In Oakland, California, not far from where I live, urban homesteading – growing food on private land for small-scale trade and consumption – has become so common the city government was forced to back off for once. In a rare triumph for sanity and freedom, anachronistic zoning ordinances from 1965 were liberalized to accommodate the city farmers. Molly Samuel explained at KQED:

“The city has already made some changes; it’s now legal to grow and sell vegetables on an empty lot with a conditional use permit. . . . Oakland North reports one of the hotly debated topics [at a city meeting] was animal husbandry: Should Oaklanders be permitted to raise, slaughter, and sell animals? Or not?”

Despite the remaining government bureaucracy, we have to cheer on the homesteaders. They are so impossible to ignore, hundreds of them flooding a city meeting, that the tyranny of zoning is being ratcheted back for once.

And although it has a leftish quality, libertarians ought to take notice of this counter-cultural movement, whose localizing agenda poses profound implications for the future of liberty. With the economic forecasts dire and the corporatist system of mega-farms firmly gripping the Obama administration and all federal politics for the foreseeable future, our rights and perhaps very lives may depend on the freedom to farm at home.

Libertarians often straddle radically different, sometimes seemingly opposed, stereotypes. We are simultaneously atomist rugged individualists and slaves to the anonymous division of labor found in modern cosmopolitanism. This seeming paradox is reconciled in our simultaneous love of political localism and integrated economics, self-sufficiency and the contemporary blessings of a thriving voluntary community. And as admirers of both the frontier and the integrated city life, we can see much to relate to in the urban homesteaders and their hybrid lifestyle of city-slicking, strenuous agrarianism.

The urban farmers too suffer from being pigeonholed as the type you’d find in quasi-socialist hippie communes. Their community’s language and cultural habits can be jarring to a free market radical, but they need not be as dissonant as they first sound. When a libertarian hears the term “sustainable living” – another common theme in urban homesteading – he might first think of the central planning-nightmare called “sustainable development” or EPA-mandated encumbrances on his track housing. But we can as plausibly interpret the meaning to be: “freedom from the vagaries of the public utilities system and state-subsidized mass agriculture.”

Even in the larger sustainable living communities, we see a diversity of social organization. “Most cohousing communities with gardens use organic gardening practices, but just as the culture of cohousing groups varies widely, organizing and running a cohousing garden is a highly individualized project,” writes Jenise Aminoff in the Fall 2010 issue of Urban Farm magazine. Indeed, while voluntary communalism is totally compatible with libertarianism, even shameless capitalists can find much to love. Eno Commons, “a suburban cohousing community on the outskirts of Durham, N.C.,” initially ran its “garden on a standard allotment model, where each unit was assigned a garden plot,” but this led to problems: “there was a disconnect between a small handful of people doing work but the whole community picking,” explains garden manager Katherine Lee. And so what did they do? Aminoff explains:

“Last fall, Lee proposed a radical change: a market model. With Lee as the manager doing most of the gardening work, residents now pay for their garden produce. On the night of the community’s weekly common meal, Lee harvests the garden’s produce and brings it ‘to market’ in the common house.”

Surely, most other approaches to communal gardening involve a bit less commercial exchange, but from a quarter-acre urban homestead or an integrated sustainable living community to a produce co-op and the farmers’ markets that have gloriously emerged in every major city, we see there is no conflict between the market economy and sustainable farming in a municipal context. The way of life is no less libertarian than living in a condo or homeownership association.

Agricultural Independence and Urban Farms vs. the State

What are in conflict, however, are sustainable living and city pastures up against the agricultural bureaucracy, the USDA, FDA, and government at all levels. Certainly, those who offer major competition to Big Ag are targeted. There have been at least fifteen raids of raw milk farms during this administration alone. The federal government has cracked down on independent farmers in gruesome ways. Huge corn and soy subsidies have distorted our food supply, putting corn syrup in nearly every processed food, warped migration patterns and impoverished third-world economies. Even patents play a role in the farming hegemony: Monsanto, the corporate food giant with influence in the last three presidential administrations (including the current one), owns genes that can be found in 90% of America’s soy. Wind inevitably blows the seeds from Monsanto crops to those owned by smaller farmers, after which the company claims intellectual property rights over the land and forbids farmers to save seeds – a traditional agricultural practice – and even sues farmers for merely “encouraging” the violation of these patents.

