OK, now I feel doubly lied to. Not only did the Food Network insinuate that the First Lady would play a key role in their White House Iron Chef, but now it turns out that the produce used in the cooking segment was not the same produce picked in the White House garden by the famous chefs.
At the beginning of the two-hour special, the chefs were shown picking sweet potatoes, broccoli, fennel and tomatillos from the White House garden. Then the chefs were seen walking into Kitchen Stadium, produce in hand. One problem: The show is filmed in New York City.
“Due to the production delay between the shoot at the White House and the shoot at Food Network, the produce used in Kitchen Stadium during the ‘Super Chef Battle’ was not actually from the White House garden,” said Food Network spokeswoman Lisa Krueger in a statement to The Talk.
Instead, the chefs used replacement produce, though only the same types of fruits and vegetables picked from the White House garden.
Replacement produce! You can’t replace the Secret Ingredient on Iron Chef. When you specifically name the ingredient to be produce from the White House garden, you can’t substitute fare from your local Whole Foods. It’s like replacing Beluga with your local sushi takeout roe. They may both be fish eggs, but no one is going to spend $5K for a kilo of sushi roe. Now I just want to slap Jane Seymour for each time remarked on how unbelievably “fresh” the produce tasted.
Additionally, this was just dumb. It’s a 3 hour trip from DC to NYC, there is no reason why they couldn’t use the same produce if it was planned properly. Or they could have filmed in DC. Either way, this was a pointless lie, and an obnoxious one at that. The Food Network may have been served extra helpings of viewers for its White House special, but how many viewers are now left with a sour taste in their mouth?
I, like many foodies across the nation, was super pumped for the special White House Iron Chef that was broadcast this past Sunday night. Sadly, I left the table wanting something more. For anyone that has been following the exploits of the Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden, there wasn’t much new information. Yes, Bobby Flay informed us that sweet potatoes are Mrs. Obama’s faves, but how many times are they going to gush about the pounds and pounds of produce the garden has dished up? How many times are we going to get the same tour of the White House acreage? Foodie bloggers across the country have already beaten this story to death.
No, I tuned in, because I was curious to see FLOTUS at the tasting table, rubbing shoulders with the other judges, smacking her lips at the amazing creations, and dashing the hopes of world famous chefs when she dismisses a dish as being under seasoned. At least that’s what I thought we were getting with the advertising “…and a special guest of national importance…”.
No such luck. Instead we got Nigella Lawson, Jane Seymour, and Natalie Coughlin. Really? They couldn’t even get Bo Obama to lick some crumbs up off the floor? Insanely dull and disappointing considering all that hype.
The show did pull in some mega numbers, the show’s biggest in its 8 seasons, but how many patrons left with a bad taste in their mouth?
So I was all excited to go down and check out the opening of the White House Farmers Market this afternoon. Yes, its yucky and rainy, but hordes of people showed up, many in their work clothes, indicating they snuck off for an hour from the job just to come check out the kickoff.
The White House farmers market was your run-of-the-mill farmers market. Except for the secuirty line, metal detectors, and lots of serious guys with little wires coming out of their ears. Other than, perfectly normal.
I, of course, forgot to charge my camera, so instead I got a single shot off of my blackberry.
That’s Michelle, Secretary Vilsack, and Mayor Fenty speechifying for all us farmer markets groupies. But don’t take my work for it, go over to Obama Foodaroma for the good shots.
Some times politicians aren’t just talk. Turns out the Obamas meant it when they said they wanted a White House Farmers market. It has been reported that the First Lady has submitted an application for a street closure about 1 block away from the White House for Thursdays between 1pm and 8pm.
The time a place have some good advantages. The farmers market would still be extrememly close to the White House, but far enough away to make the Secret Service happy. The block in question doesn’t get much traffic anyways because it dead ends into Lafayette Park, which is on the other side of Pennsylvania in front of the White House.
The Park provides good spill over for crowds. The timing will also keep the crowd situation down. DC is largely a tourist weekend stop, so having it on Thursday should cut down on roving bands of ameteurs photographers. Plus, DC is chock full of weekend farmers markets, having one during the week will create more options for the residents.
You have to give the First Lady props - she talks about changing our diet in real terms that people can understand. Inspiring to moms and home cooks every where.
So Obama wants a farmers market outside of the White House. I figured it was so overplayed I wasn’t going to write about it here. Even if this endeavor comes to fruitition, do you really think anyone is going to be rubbing elbows with Barack over the best bunch of kale? Secret Service must already be developing stress ulcers.
