Volume 100 Issue 31

Volume Volume 100, 100, Issue Issue 31 30

February February 7, 7, 2011 2011 mcgilldaily.com mcgilldaily.com

McGill THE

DAILY

Spoiled for 100 years

Published by The Daily Publications Society, a student society of McGill University.

FOOD

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Call for Candidates The Daily Publications Society, publisher of The McGill Daily and Le Délit, is seeking candidates for

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Candidates should send a 500-word letter of intention to chair@dailypublications.org by February 10th. Contact us for more information.

The Food Issue Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

BREAKING NEWS

Newburgh censured 4 Editorial: Zach Newburgh must resign 23 MFDS apologizes to rez students 5 Food prices and the Arab uprisings 6 A defence of dumpster diving 7 The price of globalization 8 Experimenting with veganism 9 Nutrition on the cheap 11 Factory farming and the environment 12 Art essay 14 McGill provides support for eating disorders 15 The athlete’s diet 17 Deconstructing your dinner 18 Montreal’s food banks 19 The top chefs of TVMcGill 21 NewsCorp buys McGill Daily 22 Editorial: Opening the discussion on eating disorders 23

4 Breaking News

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

Newburgh censured

Councillors reluctant to speak for fear of legal reprisals Queen Arsem-O'Malley and Maya Shoukri The McGill Daily

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SMU Council voted early Friday morning to censure President Zach Newburgh for pursuing a contract with jobbook. com, a job-networking website for university students, without informing the Students’ Society.

The debate and censure took place in two separate confidential sessions, which together lasted for almost six hours. The original motion called for Newburgh’s resignation, and was amended in the second confidential session to call for public censure.

Speakers of Council Cathal Rooney-Cespedes and Raymond Xing sent an email to campus publications at 5:50 a.m. Friday, writing, “‘Resolved, That the SSMU President be faced with a public censure.’ Motions to censure require two-thirds majority of Council members... The SSMU Legislative Council hereby censures the President of SSMU.” According to Robert’s Rules, the result of a censure is that “the member is put on notice that if he or she repeats the offence, he or she can be suspended or removed from membership or office.”

Newburgh told Council that he had been involved in a partnership with “Jobbook.biz Inc.” since September. His involvement was not disclosed to the Executive Committee until January, four months after entering into the agreement.

On September 20 the founder and CEO of Jobbook, Jean de Brabant, met with Newburgh.

According to a January 19 memo from Newburgh to the Executive Committee obtained by The Daily,

de Brabant is a McGill alum and former guest lecturer in the Faculty of Law. Newburgh wrote in the memo that he refused to meet with de Brabant upon first contact, but that de Brabant “begg[ed] for only a few minutes of [his] time.”

Without consulting fellow executives, upon meeting with de Brabant, Newburgh described in his memo how he signed a confidentiality agreement – since the website was yet to be patented – and began working with Jobbook with the intention of promoting the project to the SSMU executive and other universities.

In their partnership, Newburgh and de Brabant travelled on three separate occasions to schools in the United States and Britain to meet with presidents of other student unions. De Brabant paid for all travel and accommodations. In his October 27 report to Council, Newburgh stated that he “visited six (6) of the top eight (8) universities in the Northeast to discuss the creation of a network for student leaders of top North American educational institutions.”

Schools the two approached included Oxford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech, and Stanford.

Adam Khan, president of the Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology (ASCIT), confirmed that he met with Newburgh. “Zach did come to California around mid-November with the founder of the company, Jean de Brabant. They both pitched myself as well as our treasurer the idea of partnering with them in this venture, and we accepted,” wrote Khan in an email to The Daily.

The minutes from the November 11 Council meeting detail that, “President Newburgh will be absent from Friday, November 19 to

Friday, November 26 for American Thanksgiving.” However, in the memo, he noted that his trip to London lasted from November 18 to 22, dates that he requested for personal holiday.

Newburgh stated in his memo to the Executive Committee that he did not spend SSMU time or money on his partnership, though he admitted last night to Council that he had missed one workday.

In an interview with The Daily, de Brabant said, “I know for a fact he [Newburgh] spoke to the Vice President Finance and Operations [Nick Drew], who didn’t discourage him in any way.” When asked to provide a date, de Brabant responded that Drew was informed a month and a half ago.

Multiple councillors and executives were unaware of the fact that Drew was informed of the venture weeks before documents were brought forth to the Executive Committee.

According to an email obtained

by The Daily sent to Drew on January 13, and forwarded to SSMU General Manager Pauline Gervais on January 17, Newburgh stated that he had “a financial interest in the company.” In confidential session, Newburgh claimed to have given up any personal stake February 3, hours before Council met. He then obtained a letter from de Brabant stating that he was working pro bono.

Newburgh disclosed his past financial stake in Jobbook only after being questioned by numerous councillors on the subject.

The McGill name is used on the website for Jobbook, which states that, “With the objective of recruiting the best and the brightest Members, Jobbook has entered into partnership agreements with the Presidents of the Student Unions

of Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, Imperial College London, University College London, Johns Hopkins and McGill, as well as many others.” The site was officially launched February 2.

Several councillors refused to publicly comment, or requested to remain anonymous for fear of legal reprisals. One councillor told The Daily, “There’s a reason for which certain individuals were quoted anonymously, being the unfounded but seriously implied legal action that speaks to the character of any individual that would bring about this situation in the first place.”

Pauline Gervais, general manager of SSMU, spoke in the confidential session, an uncommon action for a SSMU permanent employee.

She spoke against Newburgh’s removal.

Multiple sources have also confirmed that VP Internal Tom Fabian threatened to resign if Newburgh was removed from his position.

Councillor Eli Freedman spoke about how this will affect Council from this point on. “Council is probably not going to be able to accomplish anything for the rest of the year,” he said. “I don’t think there will be any more trust.”

Referring to a story in the Tribune published Friday morning, VP University Affairs Joshua Abaki said, “I don’t think the comment that there is no harm done to the Society is correct. There was definitely harm done to the Society. In my view, there were policies that he clearly went against, and he’s lost the moral authority to guide the Society.”

Neither Newburgh nor Drew responded to multiple requests for interview, including a request sent to Newburgh before he granted an interview to the Tribune.

GA motion referred to committee

T

he controversial motion to abolish the General Assembly (GA), authored by SSMU President Zach Newburgh, was referred to a committee after a Council vote.

The committee will conduct further research in hopes of improving the GA, and making the institution more democratic and accessible to students.

The Executive Committee were also asked why they failed to go on a retreat scheduled for the previous week. Newburgh replied, “Very frankly, members of the SSMU Executive were disappointed with the way in which the GA motion was brought up, and therefore refused to go on the Executive retreat.” This claim contradicted a statement made by VP Finance and Operations Nick Drew, who, in an interview with The Daily attributed the cancellation of the retreat to excessive work.

The Executive’s decision to cancel the retreat cost SSMU $800.

—Maya Shoukri

In favour

Joshua Abaki (VP University Affairs) Shen Chen (Science) Eli Freedman (Management) Céline Junke (Management President) Basil Kadoura (Residences) Katherine Larson (Music) Tyler Lawson (Senate Caucus) Emilie Leonard (Athletics) Kallee Lins (Arts) Kyla Martinson (Nursing) Kady Paterson (Education) Max Zidel (Clubs and Services Representative) Myriam Zaidi (VP External)

Against

Spencer Burger (Arts) Nick Drew (VP Finance and Operations) Tom Fabian (VP Internal) Lauren Hudak (Science) Stephanie Ladowski (Medicine) Zach Margolis (Arts) Gus Marquez (Engineering) Zach Newburgh (President) Nida Nizam (Clubs and Services Representative)

Abstained

Maggie Knight (Clubs and Services Representative) Amara Possian (Senate Caucus)

Absent

Anushay Khan (VP Clubs and Services)

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

BSN and Queer McGill event addresses race, sexuality Erin Hudson

The McGill Daily

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he Black Students Network (BSN) and Queer McGill (QM) co-hosted their first joint event, “Is it Dark in the Closet?” last Wednesday evening.

Featured speaker Rinaldo Walcott, a Sociology and Equity Studies professor from the University of Toronto, spoke about the need for “anti-racist queer politics” to address black queer history. He asked the fifty-person audience to consider black queer people as “a part of a much longer history of black disenfranchisement and marginalization.”

Rojarra Armbrister, a BSN executive member, explained the idea behind the event’s focus on homosexuality within the black community.

“There is a lot of homophobia within the black community itself, and people want answers. We don’t know where it stems from,” Armbrister said.

She noted that homophobia is present in “this generation especially,” and explained why she felt last night’s event could contribute to finding answers.

“It’s more [about] educating ourselves and educating those around us about where this comes from and what we can do to fix it,” Armbrister added.

About fifty people attended the event. Gisele Ishema-Karekezi, a McGill student originally from Rwanda, also noted the uniqueness of the event.

“This is the first time they brought up the gay issues in the black community, so I was very excited,” said Ishema-Karekezi. “It’s not really talked about in the African community.”

According to Ryan Thom, a QM co-administrator, a long discussion between BSN and QM was devoted to, “How the space will be shaped so that it [would] be a place that both racialized black students could imagine themselves at and a place where queer students who aren’t necessarily black could also imagine themselves having a place at.”

According to Thom the discussion was “delicate but really productive.”

“We don’t always have the experience or perspective to come at [issues of race], and that’s something that all the progressive organizations, including Queer McGill, work toward,” Thom said. “That’s why we have these collaborations, that’s why we work together – to draw in a different audience.”

BSN will be collaborating with QPIRG for an event this week, and will be running several events in honour of Black History Month.

“I do anticipate that you will be seeing a lot more of these events.”

Armbrister said regarding the club’s future plans.

The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

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The Arch Effect How other student-run campus food outlets have fared without the Arch Café April 2010 April 22 McGill announces the selection of Philadelphia-based international food service provider Aramark, replacing campus food provider Chartwells

September 1 Students begin classes and find out the Architecture Café has been closed for the 2010-11 academic year.

The administration cited “financial unsustainability.”

Queen Arsem-O'Malley The McGill Daily

D

espite widely publicized mobilization around the closure of the Architecture Café at the beginning of the academic year, student-run food outlets on campus have not seen a significant increase in business.

Snax Jordana Weiss, U3 Arts, has worked at Snax, the studentrun food outlet of the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS), for two and a half years.

“It was nuts,” she said of sales at the beginning of the year, though it is “less now, because the whole boycott [of McGill Food and Dining Services, MFDS] kind of died down.”

Majd Al Khaldi, AUS VP Finance, claimed that the increase in Snax

September

October

November

December

September 15

September 22

October 20

October 22

Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson denies agreeing to reconsider the administration’s closure of the Architecture Café, although SSMU President Zach Newburgh left a meeting with Mendelson on September 11 under the impression that the deputy provost would.

Asked whether this meant Mendelson had lied, Newburgh responded: “Yes, that would be correct.”

Over 300 students protest outside Leacock, host to the first Senate meeting of the year, in protest of the closure of the Architecture Café. A day later, the Facebook group “Boycott McGill Food Services” was started. The event ran until December 31 and accumulated 3,158 attendees.

Over 100 students protest outside Leacock, and another Senate meeting, in the second Arch Café rally of the year.

The administration releases the Architecture Café’s documents disclosing the café’s financial information from the Fiscal Year 2009-10. The documents show the café ran a $15,270 deficit that year, before MFDS salaries, benefits, and other expenses were added, however, the café’s deficit was only $171.

sales following Arch Café protests only lasted two weeks.

“There was an increase in sales,” he said, “but not necessarily in our revenues.” Snax is being run more efficiently this year due to better record keeping and management, but has not seen a drastic change in profits. Prices were increased last semester “out of necessity” for the first time in two or three years. Even so, another increase may be necessary to keep the coffee shop out of the red.

Al Khaldi noted that Snax, though under the jurisdiction of AUS, has separate management and thus has not been affected by AUS, financial troubles this year.

Frostbite Etienne De Muelenaere, VP Finance for the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) was unable to say whether Frostbite, the society’s food outlet in Macdonald

Engineering, had seen a rise in business. “It’s hard to say, because we weren’t keeping stats before,” he said. However he did note that EUS has improved record keeping this year, and altered Frostbite’s operating hours to fit student demand.

EUS recently voted to absorb the Architecture Students’ Association into their organization, but De Muelenaere explained that it is difficult to see whether this has changed the business environment around Frostbite. According to De Muelenaere, EUS does not keep track of what faculties their customers are from.

MK and SSMU Midnight Kitchen (MK), a student-run food service that provides lunch by donation for students, served lunch outdoors during October to promote the boycott.

Council voted on February 3 to renew MK’s opt-outable fee, which

January 2011

January 5 Students in McGill residences return from winter break to find unexplained price increases of mandatory meal plans. Rez students got 500 signatures for a petition condemning the price hikes in 24 hours. McGill Food and Dining Services later attributed the rise in prices to general global increase in food prices.

January 31 MFDS officially launches its new food sustainability strategy, a project that will incorporate more sustainable food choices, including seafood, pork and chicken, and work to make MFDS’s financing more sustainable as well.

will be put to online referendum. In the text of the resolution, MK states that it provides “a balanced and complete lunch on a pay-as-you-can basis to an average of 150 students every weekday.”

Other food vendors in the SSMU building are not part of McGill Food and Dining Services (MFDS), and negotiate individual leases with SSMU. Revenue numbers for these businesses are not available to the public.

MFDS boycott The boycott of MFDS, organized by Mobilization McGill (MM), began in October 2010. An event on Facebook promoting the boycott had over 3,000 supporters, and, encouraged students not to resume business at MFDS cafeterias until the Arch Café reopened.

The issue of reopening the Arch Café was presented to the University’s Senate, and later direct-

ed to the Board of Governors.

At SSMU Legislative Council on January 19, President Zach, Newburgh refused to comment publicly on the current status of discussions, or even confirm that discussion addressing the reopening of the Arch Café is ongoing.

