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ARTICLE

MARCH 19TH, 2017

Food: What's Hip and What's Hypocrisy

    UCSB student Brent Knight never eats out alone. Even more interestingly, he eats out every day. Twice. 

     “I wish it wasn’t that way,” Knight said.

     According to Knight, students don’t want to eat out all the time. Like cooking, it’s time consuming to coordinate, especially since students’ schedules vary.

     “All that really matters to me is the taste,” Knight said.

     Knight says he understands he is capable of cooking meals that are more nutritious or locally grown than restaurant food, but the time it takes to prepare and cook food is something he doesn’t care to do.

     Why do some students depend on Isla Vista’s restaurants and on-campus fast food when local farmers are growing nutritious food just next door? Despite how hip local food seems, the truth is that local farmers struggle to sell their produce at home. It is the story of David and Goliath, but rewritten. The government subsidizes industries producing meat, animal products, fast food, and processed foods despite the fact that unhealthy diets are killing Americans. There is not just one Goliath, but many. And for some reason, even in Santa Barbara, the giants are winning.

Students “have too many things on their mind to be worried about their diet.”

Brent Knight at Freebirds splitting nachos with his friends.

LOCAL FOOD BUSINESS IS STRUGGLING

    The Farmbox Collective, a CSA (community supported agriculture) business created by Kristi Curtis, will soon no longer deliver boxes of Santa Barbara’s produce to the Gaucho Certified Farmers Market. Curtis said her business is not making any profit there because UCSB charges two-dollars for every box sold on campus. Since the The Farmbox Collective has reduced prices to make local food available for students, the business will only be able to continue their student-oriented drop-offs Wednesdays at the IV Co-op.

    In 2009, almost 99-percent of food grown in Santa Barbara county was exported, according to a paper by Environmental Studies professor, Dr. David A. Cleveland. Local farmers and food hubs (regionally-based food distributors) are outcompeted by the global food system, which imports produce from other countries.

    This is an issue, because buyers have the opportunity to back out on deals if they come across a less expensive offer. “The wholesalers have a contract, but they can break the contract,” Dr. Cleveland said.

    The global food system creates more food waste than the UN takes into account in their yearly food waste estimates. “What about food that’s wasted before it gets to the farmgate, food that’s plowed under, food that rots in the field?” Dr. Cleveland said.

    On the local scale, farmers are more confident they can sell their harvests. Dr. Cleveland says food waste can be reduced if local farmers could distribute more of their produce to stores and farmers markets within the county.

    There is more trust between farmers and the buyers. According to Curtis, part of the charm of farmers markets is having relations and building trust with the vendors.

     So why is Santa Barbara dominated by grocery stores full of imported food? Why is the global food system so pervasive in general?

    The unsettling fact is that not only is the global food system exploiting farmers and the environment, but they are also exploiting us.

     The government subsidizes unhealthy foods, like meat, animal products and fast food.

    Dr. Cleveland said that two-thirds of healthcare costs are due to non-communicable diseases, “usually attributed to physical activity, smoking, alcohol and diet.”

     That is two-trillion dollars a year.

    “These companies are profiting off of you,” Valentina Cabrera said, an Environmental Studies student with an emphasis in food justice and affordable housing. “They want you to get sick.”

    Cabrera explained that Libertarian Paternalism is a principle in Economics that shows how institutions can affect people’s behavior. Institutions influence people’s decision-making by making certain items available to them, or displaying certain items in stores.

     “You thought you made the choice to eat Cheetos, but really, someone made that choice for you,” Cabrera said.

    “We know the food they’re selling make people sick,” Dr. Cleveland said, “You go into The Arbor, what do you see? Giant displays of energy drinks and sodas and candy that make people sick. You see no educational information for students.”

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LOCAL FOOD IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR STUDENTS

    Curtis said that it was hard finding schools for her son that excluded fast food and had a school garden that they incorporated into their lunch program.

    “These big corporations pay the school to get their stuff out,” Knight said concerning the eatery options on campus. He mentioned how the only seemingly “healthy” eatery was Roots 217 in The Hub.

    “There is no middle ground,” Richard Ploumpis (Knight’s roommate who consented to going on record) said, “It’s like you either eat stuff that’s covered in sauce or you just eat raw vegetables. There’s no healthy food that’s also like— pretty good.”

     Students in Santa Barbara ignore nutrition values even though they understand eating better prevents disease and cancer later in life.

    “They [students] can’t see the effects of bad health now, but later down the road, it’ll come back to bite them,” Knight said, “Especially in college where every guy is a gym buff and every girl is running around the lagoon trying to get fit, it’s really about the diet instead.”Despite his prescient input, minutes earlier he said, “Well, eating healthy now does affect when I’m older, but that’s OK,” referring to his bi-daily trips to IV with a companion for food.

    Knight said that students “have too many things on their mind to be worried about their diet.” He worries about other things, like schoolwork, and maintaining relationships.

