and
they really like food fads. Eat this, not that. Less meat. More veggies. Less saturated oils. Less carbs. More bacon. Less high fructose corn syrup. Local. My wife, Grace, and I mostly adhere to the “Eat food” suggestion by Michael Pollan, and eye those tongue-twisting chemicals suspiciously.

Lately, it’s been, “Eat organic.” This makes sense to us too, but organic is expensive. We pick and choose our organic battles: eggs, milk, and chicken broth. To me, these items intuitively might carry the most hormones, antibiotics, or pesticides. We had a magazine page that lists fruits and veggies that are better organic, but I’ve never been one for memorizing lists, and I think the list was tossed.

Most food fads orbit around: “Me.” — “What is healthier for me? What will make me look better? What will make me feel better?” The upside to the latest organic movement is that aversion to eating pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics also has the corollary of being good to the planet. But when you start taking the environmental effect of the food choices we make, the equation becomes dizzying.

Who has the time or the energy to calculate the carbon foot print of organic grapes flown from Italy versus regular grapes from California. Throw in “fair trade” and now the calculation becomes a complex algorithm. Buying food becomes a balancing act — organic or fair trade, local or imported, pricey or cheaper.