Guy Lifshitz, a MM member, expressed disappointment in the success of the boycott. In a meeting that was held on November 2 between MM members and director of MFDS Mathieu Laperle, Laperle claimed that the boycott had no effect on business. Lifshitz said this was “not necessarily surprising, but unfortunate.” Lifshitz said that he had hoped the formation of MM would prompt the administration to change their system of consultation and give students the opportunity for more meaningful input in the future.

MFDS did not respond to The Daily’s requests for an interview.

Students win transparency battle with MFDS McGill Food and Dining Services promises to establish commission to increase communication with students Portia Crowe

The McGill Daily

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cGill Food and Dining Services (MFDS) is developing a new commission to work with students to improve transparency and publish relevant financial information after controversy over food price hikes.

MFDS was heavily criticized in January when students from several McGill residences returned to find that food prices in their cafeterias had been raised over the holidays.

To protest, students formed the group Perturbed Residents Interested in Changing Expensive Dining (PRICED) to petition against the price hikes.

Last week, PRICED and student representatives met with

MFDS Director Mathieu Laperle to dispute the price hikes. They came out of the meeting with the goal of improving communication between MFDS and the student body through the establishment of a new commission.

“In general, I think the meeting went really well,” said Valentine Sergeev, one of the organizers of the petition.

“We talked for a long time and they admitted that they might have made a mistake in the way that they handled the price increase, but they also explained that the actual price hike was out of their control,” he said.

MFDS executive chef Oliver de Volpi explained, “The prices of food are going up recently, that that led us to raising them in the cafeterias.”

“These are things we’ve absorbed up till now,” he said. “But we don’t want to leave next years

students with this year’s debt.”

Planning for the commission is still in its infancy. It has have not decided whether student representatives will be chosen through the Inter-Residence Council, or whether new positions will be elected.

Laperle hopes to reach an agreement on the commission before the end of the current fiscal year and implement it next fall.

In the future, MFDS has agreed to keep students more aware of their plans, but highlighted existing communication channels such as the Food and Dining Advisory Committee (FADAC), which includes representatives from SSMU, MCSS, PGSS. “Our only raison-d’être [here] is for the students,” de Volpi said. “We have to provide nutritious meals and respect certain University regulations, but aside from that every-

thing the students are telling us is what we’re implementing.”

However, de Volpi also noted that students did not make adequate use of the communication channels available to them before creating PRICED. “They went to a different sort of extreme,” he said. “Students have some responsibility to find out the right channel to vent or express concerns, and we put those out there. They’re not in everybody’s hands, but they’re not more than a touch away.”

Laperle encouraged students to email MFDS, stop by their office, or fill out the Talk2Us forms available online or in the cafeterias.

Students were receptive to MFDS’s attempts to open communication lines.

“They’re doing a good job in comparison to what they are obligated

to do,” said Sean Reginio, president of the Inter-Residence Council, “but they aren’t perfect, and they can do better. We want to work together on the same team to improve things.”

Monique Lauzon, MFDS nutritionist, marketing, and quality counsellor, said, “The idea is to have the student’s point of view and voice in terms of the different planning that we do within MFDS.” Reginio hopes that the commission can help students to understand why the MFDS has made these decisions and to avoid false assumptions in the future.

“The MFDS is doing a good job,” he said. “They’re good people working hard towards making the service as good as possible, and we have to accept that these things happen.

We’re looking forward to working towards that sustainable solution for improved transparency.”

6 The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

McGill food services see positive change Event highlights student collaboration and research Aaron Vansintjan

The McGill Daily

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ast Monday evening, McGill Food and Dining Services (MFDS), the student-run McGill Food Systems Project (MFSP), and the Office of Sustainability hosted “Deconstructing Dinner”, an event aimed at increasing awareness of positive developments in student food services on campus.

The event also celebrated important projects between students and MFDS. Student initiatives such as McGill Feeding McGill have been critical primary steps toward increasing sustainability on campus. McGill Feeding McGill is an initiative that will make the farms on Macdonald Campus McGill’s main fruit and vegetable supplier beginning next fall. MFDS is also working on plans to serve more sustainable seafood, pork, and chicken.

The recent appointment of Laura Rhodes as food systems administrator, who spoke at the event, was another major step towards sustainability.

The position of Food Systems Administrator was created to encourage food sustainability on campus, initiate a Strategic Action Plan for MFDS, help organize applied student research, and facilitate collaboration between administration and students on such issues.

The Strategic Action Plan, drafted in the fall of 2010 outlines the short-and long-term changes MFDS will undergo with regards to food

sustainability, transparency, teamwork, trust, and a more sustainable business model.

Recently, MFDS has come under a lot of criticism from student media, in particular from The Daily.

According to Oliver de Volpi, executive chef of MFDS, who also spoke at the event, these criticisms are often one-sided and miss signs of progress.

“We’ve screwed up a bunch of times, but for everything that gets screwed up that gets printed, there’s three or four actions that are good, and sometimes the screwups aren’t as they’re put out to be…

There are two sides to these things and we’re hearing one side only,” he said.

De Volpi referred to Monday’s Daily article, which criticized MFDS’s recent price hikes. “The balance has to be made: what we can do for sustainable initiatives and what the students are willing to accept paying for.

That’s what we’re trying to do, figure how much they want, at what time frame they want it, and what they want first. We consult with students all the time on these things.”

Sarah Archibald, a student cocoordinator of the MFSP who has been working closely with de Volpi and the MFDS, has had a very positive experience so far. “For me, it’s the first time I’ve worked with ‘the man’ and it’s been incredibly empowering to see this change.”

“When you are working on a scale to feed 30,000 people it’s pretty easy to be critiqued, I’d say,” said Archibald, “but they’re always open to consulta-

Blair Elliott | The McGill Daily

Jon Steinman speaking at “Deconstructing Dinner.” tion, criticism, and questions.”

Dana Lahey, another student involved with MFSP, said that one of the reasons for the success of recent projects was the collaboration between students and staff.

“To me that’s what’s made this whole process work,” said Lahey. The changes were made possible when they approached the administration with a positive attitude: “We wanted to work with them, and we wanted to understand their perspective.”

Much of the discussion at “Deconstructing Dinner” revolved around applied student research.

Many changes have been initiated

by students. For example, a GEOG 302 Management Proposal created in 2009 suggested that MFDS hire a food sustainability coordinator, independent research projects on chicken purchasing options, and the possibility of offering more vegetarian meals.

“I think [applied student research] is the best thing that we have to offer as a university,” said de Volpi. “It makes us look so good, it gives students the opportunity to do research that they wouldn’t be able to, it gives the farm the opportunity to do more work. All around, everybody wins. We’re doing 95

per cent of the recommendations already.”

“We really want to include applied student research and collaboration throughout the entire cycle,” said Archibald, “Everything from food scraps to the planting at Mac campus, where the Plant Science students will be involved – it’s all a cycle.”

After the speeches Lahey spoke of the importance and of the event.

“I’m hoping that events like this will keep on making those personal connections, and that more and more people on campus start talking together and working together,” she said.

“It’s really exciting to think of where this could go and the idea that this University could actually be a model for the world,” added Archibald.

De Volpi was equally positive: “We’re going to be something that I hope other universities are going to look at as a model,” he said. “I hope people are going to look at us and say, that’s something to be proud of.’”

“Trying to cultivate systems outside of the industrial food system box really works when we become part of the food system instead of a recipient. We really have to push ourselves out of the box,” said activist Jon Steinman during his talk at the event.

According to Steinman, this involves students working with administration instead of against.

For Rhodes and student speakers, the progress made so far is proof of this.

Rising food prices contribute to unrest in the Middle East A warning from the United Nation’s WFP: “The margins between stability and chaos are perilously thin” Andra Cernavskis The McGill Daily

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statement released Friday by the United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) claims that the rising cost of food is a key factor in the current protests and uprisings across the Middle East.

“In many of the protests, demonstrators have brandished loaves of bread or displayed banners expressing anger about the rising cost of food staples such as lentils,” said the statement written by Josette Sheeran, the WFP’s executive director.

“These are the nutritional building blocks of life, and if people feel that rising prices are pushing these food items out of reach, growing anxiety adds to the general feeling of exclusion, resentment and despair,” the statement continued.

Shokry Gohar, a professor in the Islamic Studies department at McGill and originally from Egypt, agreed that rising food prices played a large role in public discontent, especially in his native country.

“The rise in food prices have had a very negative impact on the Egyptian people because annual income is very, very low. I don’t think the average Egyptian makes more than $2 a day,” he said.

“This makes it difficult for him to be able to buy supplies and all those sort of things for his family, so it has a very strong impact, and I think it is one of the reasons that has pushed the Egyptian people to take to the street,” Gohar added.

According to the WFP’s statement, “The UN Food and Agriculture Organization Food Price Index in January reached a new historic peak, rising for the seventh consecutive month and surpassing the peak of the 2007-2008 food price crisis.”

Gohar pointed out that rising food prices are not specific to North Africa and the Middle East.

He noted that there have been significant hikes in global food prices over the past year.

“It’s not restricted to Egypt. It is a worldwide issue, but the Egyptian government did not respond to what is going on around the world,” he said. “In Egypt, the government

did not react at all to this issue. It therefore became very difficult for the Egyptians to cope with the change.”

When asked if the Egyptian government could have done anything to remedy the situation, Gohar replied, “I think the government could have done a lot to cope with this problem.”

Jane Howard, the WFP’s public information officer, agreed that rising food prices are a global phenomenon, however, she also noted that it is an issue with varying degrees. “There is no suggestion that countries in North Africa and the Middle East are running out of food. Media reports say that in Egypt, for example, the government has sufficient wheat supplies to last until June this year,” she said, indicating that populations do not necessarily need to be starving for food prices to become an issue.

“Even in times of stability, many people throughout North Africa and the Middle East struggle to access the nutritious food they require for a balanced diet,” Howard said. “All governments are

struggling with the rising cost of food globally…higher prices globally will mean less food for the hungry.” “[Egypt’s] like everywhere else in the world but the governments of the world are trying to compensate [for the rise in food prices] through giving people a sufficient income so that they can deal with the increasing food prices,” Gohar said.

Haroun Bouazzi, a Tunisian Montrealer who helped organize the recent Tunisia rally in Montreal and is involved with Collectif de solidarité au Canada avec les luttes sociales en Tunisie, echoed Howard’s view that food is not the main problem in Tunisia.

While “food prices did play a role in the discontent in Tunisia,” Bouazzi said, “it was not the main reason people went to the streets.

It was the lack of hope. It was more political than anything else. It’s not because it’s expensive, it’s because they don’t have a job.”

Though food prices in 2008 did cause some protests in Tunisia, they are not an immediate concern in Tunisia at the moment, according to Bouazzi.

“Nobody is dying from hunger right now in Tunisia. The bread and other foods are subsidized. For sure, some people cannot buy meat and stuff like that, but it is not a major social problem, for example, to buy bread,” he said.

Howard further emphasized the fact that food is just one part of the greater picture.

“Rising food prices have undoubtedly been a contributing factor in the political turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, but they have not been the central issue,” she said. “They are only part of a complex array of different issues driving the protests, such as unemployment, political reform and freedom of speech.”

However, the WFP statement warned that the rising cost of food should not be taken lightly as food and market volatility can quickly translate into unrest.

“When it comes to food, the margins between stability and chaos are perilously thin,” the WFP concluded. “It is still too early to quantify the role that rising food prices are playing in the current wave of discontent.”

The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

7

Finding the feminine in dumpstering The case for more sustainable living Alex Briggs Hyde Park

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here are plenty of reasons to dumpster dive. You can save over $100 dollars a week, and at the same time feel good by helping to reduce Canada’s food waste rate (an incredible forty per cent, even while food riots are seen around the Global South). The discomfort that people might have with it, generated by class consciousness and our sterile culture’s germophobia, are fairly blatant examples of capitalism’s subversion of our common sense for its own purposes.

But that’s not what this article is about. Instead I’d like to explain how diving teaches us to find the joy that’s all around us, how it returns us to our roots, and balances our psyches.

Our world is undeniably masculine. It is built upon a foundation of competition that tells us that if we want anything in life, we’re going to have to take it. And so, in general, people are taught to find happiness in achievement (while our financial system ensures that there is never enough monetary success to go around). Masculinity

is about strength and imposing your will upon the world you live off of.

But the modern world is far too malleable, too easy, to find happiness this way. For those who toil in the soil and raise their food up under the sun, there is great pride and joy to be found in a piece of fruit: you can taste all your hard work in savory form.

Can you find the same pride in walking to a Provigo? It’s unlikely: it requires no effort on our part, so we don’t value it. If anything, we value the money that we worked hard to earn. We’re disappointed to trade it for something as “boring” as food and undecided if ours was the right choice from the supermarket’s dizzying array of options.

I think it’s a particular kind of insanity that keeps us unhappy or dissatisfied in such an amazing world, where any and every need or desire we might have can be fulfilled almost instantly. Again, our egos feed off of taking things and not receiving them for what they are – and so as long as it’s easy, your meal will be no more than tasty.

I do my best to follow a more feminine model of happiness. I dumpster dive. There are a lot of factors in this happiness I think

Ian Murphy for The McGill Daily

– the sustainability and the cheapness – but for me it runs deeper as well. I live within my urban environment; I receive only what it gives me and I benefit it by utilizing its waste. I fill a useful niche.

It’s a return to gathering, like discovering Paleolithic berries (and spreading their seeds!) while men

Sikh Langar Food fights social hierachy The gadfly Shaina Agbayani

shaina.agbayani@mcgilldaily.com

W

ith others similarly contorted in my row, I sit cross-legged on a slender rug – our dining chair – whose length spans the entire room, one of several parallel to each other in the basement of this Montreal Gurdwara. Facing us below are exceptionally wide plates filled with fresh chapa and several crumbly blocks of multi-hued burfis befriending basmati rice, samosas, and pakoras. Volunteering grandfathers and granddaughters hover over me every few minutes with gallonsdeep pots of the rice pudding and curries just prepared in the adjacent kitchen by the laity – with ingredients purchased with their voluntary contributions – enquiring if I want more.

Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, meals are free, my company tells me.

