes. In doing so, he won a competitive eating event on Coney Island sponsored by the hot dog manufacturer Nathan’s. Incidentally, this was a new record for him, but it was not the first time he won this event. He last won it two years ago, but this year he also managed to consume ¼ more of a hot dog for a new personal record. Woo hoo!

53 and 3/4 hot dogs consumed in 12 minutes. That is about four and a half hot dogs per minute, or one hot dog every 13-14 seconds. I would guess that you would need hyperactive salivary glands to compete “professionally” in this sport. I have to assume these competitive eaters do not do this every day, because Mr. Kobayashi is only 160 pounds. I do not know how long this “sport” has been in existence, but I fear for the health of those who engage in it. Do they put mustard and catsup on those hot dogs? I am not sure how many calories are in a Nathan’s hot dog, but a typical hot dog has 240 calories and 15 grams of fat. Many hot dogs are also loaded with salt and other nasty chemicals. A hot dog bun contains 80-110 calories. Each contestant has to consume the hot dog and the bun. Figure 100 calories per bun and we have 18,275 calories that were consumed by Mr. Kobayashi in 12 minutes. Along with those calories, add in about 806 grams of fat. To put it another way, in 12 minutes he consumed 1.8 pounds of fat alone.

I sure hope most of these calories are not absorbed and instead are passed out by the body. I do not think I would want to share a restroom with one of these competitive eaters for several days after the event, that is for sure. However, it is hard for me to imagine that anyone can put that much food into body in such a short time and not cause risk major complications. Assuming you do not throw much of it up after the event (which in itself sounds dangerous), how on earth is your digestive system supposed to digest that much food? How much bile and insulin can the body create to consume one meal? Maybe I don’t want to know the answer.

Ironically, I watched this event on television while at the health club today. Yes, the Gold’s Gym where I work out has many televisions to distract us. We burn off calories on the various elliptical, walking, running and stair climbing machines while staring at whatever is on the TV. Once on a machine though you are a bit loathe to move off an on to another machine because you don’t like the show on the television in front of you. So there I was watching ESPN, expecting to see some muscles vigorously exercised by athletes in top form. Instead, I watched a competitive eating event. Perhaps in this sport you develop amazing biceps from moving all that food into your mouth in such a short period.

All I know is that after a minute or so I had to look away. I just could not take it anymore. I was feeling sick. I am not one of these people who believe that pornography is obscene, but I witnessed obscenity today on ESPN. They call it entertainment and a sport, but in reality, it was just sickening and nauseating to watch. I realize Nathan’s is in the business to make money and events like this help their bottom line, but is it absolutely necessary for the company to sponsor an event like this? Suddenly I have new respect for Oscar Meyer unless, of course, they are engaged in sponsoring their own competitive eating events. I do not recall if I ever ate a Nathan’s Hot Dog. I do not care how terrific they may taste. I do know that from now on I will avoid them as long as they are sponsoring “sports” like this. I think they should be ashamed of themselves. In addition, ESPN should be ashamed to broadcast a sport like this. What is next, a competitive eating event where contestants try to down the largest number of Tim Horton doughnuts in twelve minutes? (Homer Simpson, I am sure, would want to participate.) Should we expect medals for competitive eating at future Olympics?

At the very least, these contests are exercises in bad taste. At their worst they promote a practice that is likely quite dangerous and should not be encouraged. If, in order to be the land of liberty, we have to allow competitive eating contests, can we at least do it somewhere away from the cameras?

Since it is the Fourth of July, hot dogs are what’s for dinner in our house tonight. They do not look quite so appetizing to me now. Fortunately, they are Hebrew National.

July 4th, 2006 at 07:30pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | one comment

Wigged out at Wegmans

Future food shock is here. It’s happening.

There was a time, oh so quaint a time, when our grocery expectations were modest. Be it the Food Lion, or the Winn Dixie, or the Krogers, what’s for dinner likely was purchased there. They call themselves supermarkets. Hah! What a joke! These stores, which still populate much of our grocery landscape, are beginning to be what neighborhood grocers were to my parent’s generations, and the country store to the generation before them. These chains do not know it yet, but they are obsolete.

