“Hooked a left into Popeye’s and bailed out quick, if it’s going down, let’s get it over with.” A favorite line of mine from legendary “Geto Boy” rapper Willie D, not only because in this verse he is facing his imagined killers, but because of its reference to my favorite fast food restaurant, Popeye’s.
Oh, Popeye’s. How I loved thee.
And how I would have continued to love thee, until the day I asked myself, “Where did this chicken come from?”
Essentially,whether in a drive-thru or a grocery check-out line, we should all be asking “Where did this food come from?”
There has been a swell of information and discussion on the manufacturing and corporatization of our food. Only a select few Americans can trace their meal back to their local farm. The rest of us are busy hustling through the city and can only trace our meals back to marketed name brands.
The search of how my packaged meal came to be, led me to investigate the culture of industrial farming and the unknown impact of what a simple 2-piece meal has on my health, society and the environment.
According to definition, commercial farming is an agri-business with a high density of stock, utilizing antibiotics, growth hormones and pesticides. So, basically my deep-fried wing and thigh came from a commercial farm where chickens were kept in a production house devoid of light, injected with growth hormones (advancing from baby chick to adult within 3 weeks) and had their organs mature beyond the capacity of their skeletal frame, making them too heavy to walk and flutter. Then the “juiced-up” chicken is left standing in its own feces until gathered onto a truck by undocumented workers and transported to a processing plant.
The altering of nature does not stop with chickens. Cows, pigs, vegetables, and fruit are also getting in on the action.
I sat down with Local Chef Monica Pope who owns the celebrated restaurant, T’afia. Pope is passionately committed to local organic ingredients and she expressed concerns over our detachment from our food. “We all have to eat, and we don’t realize what we support. We don’t think about how it was packaged, where it came from, how it got here…”
A month before meeting with Monica, I was ablaze in my quest to track the clandestine pilgrimage of my 2-piece and its origin. To familiarize myself with the practice of industrial farming I home paged F.D.A. watch dog sites, read books critical of America’s agri-business and watched numerous films including the harrowing documentary, “Food Inc.” The documentary immediately curbed my addiction to fast food and my waistline dwindled two sizes. I expressed my surprise over my weight loss to Monica, because even though I had stopped eating fast food. I was still eating staples like hamburgers 3 times a week.The only difference was, instead of running to Jack in the Box for my hamburger fix, I was cooking the meat myself.
Monica explained the conundrum: “I eat whatever I want here (T’afia). Some people ask how Mac and Cheese can be healthy. Well, the way I make it, it is. Now Michael Pollen (author of Omnivore’s Dilemma) has written that you can eat whatever you want as long as you make it. I don’t go to McDonald’s or Taco Bell. I go to other chefs and eat good food and good ingredients.”
Still confused how two burgers are not alike?
Well, the difference between the patty from McDonald’s and the organic beef patty I purchased from the butcher is that, in general, processed meats are higher in saturated fat and lower in protein than pure red meats. My three hamburgers a week were also covered with fresher ingredients like romaine lettuce and tomatoes, and when I prepared the meat I did not include excess fat to boost flavor.
That excess fat would steer me to obesity.
Numerous studies show obesity has increased among American adults and children, and those percentages are even higher within the great state of Texas. A 2008 study shown 28.3 percent of adult Texans were obese. That’s a lot of fat people.
Aside from the unsightliness of swollen guts and muffin tops, obesity leads to life-threatening health problems. I expressed my shock to Monica that it isn’t illegal to sell people a product that has been genetically altered to “appear” as food, and is chock-full of hormones, coloring and corn-syrup leading to detrimental health.
I mean, on the street, if you purchased an eight-ball only to discover it was Gold Medal flour, I’m positive there would be repercussions.
Monica agrees with the banning of this sub-par food: “In the last 120 years the system has fallen apart and we just let it. We have to take more responsibility. Where’s every layer of society involved in where the food comes from and how good it is. We are in a crisis. I’m 47 and I’ve been cooking for about 30 years, I started cooking when I was 17 with my grandmother and I got involved because of family traditions, and at some point about 20 years ago, I felt it. My restaurant is not just a farm to table concept and here’s my menu. I live and breathe and feel it. I feel a lot of responsibility and the weight of it.”
Monica’s restaurant is also the home of the Midtown Farmer’s Market which is in its seventh year running. I spend a Saturday in its throes, ogling produce, eggs and artisan breads before stopping by Monica’s cooking class. It’s a mish mosh of people all looking for pure ingredients to craft their daily meals. Monica speaks highly of the farmer’s market but expresses distress over a recent comment about the popularity of her efforts. “Someone made a comment about my trendy farmers market or my trendy restaurant, and I’m like ‘What is trendy?’This is something more, and it’s the fact that you can change the world by the way you eat.”
Monica and I discussed whether this disconnect from our food can be turned around and she ends our interview with a bit of advice, “Start a relationship that is going to be satisfying to you. Eat where your food lives.”
Monica’s advice launched me to find a farm near my crib, only to discover there wasn’t one. There are community gardens and such but no one raising or willing to sell me a cow. I googled “organic farms in Texas” and discovered the nearest one is Jolie Vue Farm in Brenham. Jolie Vue has an alarming disclaimer on its modest website – “you’re always welcome to see our operations at Jolie Vue Farms. We’re proud of it, and we have nothing to hide. Just call.” Can you imagine? When I asked a former Popeye’s worker where the chicken came from, he laughed and said “a plastic bag off a unmarked truck.”
I made the trek out to the Jolie-Vue Farm to tour the grounds and meet owners, Glen and Honi Ann Boudreaux. Glen doled out delicious mouth-watering bits of barbecue made from the meat raised on his farm while Honi conducted a tour of her farm to us city slickers. During the tour I learned that Jolie Vue was acquired by the Boudreauxs with the goal of restoring the farm to its original state of native grasses, clovers, and wildflowers. In the beginning, restoration was implemented without the use of artificial chemicals. Now, the farm has been transformed from an over-grazed, chemically-sterilized environment to its native vegetation and the wildlife that subsists on it as well.
Truth be told, I was excited to visit a “real” farm and see happy, and healthy animals like the ones I imagined lived on the Old McDonald’s farm of my childhood.
Looming over the idyllic farm’s landscape was a menacing oil rig that never was. Honi Ann recounted to the tourists how the Boudreauxs stopped the company from drilling because drilling would have destroyed their farm. Seeing how the catastrophic oil spill in our Gulf will reap a lifetime of damage of unknown proportions to our environment, I commend Glen and Honi Ann for choosing to produce a healthy sustainable farm over an oil residual paycheck.
Leaving the farm to return home, I passed plenty of rest stop signs all advertising that a fast food restaurant is just a pit stop away. The glimmer of hope I had began to teeter. My stomach growled louder as I read familiar names like Taco Bell, Wendy’s and even Dairy Queen. But I kept driving, and mentally prepared the delicious meal I would prepare once I arrived home. I recognize that refraining from fast food is a minuscule contribution to curbing this expanding crisis, but this solitary act is going to have an impact on the overall consumption of fast food: demanding better quality of produce and meat and a more humane treatment of animals and workers.
I’m making a change by cooking my own 2-piece, one meal at a time.
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