But even for the small, non-commercial city farmer, the state has become a threat. Even the mildest displays of homegrown produce have run into legal trouble. In July 2011 news traveled fast of the plight of Julie Bass of Oak Park, Michigan, who was threatened with 93 days of jail time for the crime of planting vegetables in her front yard. A mere five raised beds featuring corn, tomatoes, squash and other vegetables constituted her great offense. Amid a massive public uproar, the city dropped the charges. In most areas of everyday life, the state has become ever more intrusive and invasive. On growing our own food, however, Americans appear sick of being on the defensive. The mainstream adoption of urban homesteading can lead to one of the great retrenchments of state power and influence in our times, echoing the homeschooling movement that has grown so impressively in recent years.

Much of the urban farm movement can be traced to the World War-era victory gardens – what we might call a market response to a statist emergency. The phenomenon of growing your own food (among other consumables) took off in the 1960s and 1970s and is now back in the cities, taking them by storm. Once again, they are coming in response to institutional crisis. In cities suffering in every other way, urban farms might save the day. The Detroit Agriculture Network’s Kristine Hahn points to the city’s “113 community gardens. . ., 18 school gardens, and 220 family gardens” as signs of hope for that suffering city’s future, writes Elizabeth Wahl.

It is a global phenomenon: The USDA estimates that urban areas grow about 15 percent of the food worldwide. In some countries, socialist regimentation has made private gardens absolutely necessary for survival. The Soviet government’s attempts to feed the masses were infamously disastrous, particularly in the calamitous era of Lyskensoism from the 1920s to early 1960s, when the Russian government imposed bizarre standards of agriculture along “proletarian” lines – the forced collectivization of farming and the rejection of genetics and mainstream botanical practices as being based in bourgeois pseudo-science. As the government began looking the other way, its citizens were finally able to feed themselves. By the late Soviet era, 90% of the nation’s fresh vegetables and a good deal of its animal products were from “unofficial sources” – “ meaning dacha gardens and the small private plots that collective farmers were permitted to work in their spare time,” according to the Christian Science Monitor. These private gardens became crucial in the post-Soviet upheaval as well. A 2008 survey conducted by the Public Opinion Fund found that 56% of urban Russians had a dacha or “kitchen garden.” The American government is still not as dysfunctional as Russia’s but the laws of economics apply universally. Should another financial collapse come, American dachas could be our lifeline.

At least implicitly distrustful of Washington, the urban homesteading movement gets bigger every day. With bigness, however, comes the threat of politicization, and in particular the threat of these farms being harvested by government, the co-ops being co-opted by the state. As with the bureaucratic nationalization of the word “organic” and the trouble we see with farmers running into Monsanto’s patent police, the voluntarism of sustainable living may one day be supplanted by regimented control and corporatism.

A Diversity of Meanings and Conflicts

A hint at one might come, and how urban homesteaders, without some guidance on the ethics of liberty, might make themselves vulnerable to a corporate-state takeover, arrives in the story of a trademark skirmish from this February. The Dervaeas Institute, an organizational arm of the Dervaeas family well known throughout the community for its pioneering work, its respected farm in Pasadena, and its website UrbanHomesteading.com, sent out cease and dissent letters to sixteen groups warning them about their appropriation of the term “Urban Homesteading.” According to Jess Watson, writing in the Summer 2011 edition of Edible East Bay, the letters immediately resulted in “the Facebook pages of IUH, the Denver Institute of Urban Homesteading (a farmers market), and several homesteading-related books [being] taken down.”

According to a Dervaeas press release, their cease and desist letters were only meant to inform the sixteen organizations of “the proper usage of the registered terms. No threat was made against anyone’s first amendment rights; yet, there has been a heated argument in the media against what should have been the Dervaeses’ normal rights to protect their trademarks.”

