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At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

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Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#61

Post by ChrisDutrow »

splawn wrote: post #47
ChrisDutrow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sound like a "throw the baby out with the bath water" scenario. In theory, GMOs could be more healthy than not GMO. In practice, this has not happened. The objectives instead have been to increase crop yield. The side effects have been to make the plants more toxic in very subtle ways that are hard to track and take decades for people to show symptoms. Maybe in a few more decades we'll see "good" GMOs. It sho…

I think golden rice has been around for at least 20 yrs now.[0] Also serious question, What evidence do we have for "toxic in very subtle ways"? I wasn't aware that this actually exists. [0] http://www.goldenrice.org/

The rise in gluten allergies is what jumps to my mind. I've heard a lot of people deny they exist though. And I'm sure other people will claim they are attributed to different factors.

A lot of people with gluten allergies can eat older strains of wheat that haven't changed since the early half of the century. The theory is that these are strains from before GMO time and were also not subjected to heavy selective breeding over the past century (of course it would have been selectively bred since the dawn of the fertile crescent 13,000 years or so ago).

Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#62

Post by uremog »

beachstartup wrote: post #36
alva wrote: post #35

A great bit of journalism here, hopefully it reaches a lot of eyes. I think that the fines levied on restaurants that are knowingly deceiving their customers should be much higher. The articles states $300 is the fine for first-time offenders, this is hardly much of a deterrence considering the premiums placed on 'locally sourced' dishes. If you want to get a good feel of how much proper locally grown food is, pop in…

yes, it is worth it, and ... the cost of a high quality steak reflects how often you should probably be eating steak. i.e. not very often.

Not to be mean, but I don't recall hearing that in economics.

Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#63

Post by Overtonwindow »

Totally expected. Our current food model, and the American conditioned mindset, is bigger is better, cheaper is better, and when selling food you must maximize profits, while reducing costs - no exceptions. Americans need to be brought down a peg or two (myself included!) that size and cost does not equality quality, cleanliness, or health.

Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#64

Post by soundwave106 »

jly wrote: post #14

You can tell what's probably NOT 'farm to table' by the pricing of dishes. Many restaurants would not be in business selling food at the prices they do if were actually farm to table direct from local farmers who uses the growing/raising practices the restaurants claim. If you buy meat or veggies of this quality, you already know - it costs a LOT.

I think a better potential "red flag" is more things present that are clearly out of season, as some restaurants clearly use trendy market jargon like "farm to table" simply to boost prices and/or for marketing.

Central Florida's season for vegetables is the winter. Summer is too hot for growing most things, the main things in Central Florida that are in season during that time are citrus. Some vegetables and fruits don't really grow here at all. Some do grow but do kind of poorly.

Sure, a climate controlled indoor hydroponic farm can grow produce that is an "exception to the rule", but the Tampa area only has a couple (one?) of those. Definitely not enough to cater for all the restaurants that claim "farm to table". So seeing out of season "farm to table" vegetables would be a bit of a red flag.

The same with animals. For instance the trout mentioned in the article would be a potential red flag of sorts, as Florida doesn't have rainbow trout. Florida does have "spotted sea trout" but that's a different species of fish, and the commercial harvest of that in Florida is rather limited.

You can apply this rule to other climates, of course.

Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#65

Post by _da_ »

mwnz wrote: post #58

Great article. Not hacker news.

I disagree.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

  On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
I think many hackers (myself included) find this interesting.

Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#66

Post by splawn »

jjbiotech wrote: post #48
splawn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If done accurately it means that the food is produced using the most unsustainable and inefficient ways possible so that only the most privileged can partake. Other than that its just marketing that is targeting people that either want to think of themselves as upper class or have been falsely led to believe that this type of food production is actually eco-friendly and more healthy. (Also see "Organic" food)

Inefficient? Yes. Unsustainable? No way. We've been farming the old-fashioned way for thousands of years with exponential increases in population. If that's not the definition of sustainability I don't know what is. Also, modern cultivation techniques can strip the produce and soil of essential vitamins and nutrients. So yes, in some cases, the "inefficient" and "unsustainable" farms yield more nutritious and eco-fri…

What about scaling issues?

Almost, but not exactly true. Farm tech like all tech is more and more efficient as it improves. The more efficient it is the more it can scale, boosting populations by staving off famine.

No.. there really isn't.

Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#67

Post by splawn »

ChrisDutrow wrote: post #61
splawn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think golden rice has been around for at least 20 yrs now.[0] Also serious question, What evidence do we have for "toxic in very subtle ways"? I wasn't aware that this actually exists. [0] http://www.goldenrice.org/

The rise in gluten allergies is what jumps to my mind. I've heard a lot of people deny they exist though. And I'm sure other people will claim they are attributed to different factors. A lot of people with gluten allergies can eat older strains of wheat that haven't changed since the early half of the century. The theory is that these are strains from before GMO time and were also not subjected to heavy selective bre…

A rise in gluten allergies? This is news to me. Is there anything published that you can cite?

Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#68

Post by batbomb »

hibikir wrote: post #43
smelendez wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert, but one criticism I've seen is that a lot of genetic modification is used to either get plants to produce pesticides or be immune to commonly used weed-killers, like Roundup. Some critics worry that lets farmers basically saturate their fields in herbicides to eliminate weeds, and that some of them are toxic to humans, other animals and plants near to the farm. Another issue is that most genetic mo…

In this case, the problem is that there's a huge difference between public perception and reality. For instance, you talk about herbicides: A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic. As far as updates on the field producing toxins, GMOs are actually more controlled, genetically…

> A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic.

Citation needed.

Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#69

Post by uremog »

bradleyjg wrote: post #42
PedroBatista wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the some kind of Government Agency that buys random stuff from supermarkets/suppliers, tests the food and inspects the label? The same for restaurant inspections? Its not that expensive and it sends a clear message to these people.

From the article: For 40,000-some Florida restaurants, 191 inspectors from the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation oversee them all for safety, sanitation and — occasionally — lies. By comparison, Georgia, with about half the population, has 300 inspectors. Ohio has 637 for about 22,000 restaurants. In the past two years, Florida inspectors found roughly 750 food misrepresentation violations. O…

Even just from an economic standpoint, I think such fines should be far higher. Sometimes it takes lab tests to determine fakes from real foods. Also, I disagree - consumers shouldn't have to know the market. One could argue that they should, but they should not have to.

Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

#70

Post by massysett »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #63

Totally expected. Our current food model, and the American conditioned mindset, is bigger is better, cheaper is better, and when selling food you must maximize profits, while reducing costs - no exceptions. Americans need to be brought down a peg or two (myself included!) that size and cost does not equality quality, cleanliness, or health.

I thought the whole point of the "local" movement is that cheaper is not better and bigger is not better, as people are willing to pay more for less food because it is supposedly "local".
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