The Langar of the Gurdwara – the free community kitchen at the Sikh place of worship – is a tradition established by Guru Nanak, the faith’s founding father. The existence of a Langar-less Gurdwara is as unlikely as that of a pork butch-

er in Saudi Arabia. Established in the 15th century during an epoch deeply pervaded and segregated by the socioeconomic apartheid sanctioned by India’s dominant Hindu caste system, Sikhism repudiated the nation’s hierarchical status quo by centralizing the tenet of egalitarianism. The Langar would operate as the paragon of Sikhism’s commitment to human sameness and realizing the virtues of a communal synergy.

In conceptualizing the Langar, Guru Nanak envisioned a sanctuary where solidarity and commonality in the kitchen and equal levelling and grounding – very literally – when dining, would foster spiritual and material refuge from the castesystem-sponsored social atomism and stratification, to which Indians had become so inured.

The Langar’s primary aim is not to feed the less fortunate, although it certainly satisfies this ancillary goal, but to evoke the spirit of equality and fraternity by giving no heed to the caste, class, colour, gender, or faith of those serving or being served. When Emperor Akhbar visited the Langar, he consumed the same dishes while seated on the same level and in the same fashion as Shudras – low-caste Hindus – who

outside the confines of the temple’s bulwark against inequality, would not even have been permitted to eat on the same precincts as Brahmin elites.

Within the Langar of the Golden Temple – the Mecca or Vatican of Sikhism – reverberates the cacophony of spiritual solidarity: several thousand sundry volunteers – Hindus, Sikhs, agnostics – partaking in the dough tossing, sweeping, and scooping in order to serve an average 80,000 free weekday meals to Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, fundamentalist atheists, the poor of the Punjab, the affluent of America, et cetera.

While many of the temple’s Hindu volunteers are made to snub the task of cleaning outside of the golden fortress due to their caste status, within it they elect to wipe tiles to a shimmer, embodying the contagiousness and resilience of community spirit when it is awash with the organic devotion of the masses to inclusiveness.

Upon entering this consummate haven of equality, one is purified of considerations of dissimilarity as they inhale the oxygen of an unbounded loyalty to the act of providing nourishment to all. Mealtime, as the Langar displays, ought to and can be a hearth of harmony that defies hierarchy. !

were hunting. There’s no challenge to it – it’s easy – but there’s a different kind of pride in saving food from an overstuffed dump.

I’m a detrivore, I help to renew the trash of this world, and my life is a delicious scavenger hunt. The world should be free: its interactions, its gifts, and its pleasures.

Once it is you can enjoy them for what they are, not what they cost (in time or money), and I’ve found that I can be a whole lot happier with a whole lot less.

Alex Briggs is a U2 Mechanical Engineering student. Write him at ajhbriggs@gmail.com.

Missed out on this special issue?

We’ve still got two left!

The Future Bodies commentary@mcgilldaily.com Erratum In “Campus unions sign statement of solidarity” (News, February 3), it was stated that the name of AMUSE was the “Association of McGill Undergraduate Student Employees,” their name is actually the “Association of McGill University Support Employees.” The Daily regrets the error.

8 The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

Global agribusiness

How the globalization of the food supply is starving world’s poor The character of community Adrian Kaats

adrian.kaats@mcgilldaily.com

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hen the price of a commodity increases, the number of people who cannot afford it increases too.

Food and water are no exception.

The World Health Organization estimates that “about 2.6 billion people ... lack even a simple ‘improved’ latrine and 1.1 billion people have no access to any type of improved drinking source of water.”

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 925 million people are “undernourished.” The resulting annual rates of disease and death are in the millions, largely affecting children.

In January of this year, the FAO reported that “world food prices surged to a new historic peak ... [which] clearly show[s] that the upward pressure on world food prices is not abating.” This is despite a massive surge in investment in global agribusiness.

For instance, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank group, “has made [the global] agribusiness a priority ... combin[ing] investments and advisory services to help the private sector address higher demand and escalating food prices in an environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive way.”

Bullshit.

Between 2000 and 2009, the IFC increased its annual investments “across the agribusiness supply chain” by approximately 670 per cent, to $2 billion. So why

are the practices of global agribusiness investors making the world, on the whole, hungrier?

The privatization, globalization, and deregulation of the world’s food supply chain and food trade “from farm to fork,” means that pressure from the excessive consumptive demands of rich foreign markets, such as ours, drives the price of food out of the reach of the poor local populations where investments in food production

are made.

The story doesn’t end there. When poor countries develop major economic problems and ask for our help, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization take the opportunity to hoodwink them. We promise to rescue and “develop” floundering economies through loans. These are contingent upon risk management in the form of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) and

bilateral trade agreements. These are Trojan horses.

Essentially, we assess a country’s resources, and in return for “investment,” require them to restructure their economy. This typically involves large foreign corporations gain-

but because the corporations are foreign-owned, so are most of the profits. Promised local development and wealth generation never happens, quite the opposite.

When this restructuring is applied to agriculture, the situa-

Stacey Wilson | The McGill Daily

ing the right to harvest a country’s resources, and to turn the country into a production engine of goods for trade in the global market.

Increases in gross domestic product (GDP) are meant to trickle down to the local population,

tion is even worse. A 1997 article in Culture and Agriculture puts it plainly: “Despite the growth in the GDP, structural adjustment does not appear of much help to the agricultural sector. In theory, devaluation, by lowering the relative price of farm commodities on the international market, should make a country’s agricultural exports more competitive.

However, it is by no means cer-

tain that increased exports compensate for the loss of purchasing power of a cheaper currency.”

After this required restructuring, poor countries can’t even afford to buy the food they are forced to produce.

Because local governments accept SAPs under extreme duress, appropriate industrial and labour regulations are never put into place. Local firms, in this case farms, are forced out of business. Populations are displaced as enormous swaths of traditionally managed land are converted into factory farms. Our companies loot and pillage with abandon, often resulting in ecological and social disasters that ultimately deepen the crises these companies were supposed to help relieve.

On top of all this, the implementation of poorly-planned factory farming can destroy their local environment. Arable land is exploited to the point of infertility. Irrigation systems are not properly developed, and coupled with abusive use of pesticides and fertilizers, local water systems become deeply damaged, which can devastate the ecosystems they support.

While globalization and privatization of the world’s food supply might be great for the bottom line of large companies headquartered in the well-fed developed world, they are also starving the developing world. !

To be continued next Monday with “The World’s Water.”

Adam Smith in the traditional market Deconstructing the Indonesian pasar Red star over Asia Ted Sprague

ted.sprague@mcgilldaily.com

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he dawn just barely cracks and a whirlwind of people have streamed in and out of the narrow alleys of an Indonesian traditional market, or pasar, as we call it here.

Wildly chattering chickens stuffed in rattan-made cages, stacked up high, are ready to be slaughtered, plucked, and sold on the spot. Today the chicken seller doesn’t budge: 27,000 rupiah (roughly $3) each. He won’t even shave a thousand rupiah for a seasoned bargainer. Demand is high on the eve of the Chinese New

Year. Recognizing that he has the upper hand, the chicken seller is winning this centuries-old competition between buyers and sellers.

Adam Smith’s “invisible” hand penetrates deep even in this medieval market. Nothing escapes the clutch of the law of supply and demand.

One will be hard pressed to find a list of prices in the pasar – There is no Twitter, no Facebook, – yet everyone seems to know how much this or that costs.

News of today’s prices flow seamlessly through an elusive network of information spread by word of mouth.

For Indonesians, life revolves around the pasar. The daily trip to the market is a time-honoured ritual for Indonesian housewives, known for their tenacity in bar-

gaining for good deals since they have to feed their families with what little budget they have. In the pasar the servility of Indonesian housewives is reversed. They become assertive, demanding, and often belligerent. After all, wasn’t it the women who opened the floodgates to the Russian Revolution, demanding bread for their families because they’d had enough of lining up obediently, only to find empty bakeries?

If you ever visit an Indonesian traditional market, you might find it to be a bewildering, disorganized mess. There is hardly any regulation, but things somehow work over there. You scratch your head, and so do people in the pasar. You ask them how things work here, they shrug their shoulders. It is the

economic necessity that forces this chaos to function, albeit with creaks and screeches. At the end of the day, foods make their way from the humble counters of the sellers to the smoky kitchens of the homemakers.

In the past ten years, many mini- and mega-marts have been opened, yet the pasar remains a beehive of activity in Indonesia.

Tradition still has a strong hold over people’s daily economic life, but just like any tradition, it is losing its grip in the face of fluorescent-lit and air-conditioned bigbox stores. But the pasar is here to stay, if not because of tradition, then because of economic necessity. There is just a price level that the big-box stores dare not venture to match.

However, let’s not glorify

pasar. Foreigners might think them to be “native,” “traditional,” a way of life to be preserved, but if you ask everyone there, they would want things to be improved. A rat-infested pasar is not something to be proud of.

Adam Smith’s “invisible” hand cannot possibly untangle this mess. A firm, directed hand, and one which is visible to the people, is needed, and it should be the hands of those petty traders and housewives – rough, scaly, dark, from years of peddling, hawking, and handling food. !

Ted Sprague is currently in Southeast Asia. You can follow his adventure through this column or his blog redstaroverasia.wordpress.com.

The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

9

The vegan trip Musings of an anarchist appetite Davide Mastracci Hyde Park

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his article is composed of thoughts on my one week test run with veganism. As someone who believes life is about experiences, I realized taking the vegan trip was vital.

M

y eyes finally open.

The curtains have too, but they’ve been that way all night. The rays of sun pour in and ruthlessly penetrate my pupils. After being awake for nearly two days, over the span of a party and two all-night clubbing sessions, my body is spent.

On a normal Monday morning, I wake up at 7 a.m. to get ready for class. On this Monday, I am up at 7 a.m., yet my night is just coming to a close. The world is a beautiful place at this hour if you have not yet slept. Regardless, it is far past 7 a.m., I am still hung-over from a weekend of continuously stomping my liver, and most importantly, I am hungry...

My number-one hangover commandment is to wait until 5 p.m. to eat; otherwise, food merely resembles a $20 bill entered into a change machine upside down.

But today, commandments are irrelevant. It is the first of the most miserable month of the year and only a greasy breakfast can satisfy the thirty-day hangover that November brings. I rush to the cafeteria, wearing the clothes still caked onto my body from the night before, to make the impending breakfast deadline. Crashing through the double doors of Bishop Mountain Hall, I swagger into the food section just in time to fill my tray. I spot the elusive hot foods spread, and weigh my options. Sausage, eggs, French toast, and a couple others which I tend to ignore. What normally would be an ideal breakfast is instantly shattered however, by a sudden realization. I stare in confusion at the food as the sight of

what I’ve come to think of as options are covered by locks. Jesus! What’s happening? Am I still intoxicated?

I expected a green fairy, not a Masterlock. Regardless of my allnight clubbing habit, these locks are merely symbolic of the newfound element of my life: veganism.

I have not even begun to select my meal, and yet I can feel the limitations of a vegan diet spreading through my mind. On a morning like this, I would normally

manage to utter a few grunts, and the cafeteria ladies, used to this often indecipherable Monday freshman code, would plop some food on my plate. However, this morning, I am forced to think – normally not that difficult a task. Yet in relation to food, it’s a rather newfound concept. I’ve become accustomed to the rez food process, and what it entails for someone like me. By this I mean that my weight is of no concern to me, I have no diet, and no restriction on what to consume besides whatever appeals to my appetite. And of course with

in the paper, and the best ones attack the first premise, the most important leg of the chair.

I realize that I would like to view myself as a fairly curious individual. I like to know why. I don’t like to take things at face value, and I like to ask questions. This would be my argument. Yet only a few hours in this vegan experience have led me to realize the major flaw in my argument. One of my premises is off. For me to even be able to have an argument, I need to be alive. To be alive, I need food and beverages.

Yet I have ignored something so

what’s wrong with the world but continuing to pour gasoline on the inferno of rapidly spreading issues, vegans have the commitment to embody what they want to accomplish. In this sense, though I do not intend on becoming a vegan in the near future, I admire their principles.

This realization was the main benefit of my experience as a vegan. It is hard to understand how much of an impact the choice makes on your life, as well as just how difficult it is to do, and to do well. With my dive into the depths of veganism, I

All illustrations by Nicole Stradiotto for The McGill Daily

a meal plan, I cook absolutely nothing, so ingredients and calories don’t concern me. But this morning, I have to think. Is this from an animal? Is anything in it from an animal? These three criteria reduce my options greatly. I eventually decide upon soy milk, a couple of grape fruits, watermelon, and strawberries.

This option bodes well, as I tend to feel freshened by consuming fruit in the morning, and have since incorporated far more – namely grapefruit – into my diet.

As I sit at a caf table and cut my grapefruit, avoiding the projectiles of juice emanating from it, I think.

My political theory TA told me the class would take over my mind. At first I thought he was crazy, yet now I understand.

In a paper for this class, we are expected to construct a thesis based upon a logical progression of premises. Counterarguments, of course, should be included

essential to my wellbeing. I like to analyze political decisions and views. Yet thus far, I have skipped analyzing food.

My quick stint with veganism has taught me that food can be, and really is, an extremely political subject. For many, the manner in which one lives one’s life is the most political thing about oneself. I have a great number of political views, yet often do not act upon them. Veganism, in contrast, is acting on one’s views in the most explicit way. Of course, not all vegans choose the lifestyle for social reasons, but for many, it plays a factor. If one is opposed to animals being mistreated, abstaining from using animals or animal products in any way is a logical political action. Holy Shit! Vegans incorporate their views into their life in such an essential way. In a world of loudmouth coffee shop revolutionaries, constantly blabbering about

was not prepared with the knowledge that I would assume most who want to be vegans acquire before they take the plunge. I did no research on how to sustain a healthy vegan lifestyle.

For the span of the week, it was worth it. But, my body felt the lack of research by the third day. My stomach hurt, and my body felt weak. I am sure that this is due to the quick jump from eating anything to just eating non-animal products, or to the diet issues brought on by my lack of research. I wouldn’t place the feelings on veganism itself. Beyond the physical discomfort, I also felt far hungrier.

At times I felt frantic, running around the campus drastically searching for food to satisfy my appetite.