Wegmans is America’s grocery future. Here is a supermarket that puts the “super” in supermarket. You might say it is a super-duper grocery market. It is the ultimate grocery store. While you are there looking over the hundreds of brands of herbal teas or pondering which of the dozens kinds of olives to bring home from their olive bar, you can also pick up patio furniture. Moreover, you can buy pharmaceuticals, dinnerware, enjoy a cappuccino, take home a fresh pizza, browse the cheese shop, select meat from the Kosher deli (or sushi from the Sushi bar), or peruse the extensive wine shop on the lower level. Yes, Wegmans has a lower level, albeit a modest one, at least at the Wegmans that opened here in Fairfax County, Virginia recently. Actually, we have two Wegmans in Fairfax County now. One thing we do not have a lack for in Fairfax County are upwardly mobile people with good paying jobs. If our tastes are not yet fully refined, we are darn well working on it. Ordinary food will no longer do. Limited selection no longer suffices either. We want variety. Part of living large means sampling the incredible selection of food that is out there, much of which you had no idea even existed. Chances are if some exotic food is what you want and it is not at a Wegmans, it is not available.

Wegmans is to the grocery business what Amazon.com is to online retail. By being probably the first of its kind, it is likely to be a category killer. It is what we lusted after in a grocery store but could not imagine until one opens near you. The Wegmans I went to today, for example, is so large it has its own underground parking garage. I did not even bother to count their number of checkout lanes. I am sure there were more than two dozen.

The hardest problem shopping at Wegmans is getting out before your food spoils. So save the refrigerated and frozen foods for the end of your visit. Meanwhile let you jaw drop as you ponder and try to select from the plethora of available products. For me it is not just too much, it is way too much. Admittedly, it is a neat and attractive store, pleasing to the eye and about as fancy as a grocery store can get. Nevertheless, it still boggles my mind. I am having a hard time getting my mind around the sheer size and variety of products that Wegmans sells.

In retrospect, Wegmans was bound to happen. Haughty grocery chains have been finding plenty of customers here in Fairfax County. We have our Whole Foods, our Harris Teeters and our Trader Joes and they nearly outnumber the traditional (or dare we say “classic”) grocery stores of the past. Most of this newest generation of grocery stores places their emphasis on organic foods. At Wegmans most of the foods are organic and many of them carry the store’s label. Yet they are not beyond selling ordinary toilet paper or Hostess Cupcakes either. We yuppies may prefer organic, but Wegmans’ patrons are not beyond buying a box of Twinkies now and then, which are also conveniently available. After all, you can only eat so much organic food before you get a Twinkie attack. That is when you get the craving for those sugary, processed carbohydrates loaded with high fructose corn syrup and deadly partially hydrogenated oils. Wegmans understands its customers are human beings with certain failings and provides a limited set of classic junk foods when 100% organic simply will not do.

Those Trader Joes and Whole Foods stores though are modest places. Wegmans is grand; it is about Texas-sized supermarkets. It is surprising then that its stores are all in the northeast. In fact, the Wegmans store I was at today in Fairfax is its southernmost store. The heart of Wegmans is in New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. However, I can easily predict that this chain will keep spreading out. While you are unlikely to see Wegmans in Wal-Mart country, if you live in an upwardly mobile area (particularly on the East Coast), you may find one popping up in your neighborhood one of these days.

Even with its dozens of registers, you may need to learn some extreme shopping cart tactics to wend your way through the store. Chances are it will be crowded. In fact, if the store has just opened up you might want to do yourself a favor and wait six months or so for the hoopla to die down. Although Wegmans may be too big for me to get my brain around, you are likely much less intimidated. In fact, if you take one trip into a Wegmans, you are likely to be rethinking your grocery store choices.

Do not expect to find Wal-Mart prices at Wegmans. In fact, I doubt you will find many Wal-Mart shoppers at Wegmans. It is not their kind of place and I do not think Wegmans shoppers frequent Wal-Marts either. However, do expect an attractive looking store. The Fairfax store has a harvest brown theme to it and lacks the garish florescent lights more typical of Supermarkets. Instead, we get little touches like a produce rack with an attached mist machine that artfully comes on periodically, so no customer has to deal with dry produce.

If America continues to prosper, stores like Wegmans should mean the death of traditional grocery stores. Why buy Wonder Bread at the local Food Lion when you can choose from hundreds of breads at the local Wegmans instead? (Are you still unsatisfied with the bakery aisle? Try the European Bread Bakery.) Why hunt for the Kashi cereal at the local Shoppers Food Warehouse when you can choose from a dozen Kashi cereals at Wegmans? On the other hand, you may want to save a few pennies and buy the Wegmans’ brand instead. If you are watching your grocery bill bottom line, you will probably keep shopping at the local Food Lion or Costco. If you are more concerned about quality and variety than lowest price, you will likely quickly convert to a lifelong Wegmans customer.

March 19th, 2006 at 06:20pm Posted by Mark | Life 2006 | 4 comments