But perhaps “normal rights” must be rethought if they involve controlling how others use such a phrase as “urban homesteading.” Libertarians have unique insights on intellectual property’s incompatibility with traditional property rights, and maybe some radical free market thought is what this community needs. There is also the practical consideration: “Urban homesteading” yields 610,000 finds on Google. Some entries concern not just sustainable farming but actual homesteading – squatting on seemingly unclaimed property. This squatting can be both farm-related and libertarian: with the state neglecting huge swaths of so-called “public property,” community farming can be an act of revolutionary Lockeanism.

In 2006, the city government moved in to seize a plot of public land that had been effectively homesteaded by 350 farming families in central Los Angeles. The city had caved to public pressure not to place a garbage incinerator there in 1987. “The lot remained abandoned for seven more years, when [around 1994] working folks from the neighborhood set up on the unused land, established gardens and cultivated the land in the lot,” writes Charles Johnson. Ten years after they began homesteading the lot, the city sold it to a wealthy businessman who had owned a fraction of it before it was stolen by the government through eminent domain in the 1980s. Here again we see the state creating a mess of property rights and producing conflict where none need exist.

Thankfully, most urban homesteads simply involve city farming and sustainable living practices that rest comfortably on private land that isn’t disputed, putting aside the invasive limitations of zoning law. “Urban homesteading” can also refer to government programs of home ownership – this is of the least interest to the libertarian. Given all these various meanings of “urban homesteading,” perhaps we ought to reject the whole notion of controlling the term through intellectual property law.

We Must Cultivate Our Garden

The trademark heat did not deter Ruby Blume, a recipient of one of the letters, from moving ahead with the book she helped Rachel Kaplan write. Skyhorse publishing this year printed Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living, a little manifesto that explores the principles of permaculture, gardening methods, the intimate bond between what we grow and what we eat, and how to build sustainable homes. The politics, economics, and environmental values that creep in the text might be a bit hard for a libertarian to take, but there are a few insights we can relate to:\

“If we wait for government action before jumping on board, it will be too late. Change like this has to begin. In Congress. In the boardroom. In your home. You only have control over one of those things. Exert it.” (p. 9)

Indeed, today’s urban homesteaders are acting directly, taking responsibility in their own sphere of influence, to improve their lives and escape the limitations of the state-infested world – and they do so without isolating themselves, but rather by expanding upon their ties to their community.

Kaplan and Blume give a sense of the individualism of this movement, one not necessarily loyal to enviro-leftist conformity. San Francisco permaculture teacher Kevin Bayuk is quoted with something mightily similar, in substance if not tone, to one of my favorite George Carlin routines on the futility of trying to “save the planet”:

“I’ve seen people approach this type of lifestyle or message as something they must do. Climate change, species extinction! Do something now! We must! I’ve had those feelings of urgency, but when people approach this kind of lifestyle with a sense of [urgency], it’s just a few years before burnout. That type of energy leads directly to failure; it doesn’t fit with the economy of a healthy system. I advocate for a different metaphor for why you’d live like this. I remember a story that comes from science that says the G-type star we’re flying around on is five or six billion years old, and it might live another twelve billion years. If humanity makes it, twelve billion years down the road all the hydrogen will have fused into helium in that star and it’s going to erupt and expand and envelop the Earth and all the life on it will be gone. In this story, you can’t save the Earth or humanity, so there’s no must about it. The story’s written; it’s just a matter of time. Is it twelve billion years from now, fifteen years from now, 100 years from now? It doesn’t matter to me; I just know the story of trying to ‘save’ the Earth is foolish.” (p. 20)

In the long run, we’re all dead, said Keynes. Nevertheless, the Austrian school of economics to which I subscribe suggests we should think about the future, at least as far as we can see ahead. With a financial system in tatters, utility systems poorly maintained and due for a major disaster, a government neither inclined nor able to handle emergencies natural or manmade, and a corporatist food system bringing us continually lower quality sustenance at ever higher prices, the state-approved way of life can sometimes appear to be a race to the bottom. For the sake of surviving, to say nothing of protecting our freedom from the state, those of us who have yet committed to a flight from the cities must begin taking urban homesteading seriously. Meanwhile, those already in that movement, disenfranchised from the nationalist system and thriving as a growing, localized economic force, need to hear about the intellectual revolution of peace, voluntary economics, and liberty known as libertarianism. It’s a match made in heaven. Let the courting process begin.

