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Iowa Chef responds to Time Magazine’s “Extreme Eating”

Posted on Wed, January 16, 2008 by Website Administrator
10 Comments | Categories: Farms and Farming, News, Current Events,

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Regarding Joel Stein's Time Magazine article "Extreme Eating" - while Mr. Stein is of course free to eat whatever type of food he chooses, I must take exception to his contention that "Dodd was basically telling the Iowans that every night they should decide whether to accompany their pork with creamed corn, corn on the cob, corn fritters or corn bread. For dessert, they could have any flavor they wanted of fake ice cream made from soy, provided that flavor was corn."

I am forced to question whether Mr. Stein has actually been to Iowa (outside of a presidential candidate's rally). While there is indeed a large amount of corn, soy and pork grown here (more than anywhere in the world in fact), to say that this is all we can eat when we choose to eat locally is blindly absurd and typical of a bicoastal mentality that considers America's great Heartland to be little more than "fly-over states."

In fact Iowa farmers can and do grow anything that can be grown outside the tropics. Our support for local, sustainable agriculture is evident in the hundreds of farmers' markets we have, many of them year-round affairs, and the dozens of organizations that support the so-called "locavore movement." The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture is at Iowa State University. Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Iowa Farmers Union enjoy tremendous growth and prestige here and around the country. The Iowa Network for Community Agriculture supports local food resources statewide. There are five Slow Food Convivia here, and eight "Buy fresh, Buy Local" campaigns organized statewide. Edible Iowa River Valley, a member of the Edible Communities family of magazines, boasts a quarterly readership over 36,000.

My restaurant alone provides our guests with all its meat and roughly 60% of everything else (year-round) from more than 30 "Devotay Local Farm Partners," and not to belabor the point, but there is no corn on our menu.

Mr. Stein concludes by saying "I'm going to keep buying food from my foreign neighbors. Because it's the only way we Americans learn about other countries, other than by bombing them." While this may or may not be true, I suggest he spend a little more time learning about his own country first. He can start here, I'll have a table waiting for him.

Member Comments

From aluapaluap on Wed, January 16, 2008

Thanks for writing this. I used to be a cook at Cafe Phoenix in Grinnell, and the variety and quality of local foods we used spoiled me. The restaurants I work for now (in, it should be mentioned, a climate where one would think local food would be more widely available) don’t hold a candle to my experience in Iowa. Bravo.

From admin on Wed, January 16, 2008

Thank you aluap. I’m so flabbergasted at how deeply this Stein fellow misunderstands, misinterprets, and misidentifies not just Iowa but our movement (“deeply luddite” ?!?!?), that i can hardly constrain my response to the couple hundred words I posted here. The man is in dire need of accurate information, which makes me question his journalistic credentials.
Peace,

kmf

From blake on Wed, January 16, 2008

So, my co-worker claims that Klein is trying to be funny, ironic, whatever… I, too, was outraged and pulling my hair out, but am now wondering if this is a serious piece. This Klein guy is supposed to be a humorist of sorts. If it isn’t meant to be taken at face value, the irony is sooooo subtle.

From admin on Fri, January 18, 2008

Blake,
WAY too subtle for me, and I’m one who will admit to really liking ironic comedy (I like puns too, sorry). He could have avoided all the ire around the blogs by simply throwing in at least one “but seriously folks” or something like that. He chose not too.
If he was trying to be funny, he failed at that too. Saying Iowa has a lot of corn is a joke that’s so old it’s - well - corny.

From blake on Wed, January 23, 2008

yeah, I agree… he fell flat in both logic (clearly) and humor. The scary thing for me was that even though Stein may have been trying to be funny or playfully provocative, there are too many people out there that probably gave him a “right on!” Sadly, too many people view local eating as a look-how-evolved-I-am, holier-eater-than-thou thing… we need to keep making it plain that this is just normal, sensible, delicious eating. Not another extreme/cool/sexy/ephemeral activity.

From johnson789 on Tue, July 15, 2008

Tnanks for information.This article is very good. I used to be a cook at Cafe Phoenix in Grinnell, and the variety and quality of local foods we used spoiled me. The restaurants I work for now (in, it should be mentioned, a climate where one would think local food would be more widely available) don’t hold a candle to my experience in Iowa. Bravo.

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From linasandy on Mon, August 18, 2008

Dodd tells the Iowans that every night they should decide whether to accompany their pork with different types of corns.Mr. Stein tells that he is going to keep buying foods for foreign neighbours for the understanding about other countries for Americans.

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Linasandy

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