What if we could pedigree our food? We do it for our pets and our own family trees, and that has almost no usable value other than investing in human pride. But having a pedigree on our food, that has some potential health benefits.

There’s been a lot of talk that we Americans (and all consumers of mass-produced food) are basically corn chips with souls thanks to corn subsidies in the American midwest. So what if we knew that our vegetables were grown, not only organically, but with fertilizer from well-pedigreed cow manure with three “generations” of distance from mass-produced feed?

Okay, maybe vegetables are an overwhelmingly large food to start with, but we could at least do it with meat, right? I’d much rather eat beef that I knew had five generations of grass-fed, free-range behind it.

There are other things we could rate too: how humane the slaughter house is; the quality of the land the cows were pastured on; the number of cows shared the square acre it lived on.

Yeah yeah, most people don’t care about these things. But that’s half the point: creating a system where people can see how well, or how terribly, our food is managed, maybe it’d be easier for them to care, and easier for them to make wise decisions, and easier for food-makers to feel bad when they serve us crap.

It’s just an idea. And before you proclaim that it’s “too much work” (though in reality it probably is) let’s have a look at how often we add personal content to the internet cloud that, collectively, creates enough material to create 3D models of certain parts of the world. What if we cared enough about our food to spend a little time caring about where it came from.

Dr. Thorpe also said that if the incidence of obesity fell to its 1987 level, it would free enough money to cover the nation’s uninsured population.

(via Health Care Savings May Start in Employee Diets in the New York Times)

File this one under “news I am not at all surprised to hear, but am glad for the affirmation anyway.”

I’ve talked a lot about food this year for some reason. And health care has been a national concern since Obama strolled in the front door in January. So someone helping us tie the two together in a way that’s been needed for a long time is a welcome thing to see.

I read somewhere once that if you take a fast food meal, factor in the cost of weight gain (new clothes, gas mileage, etc.) and negative effect it has on your health in the long term, the meal would actually cost more than an equivalent meal made up of fresh produce that many claim is “too expensive.”

Another challenge for the new year: find a partner and make a bet to not eat fast food all year. Keep each other accountable and make the wager high if you lose the bet (kinda like I did).

Yet another great TED video that stirs back up the conversation we (or maybe just I) have been having here about food, where it comes from, and our responsibility not just to eat it wisely, but also to cultivate it wisely.

I hope that we as a society and a world can understand and latch on to Carolyn Steel’s ideas about how to manage this earth we live on in a way that benefits us as well as the earth. It’s a symbiotic relationship, and right now, humans are abusing the privilege.

I feel challenged to think more about how I plan my week of cooking, and how if I were to actually plan meals ahead of time for my week, I could not only save money, but I could be healthier personally and be a step closer to controlling where my food comes from and how it’s made by being conscious of where I buy from. Our country really could stand to get back to cooking and eating at home together again. It would do a lot for our health, our economy and our social wellbeing.

Finally, the fact Steel mentions here, that in the western world it takes ten calories of energy to produce one calorie of food, completely blows my mind and further encourages me to think about the “miles per calorie” as far as where my food comes from.

Continuing the rant about why the American meat habit needs to change:

Not only do we eat too much meat, we also eat too much of the wrong parts. We don’t know where our meat comes from, we don’t know what the animal we’re eating ate, and we sure don’t know how to get behind the stove and take control of what we put in our mouths.

We ought to start by looking at the great food cultures of the world. The traditional cuisines of Asia and North Africa, not to mention France and Italy, are based on rice, wheat, spices and smatterings of all cuts of meat. In just about every other cuisine, protein plays second fiddle to grains and vegetables. When meat appears, it does so modestly; it takes up less space on the plate, and more often than not it’s a piece of the animal — tripe or oxtail — that Americans so willingly discard.

(via “Why Cooking Matters” on The Nation)

The best advice I ever got about meat in our diets is that, more often than not, it shouldn’t be the main attraction of a meal. It’s most healthily used as a side or ingredient in a meal. You know, sauce with meat in it on spaghetti rather than steak with a side salad. Beef stew rather than a half-pound burger.

When I was in Australia, I tried pork knuckle for the first time. Sounds a bit gross, but that’s only because Americans avoid any cut of meat that resembles an actual body part (ribs aside). It’s a smaller serving of meat that is harder to get at, and if there weren’t salad, potatoes, etc. on the plate with it, you’d leave hungry. It was quite tasty and I’d eat it again if I had the chance. But since I live in a country where all these tasty parts are deemed “gross” and tossed out by everyone but a few butchers (who are disappearing at a rapid pace), that might never happen again.

As if I needed another reason to talk about changing our eating habits, here comes a piece from TIME that’s equally insightful and shocking.

As the developing world grows richer, hundreds of millions of people will want to shift to the same calorie-heavy, protein-rich diet that has made Americans so unhealthy — demand for meat and poultry worldwide is set to rise 25% by 2015 — but the earth can no longer deliver. Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste. Sustainable food has an elitist reputation, but each of us depends on the soil, animals and plants — and as every farmer knows, if you don’t take care of your land, it can’t take care of you.

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food – Time Magazine

All of a sudden I have a large handful of reasons to eat even less meat and buy more local, sustainable and organic foods.

I read once that the average American eats seven times as much meat than their body needs. If meat products take significantly more energy to produce than the vegetables and fruits we should be eating and cost more to buy and prepare, we could have a major impact on the American obesity problem, the environment and the economy all at once if we cut our meat intake down to what it should be.

But will it happen? I doubt it. We Americans love our meat, and so do our government officials who get lobbied by meat lovers. Funded by steak- and hamburger-lovers everywhere!

A few weeks ago my friend Molly and I made quite a bet.

We were talking about things in our diet that we don’t need. She was shocked at the amount of soda she’d had lately. So we decided we would create a bet to see who could go the longest without soda. But, strong-willed people that we are, we decided that wasn’t nearly difficult enough. This is when Molly and I decided that we will not drink soda or eat cheese for two years.

Why are we doing this? Because soda and cheese are two things with almost zero nutritional benefit and plenty of nutritional detriment that are a daily part of most of our lives. Soda is sugar and bubbles; cheese is sodium and saturated fat. The only argument in favor of either is that they’re good for the soul. I understand this, but if it’s hurting my body more than helping my soul, I’d rather find other ways to find joy.

Neither of us has any weight or personal appearance goals we’re trying to meet, though we are a bit curious what the end result will be.

Oh, and there are exceptions. We get two freebies a month for accidental or intentional slip-ups. Major holidays are exempt and other exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis. Like when I meet my girlfriend’s family and eat her mother’s world-famous Italian food.

So far this hasn’t sucked too bad. It’s actually kind of fun to get creative, especially when I go out to eat. And it puts me in a healthier mentality generally speaking. I went to Subway yesterday and, because I couldn’t get soda, I opted out of the “meal deal” entirely and didn’t end up scarfing down some greasy chips with my cheese-free sandwich.

Anyone want to try this out with us? It’s a fun test of will power and hey, after two years, maybe your long-term desire for cheese and soda will be diminished forever, leaving you to be a healthier person.

Oh, and I should mention that the wager is that, if either of us breaks the rules, the rule-breaker has to get a tattoo of the other person’s choosing. Ba-zing!

Bonus question: should I do some quick math to see how much I spend on cheese and soda in a year and donate that amount to a hunger relief organization? Just a thought.