Thanks to Nicole Booz for her help and inspiration on this article. An earlier version of this ran at Freedom’s Phoenix

]]> http://libertarianstandard.com/2013/05/13/sustainable-living-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-urban-farms/feed/ 3 http://libertarianstandard.com/2011/11/23/the-market-giveth-and-the-market-taketh-away/ http://libertarianstandard.com/2011/11/23/the-market-giveth-and-the-market-taketh-away/#comments Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:00:50 +0000 Brian Martinez http://libertarianstandard.com/?p=9652

The media are in a kerfuffle about a short-term egg shortage caused by Target and other supermarket chains dropping a major supplier, Sparboe Farms, following reports that workers at its production facilities abused chickens and failed to follow the company’s animal welfare policy.  The revelations were punctuated by a graphic undercover video released by animal rights group Mercy for Animals, which showed workers stuffing chickens into cramped battery cages, pulling rotting carcasses out of cages, “torturing” birds by swinging them around by their legs, and so on.  No matter how you feel about animal rights, it’s not pleasant to watch.

Sparboe, for its part, has shifted its damage control into overdrive, posting updates about steps it has taken to “rectify problems” and pointing out that it is the first egg supplier to receive USDA certification.  Which, given these reports, provides some insight into the worth of government certifications.

I expect a government response will be forthcoming, and Sparboe may face fines and possibly a regiment of FDA inspectors swarming over its farms in the months to come.  But anything the government can do in its enforcement role pales next to the punishment which can be meted out by the market.  Even if millions of consumers haven’t suddenly adopted veganism in response to the video, they still have let their displeasure be known, and the result is that Sparboe has lost significant business and is now forced to reevaluate its practices in order to regain consumer trust.  Which is exactly as it should be.  No amount of regulatory oversight will prevent every problem in our food supply (this year has also seen the deadliest listeria outbreak, from tainted cantaloupe, since the 1920s), but with the ease with which information disseminates online, the market will help ensure such problems do not go unnoticed by consumers, who are then free to vote their conscience.  If only the market was free to punish every business, no matter how large or small, for bad decisions and unethical practices.

Gizmodo reports on a story from New Zealand about a supermarket which accidentally opened with no employees inside the store. People shopped and checked out using the self-checkout lanes. Half of the people actually paid, but note the explanation as to why the other half did not (emphasis mine):

In fact, after reviewing the tape, a religious studies professor said it seemed like everyone was going to pay until they got stuck at the self checkout machine waiting for an employee to approve an alcohol purchase. Once they couldn’t find an employee, they left with their groceries in tow.

Here we have a case of the government actually incentivizing theft and costing the store money through its moral policing. Without state laws against underage drinking, it is unlikely that stores would require employee approvals for any purchase.

Easily 99% of what American libertarians talk about is the demise of the country, with countless daily examples of new regulations, and the devastating results of those regulations. The US is, after all, in what to many appear to be an accelerating rate of decay compared to other countries around the world. The endless complaining and whining of the libertarian is not without merit–”our” federal government has for decades now been a worldwide aggressor. That said, there are a few aspects of American lifestyle that, in my opinion, are worth mentioning. These are things that I think are at least superior to that which exists elsewhere. In making this list I asked for comments by fellow TLS bloggers.

Full disclosure: for what it’s worth, personally, my only point of comparison is having lived half of my life in Perú and the other in the USA.

Of course, for each one of the points mentioned below there is some sort of state intervention that makes things more expensive or complicated. Still, there is something to be said about Americanism that is not all negative.

Affordable access to technology. Though things are improving in South America, import taxes are so high that it is not uncommon for people to travel to the US and bring back all kinds of electronics in their suitcase, pass them as their own, and then give them to buyers.

Can-do attitude. Everyday life is not a challenge. For the most part, people are cooperative, helpful, thankful and attentive. Special circumstances are not often resisted or met with disdain. In Perú, things are impossible, difficult, and take eons, but only because of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Speed of business. My cousin spent a year doing lab research in Italy. He noted that things got done “whenever” and nobody ever knew when an order would be fulfilled. Sure, there is a difference in culture. In my opinion, so long as things are done well, faster is better–it also makes you less poor.

