The green pantry

There’s more to green eating than planting a garden and keeping a worm farm. By Bette Flagler.

Farmers’ markets

Three years ago there were 22 authentic farmers’ markets in New Zealand; today there are 42 with another six about to start. According to Farmers’ Markets New Zealand, in order to qualify as authentic, a farmers’ market must adhere to three basic rules:

• It is a market for edible things (not arts and crafts)
• It sells goods produced within a defined local region
• The edible goods are sold by the producer or someone involved in the production (there is no middle man)

Authentic farmers’ markets have at least 80 percent certified local stall-holders who are primary producers selling fresh, local produce that they have grown or farmed themselves. They may sell value-added products made from their own or other produce sourced within the region.

Egg

The average consumer has only what’s printed on the carton to indicate whether an egg has been laid by a hen kept in a cage or by one running freely around a large farm. We might want to believe that farmers wouldn’t lead us astray but internationally there is concern over certification, labelling and accreditation of eggs and labelling systems. Karyn Rogers, a scientist at Crown Research Institute’s GNS Science, has developed a test that can not only determine the difference between eggs that come from caged hens and those which are free range, but can also determine whether eggs come from hens which are raised organically. Through chemical analysis of the egg, Dr Rogers can determine what the hen ate; the diet of the hen will differ depending on the rearing system used. Once this has been developed and applied commercially, she believes consumers will benefit by the certification.

On the pantry bookshelf

Michael Pollan is at it again. The author who wrote The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defence of Food is soon to release Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. This guide to healthy and sensible eating will be available in New Zealand in February. It is a logical follow-up to Pollan’s last three. In the thought-provoking In Defence of Food, he tells us: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”. His isn’t a new idea but the practice is one, he argues, from which we have drifted far and if your grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, you shouldn’t eat it.

The Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley describes how we have shifted from eating “food” to eating “nutrients” and how the more we worry about our health and healthy eating, the less healthy we become. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he follows the food production of four meals, introducing the reader to environmentally friendly farmers as well as blowing the lid off industrialized organic farming and showing how corn has infiltrated just about everything imaginable (including batteries).

Food and eating

Understanding food and how it interacts with people is one of the most important topics in the world, yet many of us blindly plod through our lives assuming food is simply something that is grown and eaten. Carolyn Morris, a social anthropologist at Massey University, is teaching a first-ever course for New Zealand in January 2010 called “Food and Eating”. The course sets out to answer the question: why do we eat what we eat and why do we eat it in the way that we do? Dr Morris says that the course will cover topics such as the global food system, famine, GM, fast food/slow food and how food is implicated in the reproduction of (and resistance to) inequalities of class, gender, ethnicity and nationality. “Anthropology helps people understand the forces that structure their lives,” she says. Food is something that people take for granted and over the last few decades the ways it is produced, eaten and controlled have changed dramatically.

The pressure’s on

Hands up if you think using a pressure cooker should be classified as an adventure sport. That might have been true during our mothers’ or grandmothers’ eras but pots that exploded usually did so because the single relief or safety valve became contaminated or clogged with bits of food. Modern pressure cookers have at least one back-up relief valve in case the primary one gets clogged. They also have a lock which prevents the user from opening the pot when its internal pressure is too high.

Pressure cookers work because as heat is applied, the atmospheric pressure inside the sealed pot rises and the temperature at which liquids boil also rises (for example, in an open pot water boils at 100°C; in a sealed pressure cooker it boils at 122°C). The higher temperature means that food cooks more quickly and uses less energy. Cooking times are typically 70 percent shorter than they are when other types of cooking vessels are used, meaning a significant saving in energy and more nutrients retained in the food.

Local organic networks

Last year Otago University student Bart Acres launched Otepoti Urban Organics, a resource network aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of food grown by gardeners in the Dunedin area. The website has an online gardening guide tailored for the region as well as active discussion forums for topical subjects where local enthusiasts share their knowledge about things such as when to plant what and where particular products can be sourced; the network currently has 350 registered users. Symbiosis Seed Exchange is the organization’s seed programme through which Otago residents can buy heirloom and open-pollinated vegetable varieties suitable for the southern climate for one dollar per packet. It’s a non-profit activity, says Bart, and any proceeds go back into the network. The seed exchange also functions as a way for gardeners to provide information about varieties and their growing behaviour.

Potatoes go purple – and green

New Zealand’s only potato-breeding programme is at Plant and Food Research, a Crown Research Institute, and aims to produce cultivars which are environmentally sustainable (pest and disease resistant) and also meet industry demands. These vary from fresh table potatoes to those that store well and have consumer-desired qualities relating to taste and health.  One of its new varieties, Purple Heart, is a medium-sized spud with shallow eyes, purple skin and purple-toned flesh. Potatoes with coloured flesh, says Plant and Food Research, are high in anthocyanins which are strong antioxidants. So not only do they look trendy, they’re better for you.

Food, Inc.

Dubbed the Inconvenient Truth of food, this documentary explores the industrialization of American agriculture and how policy drives production and diet. While farming systems may be different here, foodstuffs are global commodities and this is an important film for everyone who eats. If you missed it in a cinema last year, keep an eye out for the DVD.

Wrap it up

Let’s face it, even the most worthy of us eat takeaways at one time or another. You can beg your local shop to use biodegradable containers (if they say they don’t know where to get them, KiwiGreenPak distributes a full line of bowls, trays, cups and boxes) or choose an outlet such as Burger Fuel. At the 2009 Environmental Packaging Awards, Burger Fuel was awarded for its Eco-licious chip cup design. The cup, says the company, is 100% recycled, recyclable and biodegradable and is printed with vegetable oil-based inks. The used chip oil from Burger Fuel is turned into bio-diesel.

Pack a picnic

Disposable plates made from potato starch are biodegradable and break down completely in the compost bin. Potatopak, a Blenheim-based company, produces a range of plates and bowls made from starch that is extracted from the waste water produced during potato processing. Waste from the Potatopak plant is fed to pigs.

Greener kiwifruit

In an effort to develop methodology that can build our environmental credibility and be expanded across commodities, Landcare Research has recently completed a study which measured the carbon footprint of New Zealand kiwifruit production. Every part of the supply chain was investigated, from orchard, pack-house, cool-storage, transport and retail to consumer disposal. While Landcare Research is adapting the research model to other production systems such as pip and berry fruit, ZESPRI now knows which steps in the supply cycle can use a bit of greening.

To market, to market

On one hand we are advised that for the health of ourselves and the planet we should eat locally produced food. On the other, New Zealand is economically dependent on agricultural exports. Do we eat local and hope the rest of the world doesn’t? Caroline Saunders, Professor of Trade and Environmental Economics at Lincoln University, has authored more than 100 academic publications. None, though, has inspired more domestic and international interest than the one she wrote in 2007 which studied the differences in greenhouse gas emissions when milk solids were produced in New Zealand and transported to the UK versus milk solids produced in the UK. The “food miles” report showed that dairy production in the UK was responsible for 35 percent more emissions per kilogram of milk solids than those produced in New Zealand and
31 percent more emissions per hectare than New Zealand production. The report, says Professor Saunders, shows that production systems, not the miles food travels to the supermarket shelf, are the major contributors to the differences in greenhouse gas emissions and energy use.