    Other UCSB students cannot prioritize healthy diets due to food insecurity.

    Linda Chan is a second year UCSB student who moved into a student living ‘Co-op’ last month where Cabrera has been a resident for just over a year. The “Biko house,” named after African political activist Steve Biko, is the people-of-color themed house of the five living cooperatives in Isla Vista. Chan has enjoyed the organization of the Biko house, and has benefited a lot from the chores delegated among the residents, especially those concerning food.

    The Biko house has three residents in charge of cooking, shopping, and gardening. Chan said that it’s nice not to have to think about food all the time.

“I think the first step is more public discourse.”

Linda Chan sitting in the front yard of Biko house, Isla Vista. The student living co-op, Biko, has two garden plots and an apple tree.

    “I think it’s really hard to do it individually,” Chan said about growing food at home.

    Chan admits to struggling with food insecurity before she moved into the Co-op, “I just went to the food bank and grabbed whatever was there.”

    She talked about how students are so preoccupied with work, studies, and other distractions from self care that food is not a high priority. She spoke of her old roommate before moving into the Biko House, “I remember she would just go the whole day without eating,” Chan said, “She would buy something on campus, that wasn’t, like, very — you know — nutritious; sustaining.”

    The Biko house provided Chan with an outlet.

    Cabrera is the Food and Garden Manager at Biko. She said that they made a deal with “Harvest,” a distributor company that agreed to deliver food in bulk to Biko house for a reduced price. Therefore, Biko residents get the best deals on local food. 

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CHANGES TO AID PUBLIC HEALTH AND LOCAL FOOD EFFORTS

    “Instead of subsidizing meat and dairy in these industries, you have to subsidize local foods,” Cabrera said. Unless the government subsidizes nutritious food, this public health issue and environmental crisis will remain subject to the Goliaths in American society.

    Jonathan Foley wrote in National Geographic Magazine, “For every 100 calories of grain we feed animals, we get only about 40 new calories of milk, 22 calories of eggs, 12 of chicken, 10 of pork, or 3 of beef.” There is a huge, inefficient use of energy and resources like water, soil nutrients, and fuel used to rear livestock that can easily be ameliorated by changing diet.

    Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary “Before the Flood” shows its viewers how powerful making dietary changes can be, like giving up Doritos to save the the Indonesian rain forest, or cutting hamburger consumption in half to conserve 400 gallons of water per patty and decrease the number of cows burping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

This graphic shows the relative energy inefficiency of meat and animals products described by Jonathan Foley's article,

"The Future of Food."

    DiCaprio and Foley are both significant figures in the media. Both are environmentalists.

    “Culture shapes your decisions quite a bit,” Cabrera said. She said that we need to see images on social media, and that the key is making it available to be seen, and identifies with the audience it targets.

    Kids in a black community made a rap, “Grow Food | Appetite for Change.” The message is cultural and social acceptance of nutritious, home-grown food. All over Facebook, this musical-message is visually pervasive; the key to it's success.

“Grow Food | Appetite for Change” is a rap made by students in North Minneapolis who were dissatisfied with the unhealthy food provided by their schools. 

    “Everyone is consuming music,” Cabrera said, “The people in it [video] presenting the information are relatable.”

    “These artists are putting messages in our brains through art, and through music, and it’s relatable because who doesn’t want to be Beyonce and Jay-Z?” Cabrera said, “When Beyonce and Jay-Z went vegan, everyone started doing vegan diets.”

     These media sources are one example of what Cabrera dubbed “tools.” Tools are how people can change their behavior to stay true to their values. “What if we had, like, 'fast food healthy places' instead of Panda Express,” Cabrera said. Such infrastructure ensuring access to nutritious food is another tool.

    While subsidy and profit are preventing us from accessing the healthiest options, Dr. Cleveland, Cabrera, and Chan all individually said that students need to ask questions.

    Dr. Cleveland said, “Food should be something like water, like air—it should be something that everyone has access to good food. And yet we have a system that mitigates against it.”

    Chan said, “I think the first step is more public discourse.”

    However, concerning local food, Cabrera gave an unexpected answer: that the focus should be on eliminating toxic foods. “My dad grew up in a very humble background in Venezuela,” Cabrera said, “He didn’t have access to processed foods.” Her father grew up on rice and beans, and yet Cabrera said “his health is solid.” He walks around today with young-looking skin and no diseases.
Cabrera said that students need to put pressure on the authorities, attend board meetings, and participate when they themselves are not being well represented. She said the lack of participation and representation are the reasons that values do not line up with reality.
    “Why does California waste all it’s water on the meat industry when we are in a water crisis?” Cabrera said, “I think everyone is very influenced by money.”
    “Who decided to put Subway in the UCen? I don’t know,” Cabrera said. Is it a tradition? Are we creatures of habit? UCSB’s relationships with fast food industries show that the bottom line is that money talks and local food walks.

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