Homeschooling. In large parts of Europe homeschooling is illegal or extremely regulated. Yes, there is always the black market, but there are huge risks involved (losing your kids or parenting rights, fines, jailtime, etc.). Homeschooling is legal in every state of the US, with some states giving homeschooling parents very favorable conditions (see a href=”http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp”>this map).

Entrepreneurship. Nobody blinks an eye upon being told, casually even, that the person conversing with them owns a business or two or three. The idea of starting a business, even a tiny, one-person operation, is not special.

When working on this post I received the following comment (edited for bloggability) from Anthony Gregory:

Music — jazz, country, blues and rock, all ours. Film — we invented it and still dominate. Literature — some of the best stuff written in English. Food — lots of stuff was developed and created here. Culture — we kick ass in everything from clothing to modern art. Political philosophy — we said goodbye to empire, ushering in two centuries of global liberalization. Modern libertarianism — our people invented the freaking thing. I love America as much as anyone in this country, goddamn it. I will defend America until I’m blue in the face.

Let’s continue.

Optimism. “Americans are uniquely (and, to foreigners, obnoxiously) optimistic. Pessimism is the order of the day elsewhere, but not here.” ~Akiva

Service. Granted, this one varies widely, but in my experience, in the US those in the service industry are either happy to see you, or, most likely, pretend to be. That’s fine, because in other countries, you are sadly more than often treated as a burden. Yes, customers treated like a burden who ruin a clerk’s otherwise completely idle day.

Drive-thrus. A convenient, time saver. No need to get out of your car and walk in the cold or in the heat. Once, years ago, my wife and met a German exchange student. He said that in his country, drive-thrus were seen as inhuman and were not popular. I just rolled my eyes and thought “FAIL” at such a comment. Do they have stoves in Germany or cars?

Charity. Personal and corporate charitable donations, foundations, scholarships, memorial funds abound. Americans tend to rank near the top when it comes to non-profit financial support.

24/7 places. Some years ago Gabriel Calzada (founder of the Instituto Juan de Mariana) and I were walking around Manhattan. He still got a kick out of seeing businesses actually opened on Sundays, as well as businesses running 24/7. In Spain, he told me, some businesses are prohibited from opening on Sundays, supposedly for protectionist reasons (big stores vs. small stores).

Guns. Though a few states have it almost as bad as Europe, in most of the US you can go buy a firearm in minutes from a store; in most states you can also (legally) buy one from a private seller with no government notice, permit or registry. And in a handful of states you can take a handgun and carry it concealed without a permit.

Classlessness. In developing countries, where income mobility is not high, a de facto class system has therefore been established. In Perú, for example, it is common–indeed expected–for the poor to not generally approach or talk to the non-poor unless they are begging for money or asking for business. For the upper middle class and above, it is just not usual, and sometimes even frowned upon, for the “privileged” to mingle, chat or engage in random conversation at a checkout lane, with the lower classes. In the US there can be a bit of this, but it is nowhere near as pronounced. Most folks have no problem interacting with any other person regardless of their position in life or income. Americans greet, and shake hands, with anyone else, and tend to respect the other person for their accomplishments and work. There are even linguistic examples of “classiness.” If you are upper middle class, it is expected for you to use the informal version of you (tu) when speaking with someone of a “lower” class, whereas the “plebes” are expected to use the formal you (usted) when addressing their “betters.”

Fellow TLS blogger Akiva shares the following comment regarding American optimism and individualism:

On the first day of B-school, they had an expert on international culture who consults with major companies come and give us some behavior and attitudes test and then explain the outcome. The bottom line is that Americans are *extreme* outliers. American culture is unique. Despite all the crap that has happened, Americans are as culturally exceptional as they were in de Tocqueville’s day.

They reject fate and believe in in the power of individual choice. American celebrate mavericks; they’d never say, “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”. On a very fundamental level, Americans value others as free individuals and expect those around them to do the same. There is no deference to authority, experience, or seniority, Americans expect people to justify themselves by their words and deeds, not because of who they are. Individualism and freedom are not political ideas here, they are cultural values, to the point that even the enemies of freedom must pay lip service to them.

