Cool Cuisine

available at amazon

Review: 

Cool Cuisine: Taking the bite out of Global Warming

                  By Laura Stec with Dr. Eugene Cordero

Who are they?
Laura Stec is a San Fransisco Bay area Chef and environmental advocate. She gives lectures with EcoSpeakers.com and owns her own chef/catering business.

Dr. Eugene Cordero is an associate professor in the Department of Meteorology at San Jose State University in California. He teaches courses in climate change and his research interests centre around understanding the processes behind long-term climate change. 

First Impressions:

Amongst the half-baked concepts, the deliberate audacious spouting of half-truths and the willing denials of BigBusiness, it is heartening to find a book marrying the ideas of a local-vore lifestyle and the science behind reducing our carbon footprint and to have it delivered in a non-histrionic way that neither absolves nor occludes.

Laura Stec’s writing style is clear, friendly and to the point. Her pragmatic viewpoint of our impact on our planet is neither that of an alarmist nor is it oppressive. She lays out quite earnestly the ways our food system works or doesn’t work depending on your point of view. She doesn’t leave you hanging as to HOW you can make changes in your foodstyle but offers tips and suggestions in incorporating new ideas seamlessly into your life. While I am not 100% in agreement with her suggestions, I do agree with most information you will find in this book.

Throughout the book are tidbits and articles from Dr. Cordero that gives the facts behind the concepts of the various ways we are impacting the earth. These help to illustrate concretely the damage we are doing to ourselves--through our bodies and the planet those bodies live upon.

There are many issues surrounding the carbon footprints of the goods we buy, manufacture and sell. This book attempts to organize and present the topics concisely, calmly and practically. The book is divided into three parts:

• Background
• Solutions 
• Culinary How-to 

Let’s take a look at the first part of the first part. Here she illustrates the concepts behind a global warming diet and the impact upon our environment as well as outlines a partial list of what we can do to promote a ‘cool cuisine’.

Global Warming Diet…What is it?

“…it’s a machine cuisine we are eating today and it takes about 500 gallons(1,890L) of oil per person each year to produce it….we emit similar amounts of carbon dioxide eating as we do by driving…U.S. gov’t research shows our chemical fertilizer and herbicide-based food system contributes close to 20% of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions.”   Page 5

What makes up the global warming diet?

• A lot of beef. It takes a lot of fossil fuels to produce a calorie of beef protein—more than ten times what it takes to produce a calorie of grain protein. 

• Importing our food and drink in copious amounts.

• Overuse of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers. The US uses 22 billion pounds of fertilizer to grow the grain to feed livestock.

• Processed, frozen and prepared foods “makes up three-quarters of global food sales by price(not by quantity) and typically requires more energy to make than what we get back when we eat it.”

• Drinking bottled water. “ it takes approximately 17 million barrels of oil just to make the plastic for the 29+ billion plastic water bottles used in the United States each year.”

• High fructose corn syrup which not only comprises over 15% of an average American’s daily caloric intake, it is also the product of corn—corn which is usually a mono-cropped product and is taking valuable fertile land for vegetable growing in order to produce unhealthy sugar, useless ethanol and feed for ‘caged’ animals.

• Food waste. “nearly half of all the food harvested in the US goes to waste each year. Our food system generates 3,774 calories per person per day but we consume only approximately 2,100 calories; the rest is wasted by overeating or by just throwing it away.”

From the University of California, Davis, 2007

Largest Global-Warming Diet Contributors

• Livestock
• Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers 
• Greenhouses 
• Air freight
• Food Waste
• Consumer travel to and from store

Every day we are showing how little we value the very foods that sustain us, keep us moving and healthy and that actually taste good. We overspend on junk food, fast food and foods that are not ‘real’. Nothing compares to the taste of fruits and vegetables ripened on the vine yet we constantly purchase force-ripened or dyed foods in the mistaken belief we are ‘eating healthy’. Unfortunately with lower income families and individuals it is more often than not cheaper to buy junk foods and processed foods than to buy healthier choices. From the calories per dollar standpoint it is better to buy a 1200 calorie bag of chips than 250 calorie bag of carrots for the same amount of money. Is it any wonder we have an obesity problem in North America?

What can we do?

She does give some ideas on how to lower your carbon footprint in regards to shopping and eating. This is where my agreement with her diverges. I firmly believe we can all make changes in our foodstyle but not all of us can approach the Stage Three of her cool cuisine ideas. Most of us can handle the first two stages but to be realistic, the level of commitment each of us can give will vary immensely.