One notable experience came at the Subway on campus. I had done my research and discerned that the Veggie Delight option, with no cheese, on Italian bread, met the vegan standards. So I ordered it. The man making the

sandwich asked me if I really wanted no cheese a couple of times, as if he did not believe me.

After I assured him no cheese was wanted, he stopped, gave a look

of utter despair, and muttered, “That’s depressing.” When I think about the reasons for becoming a vegan, the decision certainly wasn’t depressing. However when I sank my teeth in the sandwich, and was still incredibly hungry after it had vanished, my taste buds and appetite were more depressed than ever.

As the week came to an end, I craved meat more than anything.

The famous smoked meat sandwiches at Schwartz’s appeared in my dreams several times throughout my experience. It felt natural to have the “fat” sandwich as my initiation back into the world of the omnivore. As I plastered my sandwich with unusually large amounts of mustard, I thought about the week. I concluded that it is unlikely that I will become a vegan, at this point, or in the future as I know it.

The type of dietary and lifestyle change required to become a vegan takes a great deal of commitment, which for me, would require a raging passion toward the issue at hand. I have not yet found that passion. To be fair, I have not done much research on the matter. I certainly will now, however, as the experience has gotten me interested in veganism, at least in an academic sense. An article was brought to my attention which claimed that vegetarians and vegans are more empathetic than omnivores, which leads them to make their dietary choices. I believe this to be true, and place my decision not to adopt the vegan lifestyle almost solely on that concept. I have not developed the passion which would allow me to make such a drastic alteration in my lifestyle. Yet, all it took to return to my omnivore routine was the thought of the uniquely appetizing hallmark of Schwartz’s.

The time for veganism in my existence is not yet here, but this experience has led me to believe that if my soul is heading in the direction of veganism, it has increased its pace...

Davide Mastracci is a U0 Arts student. His article originally started as a project for theveganomaly. com, a website devoted to veganism. You can reach him at davide. mastracci@mail.mcgill.ca.

L’achat de cigarettes de contrebande coûte plus cher qu’on le pense : il alimente d’autres activités criminelles comme le trafic d’armes et de drogues. Les individus pris en possession de cigarettes de contrebande s’exposent à de graves conséquences, allant de l’amende jusqu’à l’emprisonnement.

consequencesdelacontrebande.gc.ca Buying contraband cigarettes costs more than you think. It fuels other criminal activities, such as the trafficking of drugs and guns. Individuals caught in possession of contraband cigarettes face serious consequences ranging from a fine to jail time.

contrabandconsequences.gc.ca

The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

11

Nutrition for (almost) nothing Health-conscious grocery shopping on a student budget Critical Condition Debbie Wang

debbie.wang@mcgilldaily.com

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ealthy eating is generally conducive to healthy living.

But despite best intentions, maintaining a balanced diet can be a challenge for many students.

The world of nutrition is filled with muddled reports that oscillate between contradictory conclusions weekly (wait, so coffee is good for you now?) and fad diets that advocate for extreme, and unhealthy, dietary habits.

Once you wade through this sea of information, a new challenge emerges: eating nutritious food on a student budget. Instant noodles are cheap; anti-oxidant-rich blueberries are not. What foods can we afford that pack a nutritional punch? I sat down with U3 Food Sciences and Nutritional Sciences student Rebecca Hartley, an avid runner and long time nutrition enthusiast, to compile the following list of ten cheap, healthy foods. Of course, variety is key to ensuring an adequate intake of the myriad of essential vitamins and minerals, but incorporating a few of these suggestions into your routine will spare your wallet and contribute to a healthier diet.

Eggs Buy them in bulk at Costco! Packed full of minerals, with some types even a source of essential fatty acids, eggs are economical and fool-proof to prepare. For the busy student on the go, hard boil several to last a few days, and toss them in your bag for a proteinrich breakfast or snack.

Milk Besides being an obvious and very good source of calcium, milk contains

protein, and vitamin D, which many of us may be deficient in, particularly during the winter. During our cold, dark northern winters, Hartley suggests a daily supplement of vitamin D (take note, those who hibernate inside during the winter months).

Low-sodium canned tomatoes According to Hartley, the average student intakes 3,500 to 4,000 mg of sodium each day, far exceeding the 2,500 mg recommended upper limit. Ensure the canned tomatoes are indeed low sodium.

It doesn’t get much cheaper than this, people. Tomatoes are a great source of vitamin C and lycopene, whose antioxidant properties have been associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.

Chick peas (garbanzo beans) Great for “digestive support,” chick peas supply 50 per cent of your daily-recommended fibre intake per cup. This means your colon is happy and you’re less hungry, helping to control calorie intake. It also includes protein, and has been shown to reduce cholesterol levels.

Walnuts Not all nuts are created equally.

Walnuts are a great source of omega3 fatty acids and vitamin E, and have been shown to have significant cardiovascular benefits. They’re portable and delicious (and calorie rich).

Cruciferous vegetables The most common types are broccoli and cauliflower, but this vegetable family also includes bok choy, brussel sprouts, and rapini.

These different vegetables all offer unique nutritional contributions, but expect tons of vitamin C, vitamin A, fibre, and even calcium in the broccoli.

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Oatmeal/Oatbran Dirt cheap with a long shelf life, oatmeal is well known for being high in soluble fiber, but did you also know it contains a significant amount of protein? Ten per cent of your recommended daily intake in a cup of cooked oats!

Apples Such a quintessential food item is doubtless already a staple in many student diets, but there are literally hundreds of varieties out

there that can differ significantly in taste. As they are all comparable in nutritional value, stray a little from the proverbial sidewalk, and ditch the Red Delicious for another variety next time.

Canned salmon A more economical way of reaping the health benefits of salmon, this particular fish is preferable over tuna, which may contain mercury. Canned salmon boasts Omega 3, protein, and potassium.

Multivitamins Yeah, I kind of cheated. It’s not a food item, but it’s a daily component of Hartley’s diet. As long as you have a balanced eating plan, a normal multivitamin will complement your diet, filling in on those days when you’re a little under in some departments.

Special thanks to Rebecca Hartley, whose expertise and passion for educating less nutrition-minded individuals made this article possible.

Alternative is more than an aesthetic The case for student-run food services Jane Gatensby Hyde Park

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he ongoing campaign for honest food at McGill scored a big victory last week when Midnight Kitchen was allowed to re-open. As a volunteer at The Rabbit Hole Cafe on Aylmer, another by-donation eatery, I see the benefits of a collective approach to student eating firsthand, and there are many.

Primarily, collectives help to alleviate student poverty. In addition to our Friday lunches, we operate the Food for Thought pantry, a place where students can take free nonperishables to restock their cupboards for the week ahead. While

poverty may not be very visible on campus, between tuition, housing, and everything else it can be hard for many McGill students to make ends meet. For them, alternatives are more than an aesthetic, and having one is all but crucial – as food prices at McGill continue to rise, student collectives are one of the best ways for students to eat within their means.

A few weeks ago, a friend told me that while on exchange in Sweden, she was able to buy a year’s subscription to a student-run food service of her choice, where she ate incredibly well for a fraction of the cost of a McGill meal plan. Within this system, Swedish students were able to gain experience in running a sophisticated

service operation, able to hire other students, and able to control what kinds of ingredients went into their meals.

Another benefit of this arrangement is that the relationship between the consumer and the supplier is that of student to student, not student to university, or student to university to third-party food enterprise.

But as every young socialist is well aware, Canada isn’t Sweden.

And I have no problem with there being a Tim Horton’s in the Redpath cafeteria. What I dislike, however, is the fact that the water fountains in that same cafeteria were broken for weeks while the vending machines are always stocked with Dasani.

But I digress. The point is, we don’t

have to change everything, but a shift in proportions would be nice.

If we rely on each other more for our basic needs, we will be more connected as a campus. After all, eating has traditionally been a community affair.

And because McGill is a community, I would like to acknowledge the contributions of the administration, faculty, and their families, who donate non-perishables to our pantry every December. Even more indispensable is the involvement of Chef Jancide and company at RVC, who supply the Rabbit Hole with ingredients and expertise. Examples such as these are encouraging – they suggest that parts of the collective message might be resonating with parts of

the bigger institution. McGill might one day be open to giving students a more comprehensive food services system, despite what we may have seen in the past.

Food is political, social, and normal – a daily need and a huge part of our overall wellbeing.

McGill could benefit from more outlets that provide a human approach to cooking and eating. In the meantime, we’ll continue serving food as it’s meant to be: cooked amongst friends, and shared indiscriminately between those who have a donation to give and those who don’t.

Jane Gatensby is a U0 Arts student.

She can be reached at jane.gatensby@mail.mcgill.ca.

12The Food Issue

Edna Chan | The McGill Daily

Factory farms are destroying us Olivia Messer on the dire consequences of the American meat industry

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here’s no doubt that we live in a culture of meat. In the United States, over 10 billion animals are slaughtered every year, 99 per cent of which are factory farmed.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s bestselling book Eating Animals sheds much needed light on this issue. The book is an extensive investigation into the American meat industry, in which he estimates that the average American eats the equivalent of 21,000 entire animals in their lifetime.

When you’re a vegetarian from the American South, you have to answer a lot of questions, ranging from “Why?” to “You know the Bible says it’s okay to eat meat, right?” In an effort not to proselytize or obnoxiously provoke, I’ve learned to simplify my answer into three parts: environmental concerns, animal cruelty, and health.

Environment

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he environmental costs of the meat industry are varied in their nature, and giant in their scope.

United Nations research indicates that animal agriculture “is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. ...

[Animal agriculture] should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.”

The facts surrounding the environmental impact of meat-eating are simply undeniable, and they have dire consequences for the future of our planet’s climate.

Journalist Jamais Cascio recently found that the greenhouse gas emissions arising every year just from the production and consumption of cheeseburgers – in the United States alone – is roughly the amount emitted by 6.5 million to 19.6 million SUVs. (To provide perspective, he estimates that there are now approximately 16 million SUVs currently on the road in the U.S.) Cascio’s research takes into account the energy costs associated with everything from growing the

feed for the cattle that provide the beef and cheese, to transporting and even cooking the components.

McGill professor of Geography & Earth System Science Program Navin Ramankutty agrees that the problem is deserving of serious attention. “In terms of carbon,” he said, “[animal] agricultural practices and the conversion of land for agriculture accounts for 15 to 20 per cent of total emissions today, and this number is even higher if you consider methane and nitrous oxide, two other greenhouse gases which are even more potent [than] CO2.”

Worse still, Foer writes that the meat industry is responsible for 37 per cent of global anthropogenic emissions of methane, which is about twenty-three times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2.

The meat industry’s profligate resource consumption is by no means limited to fossil fuels, however.

According to Foer’s book, “nearly one-third of the land surface of the planet is dedicated to livestock.”

Then there’s the issue of waste, which is a multifaceted and complicated one. By waste, I mean a few different things: waste in the literal sense, a waste of lives, a waste of the remaining few of endangered species, a waste of resources, and even a waste of money. This industry is anything but efficient.

Regarding literal waste, Foer reports that “chicken, hog, and cattle excrement has already polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states. In only three years, two hundred fish kills – incidents where the entire fish population in a given area is killed at once – have resulted from factory farms’ failures to keep their shit out of waterways. In these documented kills alone, thirteen million fish were literally poisoned by shit.”

Meat production also wastes hundreds of thousands of animal lives each year. Gail Eisnitz, author of the legendary Slaughterhouse, gave a presentation in 1999 in which she explained that for all of the animals killed in the process of meat consumption, many more are killed and never make it to the plate. “In 1997,” she stated, “a single hog corporation in Oklahoma reported losses of 420,000 dead hogs – that’s 48 hogs dying every hour. … They died as a result of the hostile, stressful, disease-promoting conditions inside these massive factories. …

Thousands of piglets that were sick or didn’t grow fast enough were beaten to death. The industry calls this thumping or PACing: the industry acronym for ‘Pound Against Concrete.’”

Even the food fed to livestock has a significant environmental affect. The Guardian recently reported on a Swedish study conducted in 2003 that illustrated how “raising organic beef on grass rather than feed reduced greenhouse gas emissions by forty per cent and consumed 85 per cent less energy.”

Health

F

actory farms wreak havoc on more than just the environment. Because we live on this earth, our collective health is closely tied with pollution. What affects the planet inevitably affects us. It’s where our food grows. What you put in your body determines how it works, how long you live, and whether or not you get sick.

Foer’s book explains that there are, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 76 million cases of food-borne illness in America each year. And we’re not just talking about the big ones you’ve all heard of—like salmonella and E. coli.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a genuinely terrifying problem that few people know about. MRSA is colloquially termed a flesh-eating-bacteria. The U.S. National Library of Medicine describes common symptoms as skin abscesses, fever, and shortness of breath. Mother Earth News explains that while MRSA was confined largely to hospitals in the past, its annual death toll has climbed to higher than that of HIV/AIDS related deaths in the United States.

But MRSA is not the only antibiotic resistant infection we should be worried about. The problem is the sheer volume of antibiotics fed to livestock every year. In the U.S., this figure tallies up to 17.8 million pounds. (Foer’s research, however, shows that the industry underreported its antibiotic use by at least forty per cent, and notes that 13.5 million pounds of those antimicrobials are currently

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

banned from use in the European Union.)

This could have a seriously profound affect on our own ability to get over infections. According to Mother Earth News, “the CDC reports that two million people in the United States now contract an infection each year while in the hospital. Of those, a staggering 90,000 die. … Numbers such as that are prompting some medical investigators to suggest that we may be entering a ‘post-antibiotic era,’ one in which … ‘there would be no effective antibiotics available for treating many life-threatening infections in humans.’”

Contamination is perhaps an even larger problem with factory farming practices. Because of the speed and “efficiency” of machines used to tear chickens apart more quickly, the birds’ intestinal tracts are ripped apart, coating them in feces. As a result, Consumer Reports named a study in 2007 that found “83 per cent of poultry is infected with campylobacter or salmonella by the time it reaches the grocery store.” The study reported that this is the case even in organic and antibiotic-free brands.

This has worsened in the past thirty years, mainly because of a decision on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Foer details how “the poultry industry convinced the USDA to reclassify feces so that it could continue to use these automatic eviscerators. Once a dangerous contaminant, feces are now classified as a ‘cosmetic blemish.’”