Americans believe in the rule of law with almost religious fervor. That the state has to justify not only every exercise of power but even its very existence, is a uniquely American attitude. When Americans say that the state “can’t” do something they don’t mean it as a procedural formality, but as a statement of metaphysical reality.

America succeed b/c of the people and despite the government. Everywhere else seems to have *needed* political leadership to get anything done, but Americans by and large just take care of business. Politics is not a field that attracts the best and brightest, America doesn’t produce great statesman, but that’s b/c its best people have
better things to do. Politicians may talk of taxing the rich, but even on the left, very few would begrudge Gates, Dell, or others who made their fortunes with “honest” work.

In short, what is good about America is everything that riles the Europeans, offends those from the Far East, and mystifies everyone else.

To this list I can probably add tolerance and heterogeneity. Unlike places where there is significant pressure to never deviate from “standard” behavior, in the US people do not care too much if individuals or families do things that are not “the norm.” There are numerous “private holidays” and events and activities of all kinds. These exist all over the world, but in my opinion (again, drawing from my Peruvian experience) folks who deviate from what is standard are easily categorized as weird or outcasts, even if their interests are not, for international standards, extravagant or radically unusual.

For the “average” Austro-anarcho-libertarian, the US is free-fall, with totalitarianism around the corner. But there is also plenty of good.

This is a syndicated post, which originally appeared at Mimi and Eunice » IP. View original post.

Jon Perlow, over at Jon’s Political Ramblings, has a thought experiment which should give pause to all socialists and interventionists:

Here’s an idea that I think my socialist friends in San Francisco might love.

We’ll have the city of San Francisco open up a chain of restaurants. We’ll make them completely free and the city will pay for them with taxes. We’ll tax wealthy people the most so that the people without much money won’t have to pay any taxes for this service. Since it’s free, it will have the additional benefit of causing most of the profit-seeking restaurants in the city to close down. Even though they may sell better food, it’s hard to compete with something that is free to the customer. But since there’s little competition, the food quality in our public restaurants may suffer or vary too much from neighborhood to neighborhood. The people in the wealthier neighborhoods may try to help their restaurants get better ingredients, but that wouldn’t be fair to people in lower income neighborhoods. To solve this, we’ll create a central bureaucracy that will set food standards across the entire city. Although the overhead of this bureaucracy will cost about 20% of the total cost of the entire operation, it’ll be worth it because we’ll have uniform standards set by professionals who know what is best for us. And it’ll be funded for by taxes from wealthy people who already have too much money.

Some super wealthy people may choose to go to private restaurants, but it will be a tiny minority because few people can afford to pay taxes once for their public restaurants and then pay a second fee to private establishments. Those establishments will be very expensive because they will only cater to the wealthiest and the tiny demand will severely limit competition. Although our leaders will all dine at these elite establishments, they will stand behind the quality and cost of the public restaurants.

Some other people may choose to pay for raw ingredients and eat at home, but we’ll demonize those home-cookers as being anti-social and weird. We’ll wonder why they don’t want to eat with the rest of us? Is our food not good enough for them? It would be too dangerous to let this trend catch on. But it’ll be okay — eventually one of them will screw up and that’s when we’ll pounce. Perhaps, one of them will get food poisoning and we’ll feign outrage. Although the incidence rate of food poisoning is the same at both public and home kitchens, the general population knows that statistics lie. We’ll say we must protect these home-cookers from poisoning themselves and we’ll demand they change their ways and eat like the rest of us.

Hopefully, this model will become so successful that we’ll replicate it to the state level. And then other states will copy it. To ensure that things are fair from state to state, we’ll pass “No eater left behind” legislation to ensure consistent standards. We’ll have to raise more taxes though to fund the Department of Gastronomy.

Of course, no system is perfect. Problems may arise from time to time. For example, the workers at these state-run monopolies may realize they have a lot more leverage than they would in a free marker. Where would people eat if they went on strike? They will negotiate lucrative contracts that guarantee it’s virtually impossible to get fired and everybody will get a fair salary based on seniority instead of based on the quality of their work. After all, how would it be fair to pay Michelle more than David just because Michelle works longer hours.

