Here at the Ben & David, we like food. We like reading about food, watching movies about food, and listening to music about food. Heck, we even like eating food. And, occasionally, we like cooking.
We mostly like to take the organic route, too. With this in mind, The New York Times ran a fascinating expose on the industrialization of the organic food business. In a nutshell, what is generally viewed as additive-free, salt o’ the earth produce is considerably more mechanized than one might think, and often brought to market by companies traditionally associated with less healthy fare. Almost so as to complement the Times’s piece, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday morning that Campbell’s will make a foray into the fresh food market. While not inherently a bad thing, the shift from the orchard to the boardroom is certainly compelling. An interesting metric is the growth of organic behemoth Whole Foods Market, whose stock has risen impressively over the last year, and is reasonably representative of the growing $30 Billion field of organic produce.
We highly recommend Robert Kenner’s 2008 documentary Food, Inc, which appropriately manages the balance between understanding the needs of industrial food production, and advocacy for healthier ways of producing and consuming food. We also recommend Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty, which is a truly wonderful vegetarian-leaning cookbook, with a great deal of inventive, healthy, and easy recipes.
*Journalistic disclosure: I authored a virtually identical piece yesterday for thecopia.wordpress.com. Since the article was entirely of my creation, I’ve adapted it for Ben & David with the full consent of the original author.