His research cites the findings of a journalist named Scott Bronstein, who wrote a series on the subject for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in which he described how “every week millions of chickens leaking yellow puss, stained by green feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria, or marred by lung and heart infections, cancerous tumors, or skin conditions are shipped for sale to consumers.”

In fact, because these chickens have to be drenched in chlorine before they’re shipped to buyers, Foer explains that “the birds [are] injected…with ‘broths’ and salty solutions to give them what we have come to think of as the chicken look, smell, and taste.”

Indeed, according to Foer, largely as a result of the USDA’s lax regulation of the industry, “pathogen-infested, feces-splattered chicken can technically be fresh, cage-free, and free-range, and sold in the supermarket legally.”

Animal cruelty and treatment of workers

E

isnitz’s book Slaughterhouse, published in 1997, was the first of its kind to expose the practices on the inside of these facilities built to dismantle and prepare meat for consumption.

During her investigation, it became clear that the workers, not just the animals, at slaughterhouses

and factory farms are victims of the system in which they work. For this reason, these operations often have 100 per cent (and higher) turnover rates per year.

Eisnitz found that factory farm work is among the most dangerous in the country, resulting in surprising numbers of workplace injuries, such as the loss of fingers and limbs, burns, and stabs. Some have died when crushed by falling animals, while others have simply dropped dead while working on the line. “Due to exorbitant line speeds,” she wrote, “in the last 15 years, we’ve seen a 1,000 per cent increase in cumulative trauma disorders.

Even the meat industry itself reports that at current line speeds, workers’ bodies are physically used up after five years. In fact, that’s why these companies intentionally recruit illegal workers from places like Mexico – that completely and conveniently protects them from insurance claims.”

Factory farming’s treatment of the animals themselves is also appalling. Foer has found that approximately 200,000 cows per year simply collapse as result of illness and injury – hence the application of the term “downer.” Unfortunately, according to Foer, “in most of America’s fifty states it is perfectly legal (and perfectly common) to simply let downers die of exposure over days or toss them, live, into dumpsters.”

The issues of abuse are largely tied to the psychological trauma resulting from these types of jobs, and this is discussed in both Foer’s and Eisnitz’s books through many personal accounts.

In large part, the U.S. government’s failure to take action on animal cruelty stems from a legislation relating to “Common Farming Exemptions” (CFEs). These CFEs essentially exempt factory farms from the necessity of following animal cruelty laws. The loophole is that anything considered “common practice,” or done by a majority of farms, will overrule animal cruelty laws, making legal action on abuses incredibly difficult.

Family Farms

L

ess than one per cent of the animals killed for meat consumption in the U.S. come from family farms. But the industry certainly still exists.

Much like the independent farmers interviewed in Eating Animals, the family growers that I spoke to were willing to discuss their jobs, and genuinely concerned about the health and safety of their animals.

Jack and Lisa Ivey own a cattle and poultry farm just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Jack started farming fulltime about ten years ago, and they now have about 250 heads of cattle along with four chicken houses. “You know, everybody’s called to do something – my husband’s called to be a farmer and he loves it, and he’s great at it and he’s very passionate about it,” Lisa says.

Lisa explains that they spend a lot of time with

their animals, building relationships with them.

“My husband loves those cattle like we love our dog…and he takes that very seriously. He’s responsible for taking care of them, if one of them is sick – if we can’t take care of them, the vet comes to our house and takes care of them for us.” I sincerely doubt you’d see that kind of treatment in a factory farm.

While there may not be sufficient evidence to suggest that family farms have less environmental impact, or use fewer natural resources, they certainly have a far better record in terms of animal cruelty and treatment of workers. Unfortunately, substantially fewer people are going into small farming now than they used to. Lisa confirmed this. “It’s not an easy job. It takes a special type of person to do it, [but] I would tell you that the majority of independent farmers care for their animals like we care for them,” she said.

As much as possible, this concern extends to the choices Lisa and her husband make with regard to selling their cattle. “We sell to barns that don’t use hot sticks, because who wants to be shocked in the rear end? Nobody I know.”

Lisa explained that the combined forces of large corporations and the U.S. government make it hard to survive as an independent farmer today. “[Family farmers] are gettin’ pushed out.

It’s very distressing to me because it’s the government. The government is putting in so many regulations, and…we don’t feel it as much here in the south, but you’ve got to keep in mind – if we were out in the Midwest…where there’s a lot of the big corporate farms – we probably couldn’t operate out there. We would just kind of be pushed out.”

Farming also requires a unique level of dedication and commitment. “You can’t just go on a three-week vacation. Who is going to take care of the animals? ... The reality is nobody wants to be tied to all of that responsibility. I think that’s another reason why the independent farmer is going away. It takes a lot to make money...but I also think people don’t want the hassle. It’s a lot of work.”

The problem is that independent farms can’t produce nearly enough to feed everyone who wants to eat meat. North Americans may well have to reduce our consumption of meat if we are to start taking these questions of our health and environment seriously. “The most current data even quantifies the role of diet,” writes Foer. “Omnivores contribute seven times the volume of greenhouse gases that vegans do.”

You are responsible for what you eat, and where you get your food. It’s abundantly clear that being concerned with the environment and consuming meat don’t exactly compliment each other. Not that meat is inherently evil – just don’t reprimand those who drive Hummers whilst shoving cheeseburgers down your gullet.

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

13

14The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

Grace Brooks

The Food Issue

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15

Olivia Messer | The McGill Daily

Systems of support McGill provides a network of help for a spectrum of eating disorders Olivia Messer

The McGill Daily

A

ccording to the website of McGill’s Eating Disorder Program, statistics have indicated that university life may be “a prime breeding ground for eating disorders.” According to a Princeton University study, “scientists found that among patients with life-long eating disorder problems, 53 per cent say that their disorders first emerged during college.”

It appears that disordered eating, even if not a full-fledged diagnosable eating disorder, is a strikingly common phenomenon in university. In order to raise awareness about the nature of eating pathologies, the Eating Disorder Program, part of Mental Health Services, is hosting events at McGill until February 11 as part of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

Randi Fogelbaum, director and coordinator of the program, explained some of these statistics.

“It’s a huge adaptation to move from your parents house to university, to have to be responsible for yourself, have to be independent... there’s so much change that there is a higher rate of eating disorders among university students.”

Even though they’re quite common, eating disorders come in a variety of forms. The most widely publicized are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder.

According to the department of Family and Consumer Sciences at Ohio State University, the symptoms of anorexia nervosa include the refusal to maintain weight “at or above a minimally normal weight for height and age,” severe fear of weight gain, distorted body image, and “in females, loss of three consecutive menstrual periods and decreased interest in sexual desire.”

Bulimia nervosa, meanwhile, is characterized by a wider variety of types of binging and purging. These behaviours include everything from vomiting to excessive exercise.

Binge eating disorder involves eating more often and in greater speed and quantity than is healthy.

One of the lesser publicized, but most commonly-diagnosed eating disorders at McGill, Fogelbaum noted, is classified as “eating disorder not otherwise specified.” This diagnosis arose to fill a gap left by the descriptions of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. “Sometimes people have a lot of the criteria of either anorexia or bulimia but can’t be diagnosed with one or the other specifically.”

Body image may be just one of the contributing factors to the development of eating disorders, but it’s certainly the most well known. There have been and continue to be several initiatives to unveil the current mass cultural tendency toward perfection, including the 2008 film America the Beautiful, which will be screened today at New Rez. More recently, similar research

has been conducted on the Western obsession with weight and body image. A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found thinner women get paid far more than either “average-size” or heavier women.

Researchers Timothy Judge and Daniel Cable believe, according to the Washington Post, “that much of the problem is the result of subconscious decisions based on entrenched social stereotypes.”

The study cited that this discrepancy earned thinner women “about $16,000 more a year, on average.”

In any case, Fogelbaum asserted that, “Usually, there’s an interaction between genetics, your personality type, and then environmental factors. It’s not just about the body image.”

Luckily for McGill students, the resources offered at McGill are unlike any other university in Canada, according to Fogelbaum.

“Our program here is the only one in Canada like this...I researched about 60 universities across Canada, and [this] is the only program for eating disorders specifically with a full multidisciplinary treatment team and groups.”

McGill’s Eating Disorder Program website outlines the various services offered, including multidisciplinary assessments (where you meet with a psychiatrist, nurse, and dietician, and when you can receive personalized feedback and treatment plans), individual psychotherapy, nutritional counselling, and medi-

cal follow-ups. There are also several types of support groups, from psycho-educational groups to meal support.

Unfortunately, Fogelbaum explained, “the nature of eating disorders is very secretive because there’s a lot of shame around it, so often people don’t want others to know that they’re suffering from it.”

“By the time somebody comes to seek help, its usually been the domino effect,” she said, meaning patients feel treatment is the only remaining option. However, she also emphasized that willingly seeking treatment is crucial part to the recovery process.

According to Fogelbaum, the program’s office receives many calls from concerned friends and family, but this in itself is not enough to initiate treatment. Patients “need to want the help in order to take the help.” The best thing anyone can do who knows someone with a potential eating disorder is “to be honest…to be caring.”

Though statistics point toward most eating disorders developing in university, she explained that this isn’t necessarily all bad.

“The positive thing is that because there are so many transitions, [university is] also a really good time to get treatment for your eating disorder and it’s a really good time for students to be able to create change and be able to succeed with treatment.” It seems that with a program centred on awareness and multidisciplinary treatment, this is especially true at McGill.

“Usually, there’s an interaction between genetics, your personality type, and then environmental factors. It’s not just about the body image.”

Randi Fogelbaum Director and coordinator, McGill Eating Disorder Program

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The Food Issue

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17

Balancing mind, body, and diet The added dietary challenges McGill Varsity Athletes face in their student-athlete lifestyle Jessica Lukawiecki The McGill Daily

T

here’s no doubt that maintaining a healthy diet while immersed in the realities of student life can prove challenging for the ordinary student. But what does this challenge mean for students who also have the added commitment of being on a varsity sports team? With an extra twenty hours of practice per week, how do students whose bodies have greater nutritional demands than their peers meet all their dietary needs?

Partying, schoolwork, class, athletics – balancing all the components of a student-athlete lifestyle soon becomes second nature to members of varsity sports teams. Most teams offer some level of support and education in regards to what kind of diet athletes should maintain. Gabriel Aubry, a McGill student who’s played for the Redmen football team for three years, explained in an interview with The Daily how every year his coaches remind his team of what and what not to eat through training programs that offer healthy lifestyle advice and meal suggestions. “We are always reminded by our coaches to eat properly, because if we don’t, we’re the ones who are going to suffer from it,” said Aubry. Isabel Pett, who has been a member of the varsity track and field team for two years, echoed Aubry in an email, writing that coaches are always available for questions and generally have a

Nicole Stradiotto for The McGill Daily

wealth of nutritional information: “The coaches are full of information for those who need help fixing their diet, and they want us to EAT, not starve. None of that Atkins, no carb B.S.” Yet, just because these support systems exist, does not mean that they are easy or even realistic for students to follow. Simone Sinclair Walker, a first year student who joined the women’s synchronized swim-

ming team, is currently experiencing the difficulties of living in residence while trying to maintain her vegetarian, nutrition-conscious diet. The limited selection of vegetarian protein options in the New Residence cafeteria has forced her to reluctantly start consuming meat this year, in order to get the protein her body needs.

Her coaches will often consult team members on what meals to consume the night before sporting events, but

for her this often isn’t an option. “It’s not like I can just go to the cafeteria the night before an event and ask them to prepare spaghetti and meatballs, just because I have an event the next day,” she told The Daily.

Sinclair Walker’s diet is further hindered by the fact that her residence cafeteria only opens at 10:30 a.m. on weekends, while her practices often begin much earlier.

Being in first year, she generally

relies on her meal card to pay for food, which isn’t accepted at the Athletic Centre cafeteria. Walker’s inability to purchase food before practice unless she spends her own money at the Athletic Centre poses great difficulties when trying to consume a healthy breakfast before morning workouts.

More debates surrounding the Athletics Centre cafeteria exist.

As a site where athletes often stop to have pre- and post-workout meals, one might assume it would be filled with nutrient rich foods, but this often isn’t the case. Helen Magdalinos, assistant coach of the women’s basketball team, wrote in an email that the lack of healthy options at the cafeteria presents an added burden to athletes who already have a very busy schedule.

“Unfortunately I do not feel that the cafeteria provides healthy options nor a considerable variety of a healthy balanced menu” she wrote.

“Often times the team has to pack their own meals from home due to this.”

The lifestyle challenges of students are often overlooked, but there is no doubt that certain students may face more challenges than others. For student athletes, the added burden of balancing dietary needs on a tight schedule makes for an extremely difficult juggling act – combining books, class, partying, eating healthily, working out – and this should be given the full credit and assistance it deserves.

Challah with chutzpah Trek into the high north past St. Viateur to find the best of Jewish baking Brendan Lewis Culture Writer

F

rom the Outremont metro stop down through the historic Mile End neighbourhood, the Hasidic community has imparted a distinct cultural flavour – a flavour exemplified by one of the most deep-seated Jewish institution: the bakery.

Jewish bakeries have a certain nostalgic flare. Unadorned, yet inviting, they call to you with the unassuming, unpretentious, and enticing taglines of old-style quality. Even if it’s your first time, you’ll delight in walking in and seeing all the “old favourites” – rugelach, onion rolls, challah, black and white cookies, kugel, knishes, and (of course) bagels.

Despite their strong ties to Montreal’s Jewish population, Jewish-owned bakeries nonetheless appeal to an increasingly diverse clientele. Daniel Klein, owner and operator of Kosher Quality Bakery, Ltd., said, “Put it this way, Jewish

baking is different from non-Jewish baking. First of all...kosher baking, we don’t use milk in our products.

So some people [who] are allergic to milk, will only buy kosher. Some people, like Muslims, who don’t eat pork, then they’ll buy kosher as opposed to not kosher.”