Some people though may not like the food they are getting. They will demand better from their state government. Some forward-looking free market thinkers may realize that we should give these eaters more choices. We’ll allow a few charter restaurants to be created. They will receive funds from the state and the eaters will get vouchers to dine at these quasi-private establishments. These charter restaurants will be loathed by the public restaurants. The employees of the public restaurants will not like the employment practices at the charter restaurants such as firing waiters who are under-performing or giving some cooks bonuses because their food is better. They will say that these charter restaurants don’t meet the same standards as the public ones and demand that this be fixed to protect eaters. The charter restaurants will be forced to comply with the thousands of pages of regulations created by the public food bureaucracy, but it will be very difficult for them because they don’t have their own giant bureaucracy for ensuring compliance. Some charter restaurants will stay around but only enough to placate the most unhappy eaters and not so many that the overall system is destabilized.

Now, isn’t this so much better than the current model of having those profit-seeking restaurants of varying quality all over the city. Some of them are mom and pop places that go out of business when their customers don’t like their food. How unjust is that!

There are those of you who may think this is a pretty silly idea. But if it works so well for primary and secondary education, why not replicate it to other areas. Hopefully, I’ve convinced the naysayers.

In college, I quickly learned that working at a restaurant is a great way to guarantee you’ll get at least one free (or drastically reduced) meal per shift. I always vied for the Sunday buffet brunch shift because even though I had to show up early on Sunday after a late Saturday night, buffet brunch meant 1) I only had to take drink orders, bring fresh rolls, and bus tables, 2) I could enjoy a huge plate of brunch leftovers once the restaurant was closed, and 3) I could pack a to-go box with rations for my now-husband. During the rest of the week, the long hours on my feet and difficult customers were well worth the 1/2 price dinner and shift drink that came with each night on the floor.

Of course, leave it to politicians to destroy this small but crucial perk. Michigan State Representative Mark Meadows (D-East Lansing) has introduced House Bill 6214, which would tax restaurant employees on meals they receive while working. Let’s be clear here: when I was a server in Alabama, the minimum base pay was $2.13/hour. Yes, servers get tips and depending on where they work, they could be making well over $100 per night in tips alone. But if the restaurant is dead, you go home with a few measly dollars and the knowledge that your weekly paycheck will be enough for a tank of gas and a few staples from the grocery store. I counted on my shift dinner to be my meal of the day–supplemented with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or cheese on crackers.

Now, Representative Meadows wants to take more money from the pockets of restaurant employees. I’ve known some fine “professional” servers who have worked in the food industry for the majority of their lives. These people generally work at high-class establishments and make more than I do in my 9-5. However, the majority of folks working in restaurants aren’t doing it for the big bucks. They are busting ass by night at Chili’s after working their day jobs, they are folks without extensive training or educational opportunities, and they are people with a nice smile and warm demeanor that can hustle a few extra dollars from a table. It’s unfortunate that Representative Meadows now wants to target this population with this terribly greedy plan. More money for the state of Michigan, less for you!

Photo courtesy of bradleyolin.

Slate writer Melinda Wenner Moyer makes a big to-do over new mainstream medical-research findings that suggest that saturated fats affect your blood-cholesterol levels in ways that don’t really hurt you, while processed sugars affect your blood-cholesterol levels in ways that do hurt you.  I agree with Moyer that the topic is something over which it is worthwhile to make a big to-do.  The bottom line:  LDL (“bad, bad”) cholesterol comes in a variety of flavors, distinguished by the sizes of the particles in your blood.  Big LDL particles — those you get from eating fatty meat — seem not to attach to artery walls; those are the heart-neutral particles.  Small and medium LDL particles — the ones you get into your blood by eating processed sugars and flours — do appear to attach to artery walls and contribute to heart disease.

