Tulsa World
July 9, 2006 Sunday Final Home Edition
Syndicated; Pg. G3
Flavor is prime casualty of U.S. food industry
ROBYN BLUMNER
St Petersburg Times
What has happened to our food?
I didn't know to ask this question until a recent trip to Italy and Switzerland. Over there,
and 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 grocery store. 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 lippursing intensity that it is as if you are tasting some new and exotic flavor.
Then there's the bread. With shelf-life apparently 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? Their 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 were 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 anxiously 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 hill top every year
at the start of summer in a ceremonial procession. They believe that the grasses there
imbue the cows' 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 exponentially. I just haven't been paying it
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.
Contact Robin Blumner at blumner@sptimes.com