Nor is he alone in attracting an often non-Jewish clientele. Kevin Hart, director of operations at Homemade Kosher Bakery, noted that, “Our selling point is that you get the best of both worlds: we can sell to a Jew or a non-Jew.” Yet what explains the interest in kosher baking among those who do not adhere to kashrut? A walk through the Kosher Quality’s adjoining deli, as Klein revealed, holds much of the answer. Picking up household names like Clover Leaf tuna, French’s mustard, and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, he said, “If you look around today, almost everything…has a kosher sign [on the packaging]. It just goes to show you that people [are] realizing that kosher is not to be thrown around, it’s a market. It’s a viable market.”

Though its market presence has clearly expanded, Jewish baking still plays a pivotal role in Montreal’s Jewish culture. Both Hart and Klein attested that business spikes substantially when Friday rolls around and preparations for Shabbat – the Jewish Sabbath – begin. Jewish families come looking for traditional Shabbat foods, like challah, gefilte fish, and kugel. And, Klein added, “They all know me. I mean, Kosher Quality has been around for at least forty years, so people know.”

In many ways, however, the nature of kosher baking has changed to accommodate the mechanization and industrialization of the food industry in general. As stores like Provigo, Walmart, and Target wage war for ever-cheaper food prices, smaller stores – of which Jewish bakeries are but one example – are forced to adapt. If they want to retain their market presence, they have to carve out a more distinct niche than their superstore counterparts.

The spread of chain grocery stores has actually been a boon to

businesses such as Hart’s, which encompasses more than just retail.

By selling his products on supermarket shelves, he said, “The chains have helped with exposure.” Of course this necessitates a somewhat different economic model, namely, that of a commercial bakery. Indeed, chain stores aside, institutional vendors (including hospitals, restaurants, hotels, and even McGill) comprise much of the rest of Homemade Kosher’s business.

With far fewer than Homemade Kosher’s 75 employees, it’s plain that Kosher Quality takes a different approach. “I can’t compete with Provigo,” said Klein, “they have good prices…they have a bigger market share; they can do it. Second of all, people they buy [at the supermarkets] the fruits, and vegetables which I can’t carry; I have no space for it. Besides that, they have loss leaders: so, some things they’re giving away for cheap cheap cheap – dirt cheap…I can’t compete in that.

So, I have my niche, and people can find here almost everything, but not everything.”

Klein’s more retail-oriented business model may afford more of a human element in its food preparation, but it too bears witness to the mechanization of food in Canada today. Though he produces approximately 35 per cent of his total inventory of baked goods on his premises, market conditions don’t allow for much more.

“Today, it’s too labour-intensive for that,” says Klein, who buys much of his stock from elsewhere. “It’s the larger wholesalers. If I sell for two dollars a loaf of bread, and they all sell for a dollar fifty… to make it myself, it just doesn’t pay. Those days are gone.”

It’s all a function of trying to stay alive in a fast-paced society.

Stalwarts of an age gone by, these bakeries nonetheless continue the traditions of Jewish baking into the modern day, and against all odds have succeeded in staying relevant.

Drop into Homemade Kosher Bakery at 6915 Querbes. Find Kosher Quality Bakery at 5855 Victoria.

18The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

Deconstructing Canada’s food systems Radio show host Jon Steinman discusses the practicalities of coperative food production Tamkinat Mirza Culture Writer

W

ith supermarket shelves being taken over by possibly misleading organic food labels, it is increasingly difficult to know precisely where the food we consume comes from, its nutritional value, and its producers’ farming practices. This knowledge gap can be frustrating, especially when big businesses target the average consumer, to profit from their ignorance and willingness to pay more for “healthier” options.

Deconstructing Dinner and McGill’s Food Sustainability Strategy event last Monday tackled this very issue. The event featured a talk by Jon Steinman, host of Deconstructing Dinner – a radio show focused on revealing the insecurity of the current Canadian food system. Laura Rhodes, the newly appointed Food System Administrator at McGill, went on to introduce the University’s sustainability strategy.

In his talk, Steinman traced the changing definition of food security, from a region’s ability to have access to food at all times, to continual access to “nutritious, safe, personally-appropriate, culturally-acceptable food – produced and procured in ways that are socially and environmentally responsible.” From this angle, Canadian food systems can be viewed as fundamentally insecure – a realization that had led to initiatives which work toward changing the food system in order to achieve food security.

The town of Nelson, BC exemplifies this commitment through its food co-op, which features a

community-owned grocery store that maintains a local buying ethic.

Nelson-ite farmers and consumers develop closer inter-relationships through such an initiative, and consumers are made aware of the lifehistories of all their meals. Also, farmers are guaranteed a market for their produce. With the community integrated into the food system, costs which would normally be incurred by the farmer are subsidized – with the consumer becoming an active participant, not just a receiver.

In addition, the Nelson co-op revives the oft-forgotten social and cultural importance of food through harvest celebrations. A Regional Food Council, which Steinman hopes to create, would serve as a common voice for separate initiatives, a forum to reinforce the personal nature of the collective. “It would exist like a networking group ...a networking tool for everyone to interact regularly,” Steinman said.

Is this approach practical on a large-scale, or only in smaller communities like Nelson? Large-scale industries have monopolized the food market, removing any opportunity for independent farmers to sell their products in urban settings. But collectives offer a different approach through the decisions of an entire community. “Collectives are their own little economies. There isn’t anything that can get in the way of that from the industrial food systems. It can happen on any scale. Groups in Montreal or Toronto can engage in the same model and develop personal relations,” Steinman said.

That’s where the McGill Food Systems Project comes in. It incorporates some of the elements

Jon Steinman speaks at the “Deconstructing Dinner” talk on January 31. found in Nelson’s co-op, such as providing independent producers with a guaranteed market, increasing nutritional awareness, and providing a platform for interaction between producers and students. McGill Food and Dining Services holds regularly scheduled local and global food days in campus cafeterias, and is introducing labels to demarcate local and organic foods. “We are inviting suppliers into the dining halls to talk to the students in residences, who are learning more about local food and what is available in Montreal and Quebec,” Rhodes announced.

Blair Elliott | The McGill Daily

corporate level, when there is a need to start small and use that as a model, as seen at McGill,” he said.

There seem to be only positive things to be said for the sustainability strategy. Many students will be satisfied knowing where their meals are coming from, and that the option to lessen their ecological footprint now exists more concretely. If not, the McGill Food Systems Project welcomes suggestions for further measures through direct communication with the department and also through their annual survey.

The department’s sustainability strategy will also focus on applied student research and sustainable purchasing and operations. “The objective of these actions is to transition our food supply to more sustainable and local sources,” Rhodes said. “We want to build a capacity to meaningfully assess what is or isn’t sustainable food. Our role is to communicate in the sense of building capacity to make sustainable choices.”

Steinman agreed with the addition. “McGill has the opportunity of starting small. One of the problems seen with a lot of food initiatives is trying to start from the top and fix everything at the government and

See mfsp.wordpress.com for more details.

in portions that can really only be described as morsels, offering a taster of different styles in a manner too restrained for my appetite.

But before I had Indian food in Montreal, I tried it in India, when I accompanied my father on a work trip. Despite only staying and eating in hotels – the neuroses of my father coupled with a hotel bill covered by a host conference meant I had to shy away from street food – the experience was vastly different.

Instead of thick, creamy sauces with huge chunks of meat, sauces were thinner and more flavourful – the spices fresher, more exactingly prepared. One evening, in Bangalore, I escaped a dinner-table discussion on the subsidiarity of law and the obligation to obey, and found a law student who gave me a panipuri from a stall within the hotel’s gardens. The stall owner poked a hole in a ball of dough with a thumb stained by years of handling spices, and loaded the cavernous inside with water, tamarind, chili, the spice mix chaat masala, potato, onion, and chick-

peas. Without exaggeration, it was the tastiest thing I have tried in my life – that indescribable balance of flavours is something that has been lost in the commercial Indian food options in the U.K., which have learned to cater to milder British taste buds.

Food is making the world smaller.

When people move between countries, they take with them the most personal and necessary thing: how to eat. This is so wrapped up in culture, upbringing, and a sense of home that it is hard to shake off the traditions of your nationality’s cuisine.

But the influence of host countries on imported traditions is unavoidable. Far from being detrimental to food, this phenomenon has resulted in a wider variety. Each country does another country’s cuisine differently, and you’d be surprised where the real gems are found – Italian food in Malaysia is far closer to the original than Guido Angelina’s. Basically, if you’re at all interested in culinary evolution, just try out everything, everywhere.

The proof is in the paneer How immigration and host countries affect the development of cuisine Naomi Endicott

The McGill Daily

T

he incorporation of traditional recipes into the mainstream of a foreign country results in a distinct and tasty evolution, as each cuisine shapes the other. Despite my hometown being one of the less ethnically diverse in England, Indian cuisine dominated not only the food scene, but the culinary variety of my childhood. Friends would give out homemade mithai at Diwali, the smell of chicken korma (or a certain interpretation thereof) would waft through school corridors, and Saturday nights in front of the television were characterized by heaping plates of curry, sauces mixing together, encouraged by peshwari naan overloaded with sugar and almond paste.

Whenever immigrants arrive in a new country, the most tangible thing they bring is their home cuisine. Since India and Pakistan

gained independence in 1947, immigrants have been coming to the U.K. in a steady flow. This peaked between 1965 and 1972, meaning that many Indians currently living in the UK are second- or thirdgeneration. Indian cuisine has been such a strong presence for so long that it is now a recognized and fundamental element of British food. (I should mention now that although I’m using the term “Indian food” – as is the habit throughout Britain – this umbrella term really includes a wide array of influences and dishes from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the entire Indian subcontinent.)

This is evident in every supermarket freezer aisle and argument over where to get takeout. I searched for “curry” on the website of supermarket giant Sainsbury’s and got 160 results. I was struck by the apparently endless amount of ways to interpret “curry” – I was offered a tin of Heinz curry beans with sultanas.

But perhaps a more salient example of adaptation is tikka masala – the U.K.’s most popular restaurant dish,

so widely interpreted that no one knows the particulars of the original recipe. That is, if there ever was an original recipe – speculations of its origin range from the Indian region of Punjab to Glasgow, to seventies Soho, London. The only common ingredient in its countless variations appears to be chicken: I have had dry, saucy, spicy, mild, yoghurtey, and tomatoey versions. But I suppose, with a name as vague as “mixture of spices,” this is understandable.

The Indian dishes most popular in the U.K. pretty much all come from the north-eastern state of Uttar Pradesh, which is responsible for favourites such as samosas, palak paneer, korma, and raita. But coming to Montreal, I met more unfamiliar territory. Indian food here consists of Parc Ex and samosa sales – and both outlets are very different from what I was used to. Samosas here cater to the North American craving for deep frying. Restaurants themselves are ruled by thali: a mix plate of a couple different dishes,

The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

19

Catering to all With wide-reaching distribution, Montreal food banks do it differently Emma Fiske-Dobell Culture Writer

M

ontreal’s food banks play a crucial role in helping a diverse group of people feed themselves. MultiCaf and the NDG Food Depot are two such spaces, both providing aid in various forms to people residing in their respective neighborhoods.

MultiCaf, a food resource that services residents of Côte-desNeiges and several surrounding neighbourhoods, runs multiple programs aimed at feeding a variety of people. MultiCaf runs a food bank, a community centre, a Meals on Wheels program, and a low-priced cafeteria, all of which operate out of a single building on Appleton Avenue. The cafeteria serves a free breakfast and charges $1.50 for lunch. Frequent visitors can purchase a $25 card for twenty lunches. The cafeteria serves 260 meals per day, five days a week. However, for many, MultiCaf is more than just a food resource. Visitors often come for the free breakfast, stay for lunch and to socialize in the cafeteria, and use other resources that the centre provides, including a computer room.

While some food banks require their visitors to provide proof of income, proof of residence is the only qualification for visitors acquiring food from the NDG Food Depot or MultiCaf. Katy Cavanaugh, the administrative assistant at MultiCaf, pointed out that certain factors that may be used to judge eligibility, such as whether a person is employed, are often an improper indicator of need. “It’s hard to judge, because

what if you have a couple, both working minimum wage, living in an $800 a month apartment with three kids, and they can’t make ends meet? I mean, they’re working,” she said.

One MultiCaf visitor, who chose to remain anonymous, has been using the food bank and cafeteria services for the past two years. Without enough money to pay bills for dental surgery following a car accident, she was forced to begin visiting MultiCaf. She admitted that she never expected to become a food bank visitor, having earned her undergraduate degree at Concordia and spent years working for a lawyer. “I would never have thought when I was making my fancy salary a few years ago that I would need a place like this, but I do,” she said.

Another MultiCaf visitor, Merle Reisler, has been coming to the centre for the past 30 years. “I’m the founding mother of MultiCaf,” she said. “I like the whole concept. I wish there were more of them, but there aren’t.”

The MultiCaf food bank distributes food baskets three days a week. Visitors receive several bags of goods: bread, fruit and vegetables, canned goods, and dry goods.

In addition to food items, MultiCaf distributes bags containing household necessities such as toilet paper.

Seven hundred families visit the food bank a month, and the size of a food basket depends on the number of people in the household.

Visitors to the food bank do not fit any single profile, and include recent immigrants, people living on minimum wage, students on loans or bursaries, and retirees whose pensions do not cover the cost of food and other necessities. They also include a wide range of ages. In

Katherine Raven is a volunteer at the NDG Food Depot fact, a third of the people benefitting from MultiCaf food baskets are under the age of 18. “It’s a mix of homeless, temporarily low income and permanently low income,” said Cavanaugh. “We see people with doctorates that come here.”

The NDG Food Depot also provides varying levels of assistance to its visitors. “For some it exists when times get tough and a little food assistance is all they need, for others it is a lifeline that has been a regular part of their lives for years,” said Mathieu Forget, the intake coordinator. Forget believes that the Depot’s commitment to providing healthy food sets it apart from other Montreal food banks. Food baskets are pre-approved by a dieti-

Ariel Fournier for The McGill Daily

cian, and are aimed at providing an adequate amount of vitamins and nutrients to the consumer.