Sometimes strident goals can be a deterrent to those who want to lower their footprint but have no desire to eliminate meat from their diets—I am one of them. I am an unabashed omnivore. I think if we just followed half of her lists we would all be in a better place both in regards to the environment as well as to our health.

 I also wish she would be more emphatic as to the sources of beef she recommends we decrease ie most of the cattle-grazing and soy growing land in the six million acres of cleared Amazon rainforest are destined for the fast food, steakhouse and BigGrocery establishments, not home cooks and ‘normal’ meat eaters.

She then goes on to cover topics like how much healthy soil means to our foods, mono-cropping, and fair trade coffee and chocolate. At the end of each chapter along with some recipes, there is a page entitled Book 'n' Cook Club Ideas. I like this as she details the differing things that can be done either alone or together in a group of like-minded individuals such as videos to watch, books to read and recipes to try.

Water, water everywhere, is there a drop to drink?
Chapter 4 illustrates just what is behind our bottled water consumption and how it impacts our environment and tackles the issue of bottled vs tap in terms of taste, energy consumption and reusing your plastic bottles. I like that she conducted an experiment looking into the bacteria question of refilling a bottle without the benefit of washing it first, which is something that would occur if we were to do this at work or outside on a walk/jog/run. She hired a San Francisco microbiology lab to run the test where four PET bottles in different states of short-term use were tested for bacteria count and she included her own stainless steel bottle that hadn't been 'washed' in a year and a half. Personally, ewww.

Here are the results of the test:

Sample	Standard Bacteria Plate Count
Never used; water poured out (plastic)	1
Used once; not refilled (plastic)	58
Used once; refilled, used again (plastic)	3
Refilled for  2 ½ weeks (plastic)	4
Refilled for  1 ½ years (metal; never washed)	340,000

anomaly: assumed to be contaminated before test but still safe

While the results show that in all cases it was perfectly safe to drink out of, it is still recommended to wash your bottles with warm soapy water. And what about that large number for the metal bottle that was never washed? According to the microbiologist you could consume the same amount of bacteria eating a raw vegetable or salad, unwashed. In other words, it won't kill you.

However, it must be understood that even "newly purchased bottled water can have high levels of bacteria."  The NRDC (National Resources Defence Council) commissioned tests for over 1,000 water bottles from 103 different bottled waters and they found that most bottled water is a good quality, many were found (around 1/4) to contain over-the-limit amounts of arsenic or certain cancer causing synthetic compounds. "...about one in five of the bottled waters tested contained at least one sample with more bacteria than recommended in industry guidelines."

Making a difference

In the next section, Solutions, she illustrates 7 different companies or individuals who are making a difference-what she calls Innovative Risk-takers-and how we benefit from their endeavours.

In the final section, Culinary How-to, she demonstrates how easily we can, and do in some cases, incorporate better eating, purchasing and cooking habits into our lives. In speaking about her catering experiences of people leaving food behind that has nothing to do with the food's taste or proportions, she asked herself "Are they feeding off of more than just the food; maybe the people, the excitement and the energy adds to their feeling of 'fullness?" Which in turn led her to begin to wonder about satisfaction and what exactly it means to us. She then makes a statement that deserves some thought by every consumer:

 "If satisfaction were only about quantity, surely we would have had our fill by now. What if quality plays a more important role than we think? If satisfaction also involves quality, we would need to learn how to feed our bodies, minds, and souls. Our stomachs can be filled with food, but family, friends and feelings feed our heads and our hearts. Food is just the vehicle that brings us together so we can feed the other parts of ourselves with conversation and connection ...When cooking together and sharing food, our meals are prepared with hands of loving grace rather than with the hands of indifference..."

A good point that goes beyond merely wanting to lower your carbon footprint to learning about different foods and growing practices as well as getting to know your local farmers and food producers. It's food for the soul as well as the body.

So, do I like this book because it coincides with my own viewpoints that I have stated before? Of course. I would hardly advocate a book that was the antithesis of my philosophy. However, I strongly believe that this book could sway even those who have given next to no thought on the subject as well as the hardened proponent of machined foods, if they gave it a chance.

I had originally planned to prepare some of the recipes found in the book but I realized that I simply don't have the time to do so at the moment. It is something I will save for a later date.

My recommendations for local-vores

In keeping with the theme, let me tell you about this great new pizzeria here in town, The Italian House Pizzeria. Not only do they take great pride in their food, they also make it fresh in house using local farmers and suppliers. And it shows believe me. Our pizza had roasted cremini mushrooms, roasted red pepper strips and the best smoked bacon strips I have had in a long time-certainly not your run of the mill pizza. Finally, a place that knows what quality ingredients and community involvement means. I highly recommend it. You can find them here on Facebook and here on their website.