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The Chain Gang

Consumers foot the bill for the supermarket monopolies. And what a bill! A 1975 government report found that 41% of the increase in food margins in a nine-year period was the result of rising advertising and promotional expenses — money spent not to better our diet but to manipulate us as shoppers.

Breadmen’s

The Rose In The Greasy Fist

I’ll start with a startling admission: in this, The New Age, the closest I come to feeling part of a community is at an all-night cafe just down the block called Breadmen’s.

The Death Of The Farm

Every week, hundreds of farms go out of business. Only half the farms that were viably operating in 1950 exist today. In less than thirty years, three million farms have disappeared. The story of their demise is one of America’s greatest tragedies.

Will An Apple Turnover A Day Keep The Doctor Away?

Initial decisions about what we will eat are made by the supermarket chains when they divvy up their shelf space. And these decisions are based on different values than we would apply. More often than not, the result is one row of fresh fruits and vegetables and ten or twelve rows of boxes and cans.

A Secret Garden

Chosen for their distinctive aroma and taste, les fines herbes have a charming ability to stand on their own, or to mingle pleasantly, like party goers.

Seeds Of Life, Seeds Of Destruction

When plant varieties are lost, their genetic material is lost — and lost forever. Without existing seeds which carry specific genes conferring resistance, it may not be possible in the future to breed resistance back into corn or any other crop.

Remembering The Bicentennial

This is all in service of an excuse to reissue a bunch of bicentennial humor that ran on WDBS from the fall of ’75 to July 4, 1976. There were well over a hundred different “bicentennial minutes,” and what follows was excerpted from the worst of them.

A Banana By Any Other Name

The Case Against Brand-Name Vegetables

Four years after the Chiquita campaign had been launched, United had captured nearly a third of the country’s market at prices 10 to 15% higher than other bananas. Through brand name promotion, United had convinced consumers to pay more for Chiquitas than other bananas and to like doing it.

Tomatoes: Who Stole The Taste?

The “fresh” tomatoes we buy in the supermarkets are picked while they are still green and firm — and then taken to be gassed. (The industry prefers to call this “de-greening.”)

Temple Sweeper

Eight years ago I decided to become a vegetarian. This decision corresponded roughly with a hazily conceptual political activism and very clearly with an infatuation with a male vegetarian. Since then . . . concern for my diet has moved from the realm of “proof of lifestyle” to a central place in my efforts toward well being.