“We make sure to have fresh produce year round, and put aside a fraction of our annual budget to ensure items such as milk, tuna fish, and eggs are included in every basket, since these items are rarely donated in sufficient quantities,” Forget said. In addition, the Depot offers food baskets specific to people with dietary restrictions and preferences, including halal, kosher, and vegan.

Both the Depot and MultiCaf reduce food waste by collecting food that would be disposed of otherwise. MultiCaf receives day-old bread from neighbourhood baker-

ies, as well as food items with superficial flaws that are often deemed unsuitable by food sellers, such as dented cans. Fruit and vegetable vendors contribute produce that is a day old but still in fine condition. MultiCaf also receives goods from large corporations such as Kraft, through the charity Moisson Montréal. Other food items come from food drives. Every day, MultiCaf staff visit local hospitals and pick up food that is left over from the previous day. This food is served at the centre’s cafeteria, and the cafeteria food that is left at the end of the week is given to visitors for free. Many visitors bring Tupperware containers and eat this food over the weekend.

Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill’s Office for Science and Society, in an article. It thus helps in developing normal growth in the body while maintaining good vision.

Food myths: fact or fiction?

The truth behind popular perceptions of nutrition Victoria Alarcon

Excalibur (York University)

T

ORONTO (CUP) — When it comes to staying healthy, it’s no surprise that people will believe just about anything to stay in good health. Whether it’s drinking green tea every day or eating chicken soup every hour, the consensus has always been better safe than sorry.

But who’s to say that every single thing we hear is true? Here are some of the most popular myths around, and the truth behind them.

Fact: Chocolate can give you acne The tasty treat is known for coming in different shapes and sizes, and is one of the most popular

sweets around, but the probability of getting acne from eating chocolate is very high.

“Some people have allergies or are sensitive to some of the components in chocolate, so that may trigger acne,” said Rolando Ceddia, a health professor at York University. Ceddia cautions people eating the treat, saying that though researchers have yet to find a reason as to why chocolate triggers acne, there is a clear association between the two.

entific evidence goes, according to Ceddia, it’s untrue.

“The reason they say it’s good is because there is vitamin C in it.

Some people say it prevents flu or infections, but there are a lot of studies who look at people who drink it and there is no difference,” said Ceddia.

Though vitamin C has been shown to reduce the duration and severity of flu symptoms, the added sugar in many brand of orange juice hinders any kind of repellent effect.

ers, and if there is any food out there that is grown without those chemicals, then it is indeed the healthier choice.

People have chosen to go with non-organic simply because it is cheaper to buy, but at the end of the day, organic food is a lot healthier than the regular kind, says Ceddia.

“They put so many chemicals on [crops] to make it look bigger and nicer, but it is not better,” he explained.

Fiction: orange juice prevents the flu

Fact: organic food is better for you

The drink is enriched with vitamin C – which boosts your immune system – and calcium, but it’s not the key to any secret antidote for the flu.

The theory has been that the more you drink, the more likely you are to stay healthy, but as far as sci-

When comparing organic and non-organic foods, one would find that organic tends to be the healthier option, explained Ceddia.

According to Ceddia, a fair amount of chemicals and pesticides go into the crops of farm-

Carrots are a great source of vitamin A, an important component of having not only healthy skin, but also healthy vision.

The orange vegetable contains beta-carotene, which changes into vitamin A after it is swallowed and digested by the body, says

Fact: Carrots are good for vision

Fiction: Eating chicken noodle soup is the best way to fight a cold Parents and grandparents have said it: the best way to fight the cold is by eating chicken noodle soup.

Right now, though, there is no evidence to support this, says Ceddia.

“There is one nutrient or one component that may be related to making the body healthy, but when you put it in your system, the nutrient will not achieve what it is thought to achieve,” said Ceddia.

“It’s okay to eat chicken soup because it’s nutritious, but it’s not to say that chicken noodle soup is better than having broccoli soup.”

20The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

Weighing in on health Trying to balance low weight and high performance Jenny Lu

Sports Writer

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or athletes, whose bodies are their lives, food and good nutrition are essential. This is especially true of sports, where weight and appearance are factors, as is the case with wrestling. In higher-level competitions, wrestlers are divided into pre-determined weight categories, usually two to four kilograms in range. Weigh-ins determine each wrestler’s weight prior to a meet, and the time leading up to this critical event is often used to cut weight in order to avoid being ruled ineligible for competition. Maintaining weight is a fundamental part of all wrestlers’ lives, but entering lower weight classes is widely seen as a strategic way to significantly raise your chances of winning. There are many methods for cutting weight: some are harmless and idiosyncratic – like wearing no clothing or standing on your head right before stepping on the scale – while others are widely used and more serious, like wearing rubber suits while running, working out in sauna rooms, and simply eating little to nothing. Despite their intense weight-loss regiments, wrestlers maintain extremely high levels of activity, especially during competition season. If we examine other world-class athletes – like Michael Phelps who allegedly eats 12,000 calories a day – and compare them to wrestlers trying to make weight by eating only a few thousand calories a day, the question arises: is this healthy?

Everything we eat goes through a series of chemical reactions and, depending on what is lacking or in excess, our body’s metabolic pathways are constantly changing.

When we need energy, the first

thing to be metabolized are carbohydrates, starting with simple ones, like sugar, and ending with more complex ones, like starch and fat. Carbohydrates are the main source of energy for our bodies.

Simple carbohydrates are metabolized very quickly and only provide energy for a short amount of time.

Complex one’s are metabolized more slowly and provide energy for much longer periods of time.

This is why athletes like marathon runners, will eat a huge amount of complex carbohydrates for long lasting energy. If our bodies have insufficient amounts of carbohydrates, they will start to metabolize their own proteins, essentially eating themselves. This is what happens during starvation and, given enough time, will lead to death.

Bodies are extremely complex.

Proteins, fats, glucose – all the molecules within the major metabolic pathways can all be interconverted. If too much sugar is consumed it will be converted into fat.

This is why many fat-free diets do not succeed, because without the long-lasting energy fat provides, dieters eat an excess of other carbohydrates, like sugar, which are then converted into fat. Similarly, all-protein diets create an excess of protein, which also ultimately ends up as fat. Basically, what you eat is less important than how much you eat, and counting calories is the most popular way of restricting how much is eaten.

Still, losing weight is a process more complex than counting calories. Muscle is much denser than fat; so if a fat cell shrinks and the muscle cells grow the same amount, overall weight will actually increase.

For athletes who already have extremely low body fat, however, losing weight usually means losing muscle mass. Losing muscle

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means lowered performance, and finding the balance between weight loss and sports performance is very tricky.

“When people are restricting calories they don’t fully recover in time for their event or competition,” said Ross Andersen, professor of Kinesiology and Physical Education at McGill. “Would they be better fighting up a weight class and not having to reduce their calories? Probably.”

He also stresses the importance of psychological health.

“A lot of times, athletes who are severely restricting calories will eat pure protein to pee a lot and shed weight quickly. And we know that when they do that they feel cranky, they don’t feel good. But, psychologically, part of what we want to do, especially with elite athletes, is have them coming into a competition … raring to go. But when a wrestler has had to lose five pounds in a few days they don’t feel like that.”

In addition to counting calories, wrestlers – and other athletes trying to lose weight – frequently try to lower the amount of water in their bodies. Some benign suggestions include chewing gum and spitting a lot. But many athletes do this by exercising in plastic

Kierra Young for The McGill Daily

suits, or in other environments that will cause them to sweat more. Wrestlers like Rory Ewing, U3 Mechanical Engineering, recognize the dangers of this, but concede that sometimes drastic measures are necessary. “It’s bad for you and it’s really hard on your body,” said Ewing, “But it is a way to lose those last couple of pounds.”

Both Andersen and Ewing, however, stress the importance of maintaining health throughout the year and not just before weigh-ins. “I would focus more on overall health and weight management,” said Andersen. “For athletes in the combative sports, trying to make weight classes – trying to find a weight at which they are fairly lean but can manage – will help them perform better in the long run.”

Ewing agreed, explaining how he and other athletes who are more deeply invested will maintain their weight throughout the year, so that come competition time, they can cut weight without taking drastic measures. “There is a right and wrong way to do it,” said Ewing.

“Sacrifice doesn’t necessarily yield good performance. If you do it the wrong way you can give a whole bunch but not get any back.”

Both agree on the importance of being well informed. Andersen suggested working with dieticians, nutritionists, and coaches to come up with a plan.

“If I knew someone who was going to get into it I would say do your homework,” said Ewing. “It will be more effective and less damaging to your body.”

Despite health ramifications, wrestlers acknowledge that this sacrifice is part of the game. “As with any combat sport, performance does not just concern being sleep deprived, food deprived, water deprived.

It’s not just that,” said Ewing. “It’s that wrestling is not a comfortable sport. Six minutes may not seem like a long time when you’re sitting on the bench but it is six minutes of the hardest effort you’ve ever put in.

And it’s those last couple minutes, seconds even, that will determine whether or not you win the match.”

Although it is undeniable that cutting weight is not the healthiest thing for your body, it is an inextricable part of wrestling, as well as other sports. We must also keep in mind that those involved are not necessarily in it for the health benefits. All athletes get hurt, and almost every sport has some kind of health risk. However, athletes are there for the love of the game – and there are definitely benefits to doing something you love.

The Food Issue

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

21

Food gets fame-hungry TVMcGill’s food programming offers helpful advice, while keeping students entertained Nicole Leonard Culture Writer

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TV. TSN. MTV. Food. One apparently simple subject, worthy of its own television network amongst the giants.

It makes sense then, that McGill’s own television channel, TV McGill, would address gastronomy’s overwhelming significance in viewers’ lives. Food’s daily influence may in fact be felt by students more strongly than others. Once McGillians graduate from mom’s cooking and residence cafeterias and begin to live on their own, food becomes a more complex issue than ever before. It involves planning, recipes, shopping, and dirty dishes. The great caveat, however, is that this need provides unique opportunities to approach cooking and consumption with the entertaining, original approach that TVMcGill espouses.

In addition to providing news coverage of on-campus food issues – such as last semester’s report on student organization Campus Crops – the network features its own varied food-related programming. “Food is obviously an integral element of students’ lives, which is why we created ‘The Hot Plate.” ‘Cooking While Drunk’ is more entertainment-based, and involves voluntary groups of students getting together,” said TVMcGill’s executive producer Dan Beresh.

The most successful of these shows is “The Hot Plate,” a cooking segment created by 2010 McGill

Houda Chergui for The McGill Daily

graduates April Engelberg and Amanda Garbutt that profiles simple, cost-effective recipes for appetizers, entrees, and desserts. The show addresses students’ hunger for painless cooking instruction, while simultaneously meeting TVMcGill’s goal to include and entertain the McGill community at large. Their show was so successful that it was featured on CTV and bred its own website, thehotplate.net. The young women continue production postgraduation in Toronto.

Beresh summed up the conception behind the network’s foodrelated programming: “the idea was, let’s have fun with the cooking.

If we can teach people along the way then that’s great too, but the

idea is to involve the student community and have a good time.” He stressed the importance of keeping food programming fun, lighthearted, and inclusive, since it is a matter that everyone can positively relate to. “Cooking is often solitary, so I think [our food programming] works on bringing people together around the idea of food and its success – or failure, in the ‘Cooking While Drunk’ case. A lot of times it is not about success, but about the degree of failure.”

While we treasure the qualities that TVMcGill boasts – innovation, student collaboration, and entertainment – the disparity between its coverage and that of mainstream cooking programs is evident, mani-

fested in the infrequency of the shows. Unlike corporate networks, TVMcGill lacks big budgets, intricate lighting, and stage kitchens.

This makes it difficult to keep up food-related programming, as does its reliance on the willingness of active student volunteers and the availability of their apartments for filming. Accordingly, the shows are not produced on a regular schedule, which results in a lower quantity of segments. As Beresh pointed out, “A food-related program requires a lot of specialty stuff in regards to recording techniques, so it’s very difficult to produce shows on the regular.”

The graduation of Engelberg and Garbutt last year meant the end

of “The Hot Plate” on TVMcGill – a sign that other students will need to get involved and fill the void in campus cuisine cable if this type of programming is to continue.

The student-run TVMcGill approach to food and cooking encompasses the McGill way of life and draws us into to various cramped Montreal kitchens, with recognizable hosts as well as various guest-starring students. It showcases one thing that we universally love and value tremendously: good eats. Check out TVMcGill’s archives online at tvmcgill.com for some tasty recipes and hilarious entertainment, and lookout for, or better yet help create, what is coming up next.

scorned culinary goddesses like Ina Garten for taking too much of an interest in food. “Food is for energy,” she’d say, crossing her bony arms as we watched Garten waddle a tray of butter-cream cupcakes to her husband. “I eat to survive.”

Married, wealthy, and a stellar hostess, Garten represented an ideal of femininity that for my mother had turned the banal activity of cooking into a desperate personal drama. By breezily cooking five-course meals for her husband on television, Garten made the ability to cook and stay married seem contingent. She embodied that repressive old wives’ tale that said the way to man’s a heart was through his stomach. My mother protested this idea by hating her.

When my father re-married in 2004, his wife kept a kitchen that was permanently stocked with homemade casseroles and pies. I was convinced my mother would run over to their house and kick in

the oven. Pretty, round, and a great cook, my stepmom was everything my mother had learned to despise.

But perhaps from the realization that her marriage was effectively over, a sort of maturity dawned on my mother. Taking a bite of her own bitter and under-cooked pad thai one day, my mother burst out into laughter. “This is fucking terrible,” she said, and threw her hands up in the air.

Today, watching my mother in the kitchen is still entertaining, although not in the way that adjective would be applied to Garten.

She still obsesses over which combination of ingredients to use, and warns us that her meals are going to be too spicy or too dry. The difference in her behaviour is subtle: she shrugs her shoulders when she misses a step in a recipe or when something gets burnt.

But she’s more at ease with herself and with her kitchen. What’s more, she’s even come to like Ina Garten.

Domestic domination One woman’s conflict with the kitchen, kids, and Ina Garten Sarah Mortimer

The McGill Daily

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ost of my life, my mother has been of the mindset that one shouldn’t fuss over food. She grew up on an abysmally flavourless diet of grey meats, spongey potatoes, and runny greens, and quickly developed the conviction that food ought to be thought of strictly as fuel, never as an art or pleasure.

