San Diego TelevisionA nutritional heads-up from KPBS
If you are what you eat, and what you eat is what it ate, then you and I are made up of corn meal, cattle bones and chicken feathers. Or so it seems after watching “Food,” part of the “Envision San Diego” project hosted by Joanne Faryon of KPBS-TV, Channel 15 (Channel 11 cable). It airs at 9 p.m. Monday, Nov. 16. Packaging several shorter reports aired over the past few weeks, “Food” looks at production at San Diego farms and in our offshore waters. Just a half-hour long but packed with informational nutrition, the film takes a local look at many of the same gastronomical issues brought into the national discussion lately thanks to two books written by Michael Pollan: “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets Behind What You Eat.” Pollan’s books, and others published on the general subject, and now Faryon’s documentary, ask the question your mother once asked when you picked up something disgusting from the sidewalk: “Do you know where that’s been?” Another question to be considered: once you have all this information, will you continue to eat beef, chicken and fish? But as Faryon says as her film begins, “you may not want to know” some of the answers. “Fish no longer eat fish,” she informs us. “Cattle eat corn even though it can make them sick. Chickens eat fish, and fish are eating cows. Even chicken feathers become food.” Fish in the ocean, for instance, normally simply eat other fish. (You’ve seen the cartoons: big fish eating smaller fish, eating one still smaller and so on.) But farm-raised fish – kept in the ocean but confined in enormous nets – are fed beef and chicken by-products, meaning blood, bone, fat and chicken feathers. “Are they as healthy as wild fish?” she asks. “It depends what you feed them.” What we do know is that European governments have already banned cattle-fed fish from their markets, as well as America’s hormone-fattened cattle. Faryon and other KPBS reporters interview San Diego and Imperial County farmers and animal scientists and find, for example, that it’s not possible to raise cattle here beyond the age of six months: not enough grass and water. And Escondido orange growers, with land, labor and water at a premium, are switching to avocados. Not that they’ve been raising oranges for San Diego supermarkets. No, local oranges make for great eating, but they look a little green to American eyes, and their peels are a little tough. So San Diego oranges are shipped to China, Japan and India. And local markets stock oranges from Australia, South Africa and Peru. A Julian chicken rancher has decided he’ll no longer raise the big-breasted birds prized for their generous portions of white meat. They can’t physically manage the act of mating, and, as you’ll see, they can barely walk. By the way, when you see the words “no added hormones” on a package of chicken, don’t be too impressed. U.S. federal regulations forbid giving hormones to chickens.  Robert P. Laurence About the author: Robert P. Laurence was television critic at the San Diego Union-Tribune for 21 years. He previously wrote about politics, jazz, rock 'n' roll and all manner of news. He graduated in journalism from San Francisco State University, and earned an M.A. in political science at San Jose State. He's lived in San Diego since 1971. More by this author Subscribe to Television:
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