FERN’s Friday Feed: The big apple
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Everyone’s least favorite apple
The New Food Economy
You’d be hard pressed to find a food item that is as hated as the Red Delicious apple. But despite its “bitter skin that gives way to crumbling, mealy flesh,” Tove Danovich writes, the apple remains a staple crop for apple farmers. Why? Well, we export it, and we serve it in settings where the eater can’t turn it down. Around 50 percent of our not-so-delicious apple crop is exported every year, and the rest is increasingly served at schools, hospitals, and hotels — making the Red Delicious the “the official apple of the captive audience.”
Eat local? Buyer beware.
USA Today
An investigation found that state-sponsored “buy local” programs are “deceptive and virtually unregulated,” writes Robert Anglen. The annual market for local foods in America has reached $20 million, but “most state food-branding programs certify products as ‘local’ even if half the ingredients come from another state or country. Many states have no minimum ingredient requirement.”
Portlandia’s gut-level legacy
The New Yorker
From its very first episode, entitled “Farm,” in which Peter and Nance pursue the bona fides of the free-range chicken (Colin!) they’re about the eat, the show’s defining theme has been the deft and hilarious skewering of foodie culture. In this appreciation, as Portlandia’s final season plays out, Troy Patterson writes that the Colin sketch “introduced a theme of meals savored with religious fervor, treated as sacraments and totems by diners whose refined sensibilities lead them to spew energetic nonsense.”
EPA wants to deregulate coal ash
The New Republic
Coal ash is the “second-largest industrial waste stream in the country behind household garbage,” and has contaminated water sources in communities from coast to coast. But amid industry reports that demonstrate that “toxins like arsenic, mercury, and radium are leaching into groundwater from pond-like storage pits filled with the sludgy leftovers of coal burning,” EPA chief Scott Pruitt intends to roll back regulations and monitoring requirements for the industry.
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