Her mother, a wino and a depressive, embodied the pressures that perpetually weighed upon the midcentury housewife. Married at 19, she was an abominable cook and housekeeper, and eventually dulled the shame of her domestic failure by taking generously to the bottle.

In marrying my father, my mother took these sore lessons of her childhood with her. She committed to being uncommitted to the domestic kitchen, and for a number of years, served Oreos for dessert with pride.

During the 15 years that my mother and father were married, the kitchen never played more than a minor role in our family lives. Both of my parents worked, and so when the question of what to have for dinner arose, the answer was always what was quick and easy. Day in, day out, we alternated between potatoes, meat cutlets, some variation of vegetable, and large plates of spaghetti.

Occasionally, my mother would bake a cake – borrowing the recipe from Betty Crocker – and no one would notice when she glued its broken pieces back together with icing. In those times, the kitchen was a simple, no frills place, where my mother could find peace when she sought it.

When my parents divorced in 1999, something about my mother’s relationship to food and the kitchen changed. As a single working mom she had even less time to prepare meals for her children, and was forced to turn to

frozen dishes and take-out more frequently to fill our bellies. On weekends, she responded to the guilt of not being able to prepare a week’s worth of home-cooked meals for her children (though meat dishes and spaghetti still remained), by feverishly cooking and collecting recipes. Books like The Joy of Cooking and Canadian Living were suddenly piled on our countertop flagged with colourful post-its; baked goods (always dry or undercooked) made their way into my lunch boxes; and runny eggs Benedict and roast dinners found their way into our Sunday routine.

Conflating the failure of her marriage with her failure to reproduce an archaic ideal of womanhood, cooking became both an obsession and a source of repulsion for my mother. While at dinnertime she fussed over what to make, agonizing over whether the final product was “too salty” or “too dry,” she simultaneously

Compendium!

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

Lies, half-truths, and fair and balanced journalism

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Newscorp buys The McGill Daily iPad-exclusive paper now on par with “fair and balanced” FOX News Geraldine Finch | The McGill Daily

Stefan Goulet

The McGill Daily

R

upert Murdoch announced that he was buying The McGill Daily for an undisclosed sum on Wednesday after months of secret negotiations. The Daily, Murdoch revealed, is now being changed to an iPad-only digital format.

The legality of this transaction has been under scrutiny due to the fact that the previous owner was a student society. However, the McGill administration happily accepted the money on behalf of McGill students. The one stipulation was that the publication drop “McGill” from their name.

“The University has to protect its brand and the logo very vigorously so that it has true meaning, in the same way that Nike would do everything possible to protect its swoosh,” said Vice-Viceroy Mortono Fendelson in an unrelated interview.

Murdoch declined to comment, but industry analysts have applauded the move.

“Rupert Murdoch has always been a visionary media tycoon,” said Annabel Liste, Wall Street Journal business correspondent.

“He is now venturing into the two fields of media that he never conquered: digital tablet distribution and student journalism.”

The iPad market, however, is still a growing at McGill and lacks a strong presence. While part of Murdoch’s

Here’s to metal death traps

H Murdoch at last Wednesday’s press conference. plans for releasing an iPad-only digital newspaper was to tap into a global market that is expected to be close to 50 million by the end of the year, the McGill population currently has 12 iPad users.

“I’m really excited,” said Wesley Van Buren, U3 Apple Product Studies. “I really like The Daily and I’m glad I can still read it on my iPad.” When asked about now being one of the few people at McGill that has access to The Daily – a publication once read by thousands across campus – Van Buren said, “Well, I guess I’ll let people read over my shoulder in class, if they’d like.”

The Daily editorial board could not be reached for comment before this paper went to print, however it

has been speculated that they may stage a socialist uprising protest against their being sold out to an external media source.

Some analysts have speculated about potential tension between The Daily’s current editorial stance and Newscorp. Last June, Newscorp donated $1 million to the Republican Governor’s Association and has a reputation for being a right-leaning corporation. FOX News – one of Newscorp’s most infamous media outlets – is often criticized for being a platform for radical right-wing conservatives to move forward their political agenda praised for being fair and balanced with an unrivaled level of professionalism. Journalistic integrity will not be compromised.

ow fucking awesome is snow biking? It’s like sledding or skiing on a metal death trap, while those fucking drivers get all googleyeyed on you for daring to ride your fucking bike at 25 below. Not only are you positively risking your life, your slipping and sliding makes you look all badass in all those feet of fresh snow. Cutting through high snow banks with your tires just makes it oh so worth it. And when you arrive sweaty to class, people turn their heads and think to themselves: “Jesus fucking christ, that guy was biking!” Yes drivers, get the fuck out of my way, I fucking own this street.

Fuck yeah! is an anonymous rave column. Send your professions of love to fuckthis@mcgilldaily.com. Try to keep it less than 150 words please!

Mark Heinrichs for The McGill Daily

You spin me right round, baby Miss Nomer !

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Across

1. With 33-Across place to put stolen equipment?

4. One of the five senses 9. Test versions 14. Nickname indicator 15. Movie prize 16. Grammar topic 17. Calif. airport 18. Oysters or dark chocolate, maybe 20. Long stories 22. Discounted 23. Creamy rice dish 25. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Roush 26. Back muscle, familiarly 29. African antelope 31. Harsh 33. See 1-Across 36. Mail carrier’s grp.

38. Asperity 39. Interest in trying new things 42. Tempt 43. ___ weevil 44. Family chart 45. Better looking 47. Sheer fabric 49. Toronto-to-Ottawa dir.

50. Buck’s mate 52. Coastal Massachusetts medicine man?

56. Former McGillers 58. Alanis Morissette topic

59. Break-up flower?

63. Criticize, slangily 64. Lion features 65. Chip away at 66. Caught 67. Rating units 68. Spanish bulls 69. Coast Guard rank: Abbr.

Down

33. Wood shaper 34. Ancient Greek theater 35. Egg-shaped 37. Telemarketer 40. Unnecessary 41. Arm bone 46. Easy win 48. Thinks out loud 51. Irish patriot Robert 53. Artful move 54. Satirical news source, with “the” 55. Growths 56. Golden-___ 57. Roman Emperor 59. Some radios, for short 60. Confucious breakfast?

61. Biochemistry abbr.

62. Prefix with meter

1. Farm machine 2. Cousin of a giraffe 3. Where y=0 4. Cozy and warm 5. Cleopatra’s killer 6. Underwater way to get to class?

7. Mountain pool 8. Jagged, as a leaf’s edge 9. Construction workers 10. Latin 101 verb 11. Mai-___ Solution to “Active galactic nucleus” 12. Turkish title A L G A N E W S A S C O T 13. “Hold on U T A H S H A R E R O U T a ___!”

L U R E C O R E D H A S T A C T U A L I Z A T I O N 19. June honorees T H O N G O V A I M P 21. Dispute E N G I N E D R I V E R 24. Drawn tight A C E P R O N E E M S 26. French H U M E R U S R E L E A S E diet word P A S A S S G R I S T 27. Got out of bed O L D T E S T A M E N T 28. Concise T E E E E N O R B I T R O T T E N B O R O U G H 30. Cook’s wear T I E R M I L E A J U G A 32. Wine disH E R E P L O T B A L L S tributor C R E E K

E R G O

S T O A

23

The McGill Daily | Monday, February 7, 2011 | mcgilldaily.com

volume 100 number 31

editorial 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com coordinating editor

Emilio Comay del Junco coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor

Henry Gass news editors

Rana Encol Mari Galloway Erin Hudson features editor

Niko Block

commentary&compendium! editor

Courtney Graham

coordinating culture editor

Naomi Endicott culture editors

Fabien Maltais-Bayda Sarah Mortimer science+technology editor

Alyssa Favreau

health&education editor

Joseph Henry sports editor

Eric Wen

photo editor

Victor Tangermann illustrations editor

0livia Messer

production&design editors

Sheehan Moore Joan Moses copy editor

Flora Dunster web editor

Tom Acker cover design

Victor Tangermann le délit

Mai Anh Tran-Ho rec@delitfrancais.com Contributors

Shaina Agbayani, Victoria Alarcon (CUP), Queen Arsem O’Malley, Alex Briggs, Grace Brooks, Andra Cernavskis, Edna Chan, Houda Chergui, Portia Crowe, Blair Elliott, Emma Fiske-Dobell, Ariel Fournier, Jane Gatensby, Matthias Heilke, Mark Heinrichs, Adrian Kaats, Nicole Leonard, Brendan Lewis, Jenny Lu, Jessica Lukawiecki, Davide Mastracci, Tamkinat Mirza, Ian Murphy, Maya Shoukri, Ted Sprague*, Nicole Straddioto, Aaron Vansintjan, Debbie Wang, Stacey Wilson, Kierra Young *Pseudonym

The Daily is published on most Mondays and Thursdays by the Daily Publications Society, an autonomous, not-for-profit organization whose membership includes all McGill undergraduates and most graduate students.

3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-26 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6790 fax 514.398.8318

Boris Shedov Pierre Bouillon Geneviève Robert Mathieu Ménard

advertising & general manager treasury & fiscal manager ad layout & design

dps board of directors

Tom Acker, Emilio Comay del Junco, Humera Jabir, Whitney Mallett, Sana Saeed, Mai Anh Tran-Ho, Will Vanderbilt, Aaron Vansintjan (chair@dailypublications.org)

The Daily is proud to be a founding member of the Canadian University Press.

All contents © 2011 Daily Publications Society. All rights reserved. The content of this newspaper is the responsibility of The McGill Daily and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University. Products or companies advertised in this newspaper are not necessarily endorsed by Daily staff.

Printed by Imprimerie Transcontinental Transmag. Anjou, Quebec.

ISSN 1192-4608.

EDITORIAL

Zach Newburgh must resign Last September, SSMU President Zach Newburgh embarked on a partnership with the networking startup Jobbook. Over the past five months, his actions have been consistently secretive and deceptive.

He has abused his position as SSMU president, betrayed student trust, and engaged in a deep conflict of interest. He must resign now.

Newburgh held financial stake in Jobbook even as he planned for SSMU to become a partner with the company – only dropping his shares before Council on Thursday. Jobbook also paid for trips he took with its founder to England, California, and New York to lobby student leaders at prestigious universities to sign up for the employment site. The weekend trips were on personal time, but his role in promoting the company was inseparable from his position as SSMU President. On jobbook.com, launched last Wednesday, the company proclaims that it’s “entered into partnership agreements with the Presidents of the Student Unions of Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, Imperial College London, University College London, Johns Hopkins, and McGill.”

Whatever his intentions for partnering with the company, Newburgh’s actions are unacceptable. If the site’s services are as valuable as he claims, he should have presented them to Council and the other members of the SSMU executive months ago. Jobbook may or may not be valuable, but to allow Newburgh to get away with this sets a dangerous precedent. It allows for an unchecked corporatization of the university without the student body’s knowledge and without any guarantee it will be in their interests.

In the early hours of Friday morning, SSMU Council voted to censure Newburgh. This isn’t enough. If Newburgh won’t resign on his own, it’s up to us to pressure him to. Write Newburgh at pres@ssmu.mcgill.ca letting him know how you feel and write your councillors telling them to force his resignation.

Students can also take this into their own hands.

A petition of 200 student signatures can force Council to debate and vote on Newburgh’s removal. It takes a two-thirds majority of councillors for this to be effective. It’s up to students to make sure this happens – start a petition and make your voice heard now.

Toward a more open discussion This week is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, to be marked by a series of events both at McGill and across Canada devoted to recognizing a diversity of bodies, and raising awareness about the nature of eating disorders.

Eating disorders are a largely invisible and very private phenomenon on university campuses nationwide. Statistics often put forward about eating disorders don’t even begin to capture their many nuances, fail to account for men, the number of people who never seek treatment, and those who don’t realize that their behaviour could be categorized as disordered eating. There is a wide spectrum of ways in which unhealthy relationships with food may manifest themselves, far beyond the media’s popular – and obscenely sensationalized – obsession with “shockingly” skinny women. Canada’s National Eating Disorder Information Centre explains, “If the way you eat and think about food interferes with your life and keeps you from enjoying life and moving forward, then that is disordered eating.”

This problem, then, can become very isolating, because people feel ashamed, depressed, or as if they need to hide their habits. Social stigmatization of eating disorders and a focus on what the ideal body type should be has contributed to widespread ignorance of the complex nature of eating disorders.

According to McGill Mental Health, eating disorders “occur in a social and cultural environment that fosters unhealthy and often unrealistic ideas about weight and shape. Eating disorders are often coping mechanisms, used in an attempt to deal with stresses and traumas, and are often associated with underlying psychological issues.” These coping mechanisms, however, can be compulsive and harmful – people may use them as a way to control their own image, or their own lives, because they feel they do not have control in other aspects of their life. Eating disorders are not always a conscious choice.

Implicit in understanding the nature of eating disorders should be the realization that we are members of a community that can trigger some of these unhealthy relationships with food. As such, we have a responsibility to be informed about the signs, symptoms, and real mental, physical, and emotional implications of the whole range of eating disorders. This doesn’t mean that we have licence to project our concerns onto others, or to force someone to seek treatment. Treatment is in most cases, and should remain, a personal choice. That being said, it is important to recognize that if you feel that you or someone else may be struggling with an eating disorder, you should say something. This is a conversation we should be having, and an issue we should all be aware of, year round.

If you feel that you or someone you know may be struggling with an eating disorder, please don’t hesitate to check out the following resources: McGill Mental Health services are located in the Brown Building, 5th floor in the East Wing. They can be reached by phone at 514-398-1050. Or find them online at mcgill.ca/mentalhealth/edp/

SSMU Referendum Question Deadline!

Want to submit a referendum question for the Winter 2011 referendum period?

The deadline to hand in petitions is Friday, February 11 at 5pm.

Your question must be approved by Elections McGill BEFORE you begin petitioning! Drop by our office at Shatner suite 405 or email us at elections@ssmu.mcgill.ca For more information email us or check out electionsmcgill.ca

the new

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