St. Petersburg Times, FL
06-18-06
Fixing the problems in our food supply is really a matter of taste
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
What has happened to our food?
I didn't know to ask this question until a recent trip to Italy and Switzerland. Over there, in Italy especially, I realized that the food we buy from American supermarkets is just a bland, unappealing cousin to that available in Europe.
Oh, from the outside, the cantaloupes in Italy look a lot like the melons piled in bins at the local Publix. But take a bite of an Italian melon and the flavor explosion in your mouth that screams "Cantaloupe Here" tells you that this is a whole other world of fruit.
In Sorrento the lemons grow to the size of softballs and infuse a risotto with such lip-pursing intensity that it is as if you are tasting some new and exotic flavor.
Then there's the bread. With shelf-life the dominant concern of America's supermarket bread aisle, we get to choose from a huge variety of barely edible options. Even those loaves that tout their "heartiness" have crusts in color only and mushy middles.
In Italy, the bakers should all be knighted. Every offering is a brick-oven masterpiece. The bread in restaurants is typically served without any accompanying butter or olive oil, because, who needs it? The crunchy, chewy, deeply satisfying staff of life is flavor enough.
With food like this, you would think that Europeans would be fat.
They're not. Throughout Italy and Switzerland it was extremely rare to pass someone who carried more than a few extra pounds.
Certainly there are all sorts of reasons for this, including the amount of walking and bike riding they do. But I wouldn't rule out the quality of their food as a contributing factor. In Rome I ordered a salami sandwich in a busy marketplace and was handed a towering hard roll cut in half with three paper-thin slices of cured meat. I was disappointed, thinking I would barely be able to taste it. But the full-bodied flavor of the salami ended up overwhelming the bread. In our country, that sandwich would have been stacked with an inch of salami - and the calories that come with it - and it would have been half as flavorful.
Up until this trip, I had not paid much attention to the food wars launched by my

friends in the progressive community. I was never overwrought by the
Frankenfoods phenomenon. I thought genetically engineering food was only a more sophisticated take on the hybridization that had been going on since
Gregor Mendel. It didn't scare me. Hormones, preservatives, pesticides, what cattle was fed, none of it registered on my "we-have-to-do-something-about-this" meter.
But now I'm thinking that I've been way too blithe. There is something wrong with our food. The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University found that the produce from an average Iowan's dinner is trucked 1,500 miles. To withstand that kind of trip, our comestibles have been scientifically manipulated.
Suppliers have doctored it to look pretty, have fewer seeds, withstand mechanized harvesting without bruising and sit in a warehouse or on a truck without aging - every consideration but the taste.
The Red Delicious apple is the perfect example.
As a kid I remember the sweetness bomb that was the Red Delicious. Its juicy burst of flavor made me eagerly anticipate its appearance in the supermarket every fall, even if that signaled the beginning of school.
Now, I don't buy them. The flavor has been bred right out. News accounts say that growers aggressively manipulated the fruit over the decades, focusing on thickening the apple's skin for sturdy storage and brightening its color to attract consumers. But pretty food and nostalgia will fool customers for just so long and now the Red Delicious is foundering in the marketplace.
Taste, guys, bring back the taste. And while you're at it, fix the tomatoes, too.
In Appenzell, Switzerland, ranchers move their livestock to an alpine hilltop every year at the start of summer in a ceremonial procession. They believe that the grasses there imbues the cow's milk with a special flavor that enhances their famous cheese. Of course it does. We're finding pesticides in human breast milk because the food Americans eat contains toxic residue. It's obvious that the way animals are fed has a direct impact on the quality of their milk and meat.
I realize I'm a little slow to this "better eating" train. Chefs, farmers and foodies around the country have been launching efforts for years to bring back fresher, locally grown, and heritage produce and meat. The organic, slow food and sustainable farming movements are well established and growing. I just haven't been paying them much attention. But I will now. The Italians have taught me what fresh food is supposed to taste like, and it is positively out of this world.