The knowledge that processed carbohydrates lead to problems with blood cholesterol isn’t new, however.  Dr. Sheldon Reiser published studies showing that processed-carb intake raises LDL and triglyceride levels back in 1983.  (You’ll have to visit a library to find this:  “Physiological Differences between Starches and Sugars,” in Medical Applications of Clinical Nutrition pp. 133-177, ed. By J. Bland, Keats Pub. New Canaan, CN, 1983.)

I’ve known how to eat well for years, but recently have set aside the time and developed the motivation to really do it.  What occurred to me while I was shopping:  My wife and I are now shopping mostly for meats (including fish), cheeses, nuts, and a huge variety of fresh produce.  In other words, the “radical” healthy diets some of us are eating, including the “paleo” diet, remind me of what my grandmother ate (though our grandparents didn’t know to avoid bread, especially white bread).  Of course, we’re avoiding processed foods, which everybody has known to do for decades.

So, what’s the federal government to do?  Government officials have been waging war on our meat and fat intake for years, most recently with the updated food pyramid (the one from 2005, due to be updated this year) that calls for six or more servings of grain (only half of them whole grain), and only two of meat, per day — a diet likely to make anyone but a marathon runner gain body fat and tiny-bit LDL.  Knowing that the 2005 pyramid is already obsolete, is there any reason to trust the next one, or any reason to trust that the government’s new war on salt is any more credible?

The final answer:  Don’t trust the government’s war on nutrition (ostensibly a war on bad nutrition) any more than its wars on inflation, unemployment, drugs, or terrorism.  Inform yourself, take control of your own health, and enjoy a long and healthy life in spite of the government’s attempts to help.

I love food shows, enough to be sucked into watching the first two episodes of “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” (I also only have basic cable, so no more Food Network. Sigh.) Last week we followed Oliver as he created a new lunch menu for an elementary school in Huntington, West Virginia, the CDC’s unhealthiest city of 2008. And what did we find? Oliver’s menu of baked chicken, brown rice, and fruit did not meet the USDA standards for a well-rounded lunch. He wasn’t offering two grains! Heaven forbid! Oliver resorted to toasting hamburger buns to serve with the lunch, all the while complaining that this extra starch was just going to make the students fat. The USDA-approved lunch, however, met the guidelines–a slice of cheese pizza is two grains. I think they threw a few carrot and celery sticks and a piece of fruit on the tray as well. Which would you rather your child have for lunch? Well, it doesn’t matter because the USDA demands they have the pizza.

As a child of a lunch lady, I know that the ire for the sub-par school lunch is often directed at those who prepare and serve the food and not at the true culprit: the USDA. I asked my mother exactly how the lunches are planned at her school, and I learned that she is given a menu each week which she must strictly abide by. The only alterations she can make are to remove spices, butter, and anything else that may add any actual flavor to the food. Can she incorporate any local foods? Can she tailor the menus to local tastes? Absolutely not! Them’s the rules, lunch lady.

My mother, and countless other lunch ladies (and men!) across the country, LOVE what they do. They enjoy feeding the children. They like to see empty trays returned to the kitchen. They truly care about the health and well-being of the kiddies who walk through their line everyday. But they are given no opportunity to create lunches that kids actually want to eat. Instead, they are forced to reheat mostly processed foods and require each student to take a carton of milk, only to watch the unopened cartons go directly into the trash. Talk about a waste of money.

Nutrition is first taught in the home. Parents must take their responsibility as educators seriously and not depend on the schools to teach their children. And parents must take a more active role in their children’s development rather than believe that the government knows whats best for their children. The USDA thinks they know what is best: cheese pizza and chicken nuggets for lunch.

In the silly but eminently watchable Travel Channel show, Man v. Food, host Adam Richman visits diners that provide food challenges — dishes so big or so pepper-hot that whoever manages to eat an entire one wins some kind of honor.  Imagine such a diversion during America’s (first) Great Depression.  In fact, it should ever be as Man v. Food paints it; the only famines recorded in the last several centuries have been the direct results of the activities of forcible governments.  Societies always, always can feed themselves abundantly and inexpensively in the absence of governmental wealth-destroying interference.  Watch for evidence of this in your own life while the American economy struggles to absorb the gargantuan economic “stimuli” and control-tightening measures instituted over the last, and the next, few years.