That being said, people are getting (overly) excited about this idea. And everyone has an opinion. Even Ben Buchwalter from Mother Jones, who seems to think he has the recipe for success. As he claims, all Obama has to do is:
Booths must provide free samples. And I’m not just talking about peaches. A farmers’ market has got to be more than a place for people to buy produce. Consumers need to roam freely to get a feel for the lay of the land before making buying decisions. Free samples of bread, veggies, and hummus-type spreads make this possible.
Don’t try to sell me $8 eggs. Yes, it’s important to buy products that come from humane farms. But some studies have even shown that cage-free eggs may not be “all they’re cracked up to be.” And you can find organic, humane eggs for a reasonable price.
How about some hot meal options? After a good hour of farmers’ market roaming, I tend to work up an appetite and a red pepper just doesn’t cut it. But farmers’ markets are often tempted to bring in chains so that they can charge higher booth fees. Including Chipotle or Panda Express is a quick way to destroy the market’s legitimacy.
And throw some live music in there for good measure. But President Obama, resist the urge to go for star power. I don’t want to see Bono and Mary J. Blige headlining the main stage at your farmer’s market. Like the vendors at the market, the live musicians should be locals.
So let me quickly explain why Ben should not quit his day job and open a stand in Dupont Market.
Nobody has to provide anything, and trust me no one wants a bite of raw onion. But product samples are always welcome. BTW - I’ve yet to find a local farmers market that sells homegrown hummus. This is DC not Tel Aviv.
I agree on the eggs. Its true that DC area farmers markets are over priced and its the most obvious in the egg prices.
Apparently you, unlike me, has never tried to beg the fresh crab cake guys to cook up a serving for me while I shop. They won’t do it. Requires all sorts of licensing that’s just not worth it.
A highly controversial tactic is being employed by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in the nation’s capital this week. PCRM is the advocacy arm of the Good Medicine quarterly magazine. They have a heavy focus on preventative medicine such as funding research on things like diabetes and cancer and advocate for better nutritional information and healthier school lunches. It’s that last mission that has put PCRM front and center in the question of good taste and even ethics.
PCRM has launched a metro ad campaign in Washington featuring 8-year old Jasmine of Florida asking “President Obama’s Daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don’t I?”
Yes, Sasha and Malia eat very well. They go to a wonderful private school that serves items like organic strawberries and roasted local squash. We should hope that every child in the country gets meals like theirs, and we should aspire to that lofty goal, but those meals are not designed by the Obamas.
Jasmine has also written a letter to Sasha and Malia asking them to join her campaign. Advocacy organizations run these kind of campaigns all the time - run ads in places where lawmakers will see them, have cute little girls write hand written letters to their congressman, etc. But their target usually is adult elected officials. Not little girls. Especially this young. Sasha is the youngest resident of the White House since JFK Jr. in 1961.
Sasha and Malia are celebrity daughters, just in the way that Jolie-Pitt brood are. It is expected that some public photos will be made available and that with their parents they may make public appearances. This is completely different than pressuring small children about policy crafted by their parents. That is what this campaign amounts to.
Who knows if Mrs. Obama will allow Jasmine’s letter to be passed onto her daughters. Now that the Politico and Fox News has picked up the story, it may become hard to ignore. While this will not take an emotional toll on the girls like when People put Chelsea on the front page during Clinton’s Monica-gate, it is by no means right to put two small children in the middle of a policy argument.
It can only be assumed that this ad was meant to provoke a response from the White House. Something tells me that the response may not be the one PCRM was looking for, and one that the food movement would want to be associated with.
Since all the good nutrients come from nutrients in the ground, your foood can only be as good as the soil you grow it in. Turns out that Michelle Obama’s organic garden is not very organic. Seems the Clinton used sewer sludge to fertlize the grounds in the 90’s which has high levels of lead. Not the end of the world, but the Obamas are definitely going to have to reconstitute their soil before growing anything else.
70% is the percentage of antibiotics in the United States that goes into animal feed. That’s why the Obama Administration is attempting to get legislation passed that would require a veterinarian to administer antibiotics to sick animals, instead of allowing CAFO owners to indiscriminately dump the drugs into their troughs. Yet here comes Steve Kopperud trying to spin the practice in the name of “science”.
What folks forget in these debates over emerging and existing technologies is that the argument should never be “either/or.” It’s ensuring lawmakers remain objective, perceptive and open-minded enough to allow promising technologies to flourish - with appropriate oversight - so that benefits can be achieved. It’s again a question of choice. No lawmaker - or company in search of a marketing niche - should deem itself smarter than the rest of us when it comes to whether we embrace a technology or not. It comes down to this: If it works, I’ll decide whether I’ll avail myself of the benefits. If it doesn’t work, I won’t waste my time or money.
Sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? Let the scientists be scientists and the farmers will choose what works and the free market will solve our problems. Except our health problems. You see, there is no provision in the free market that gives an advantage to products and services that are healthiest for us. That’s where the free market fails. Farmers have no incentive to stop a practice that may be causing a major health problem. Yes, people can choose to buy antibiotic free meat, and many are. But those purchases aren’t goig to protect them from antibiotic resistant infections that start on a farm and then get carried into their hospitals and other public places.
While Mr. Kopperud does have a valid point that not enough people are taking into account that overuse of antibiotics in humans is a concern, the numbers don’t lie. There is a much bigger problem with antibiotic use in livestock.
As for “science” and what does and does not work, there’s a whole bunch of real scientists out there not paid for by Big Food that say antibiotics in our food IS bad for us.
“Antibiotic medicines are losing effectiveness on humans due to their increased use in animal feed,” said Margaret Mellon, Ph.D, JD, director of the food and environment programme for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Animals raised in natural environments rarely require the use of antibiotics. Americans who choose meat produced this way are making conscious decisions to ensure that antibiotics will still be working when they or their family need them.”
…
In the US the use of antibiotics in food animals has attracted the attention of Congress. Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative Sherrod Brown (OH) plan to re-introduce bills soon to phase out the routine use of medically important antibiotics in poultry and livestock. Similar legislation introduced in the last Congress was endorsed by over 170 groups, including the American Medical Association.
So Mr. Kopperud please don’t concern troll us with pleas for science to reign.
Huge move today, that seemed to come out of nowhere. The Obama Administration announced they would be pushing a bill that would seek to limit the over use of antibiotics in livestock. This is going to be a massive fight, and the cattlemen and poultry farms are going to fight tooth and nail. It is incredibly good news though that the Administration is willing to engage on such a contentious issue. And not a moment too soon, as deaths from antibiotic resistant infections now kill more people in the US than AIDS does.
In written testimony to the House Rules Committee, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs, said feeding antibiotics to healthy chickens, pigs and cattle — done to encourage rapid growth — should cease. And Dr. Sharfstein said that farmers should no longer be able to use antibiotics in animals without the supervision of a veterinarian.
Turns out the G8 leaders weren’t done yet. Instead of the $15B pledged as of yesterday, they tacked on another $5B at the last minute to take the total to $20B. President Obama led the food aid charge:
A senior White House official said that at one point President Obama personalized the appeal for more aid, pointing out to other world leaders that he still has relatives in Kenya who are mired in deep poverty.
“You could have heard a pin drop in the room,” the official said.
The U.S. expanded on its own commitment to double agricultural development assistance to more than $1 billion in 2010, officials said. Administration officials now say the U.S. will contribute at least $3.5 billion over the next three years to the worldwide effort.
So proud of our prez right now. I’m also so excited by the shift in strategy. It seems that Jeffery Sachs is really getting through to this group.
Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, applauded the commitment by the Group of Eight nations.
“In the past, food security was a mere bullet point at the G8,” he said. “This time, world leaders have endorsed a concrete and wide-ranging initiative. They have recognized that food security has two dimensions: food aid for critical situations and sustained investment in agriculture to break the poverty cycle.”
—The FDA will help the food industry establish better tracing systems to track the origins of a bacterial outbreak.
—A new network will be established to help the many agencies that regulate food safety to communicate better.
—Egg and poultry producers will have to follow new standards designed to reduce salmonella contamination.
—The Food Safety Inspection Service, the Agriculture Department agency that inspects meat, will increase sampling of ground beef ingredients in an effort to better find E. coli contamination.
—The FDA will recommend ways that producers of leafy greens, melons and tomatoes can reduce disease strains, and require stricter standards in those industries within two years.
—The FDA and the Agriculture Department also will create new positions to better oversee food safety.
The First Lady invited the Bancroft schoolkids down to the farm to pluck some goodies. The kids pulled up a feast including:
73 pounds of lettuce
12 pounds of peas
1 cucumber
They also served some baked, not fried chicken. Sadly, we district folks aren’t allowed to raise our own chickens so there was no poultry assassinations to behold. The White House claims to have harvested over 225 lbs of food so far from the garden. I admit it, I am so jealous. My little community garden plot just can’t compete.
The Prince of Wales is in, and of cousre the Obamas are in, so is it any surprise that the Governor from Maine is jumping on board?
Gov. John Baldacci today answered President Obama’s call to public service by helping a group of campers create an organic vegetable garden. Food from the garden planted at Camp Tracy in Oakland will be donated to area residents, Baldacci’s office says.
So who’s next to jump on the band wagon? Gov. Corzine definitely needs a makeover. Gov. Sebelius would have made a great gardner if she wasn’t headed off to HHS. who knows, maybe Gov Sanford is MIA in his own personal garden.
