How Income Inequality Effects What We Eat

A week or so ago I wrote a short post about income inequality and it seems to be a sticky issue. This week I was reading an article about the "food divide" when I found more evidence of how income differences are effecting us here in America.

Among the lowest quintile of American families, mean household income has held relatively steady between $10,000 and $13,000 for the past two decades; among the highest, income has jumped 20 percent to $170,800... Whole Foods—the upscale grocery chain recently reported a 58 percent increase in its quarterly profits—while the number of Americans on food stamps has surged by 58.5 percent over the last three years.

The article Divided we Eat, was in the 11/22 edition of Newsweek, and you can read it on their website. The story is quite compelling, and basically outlines how wealthier people can afford to eat better than poor people (and by better, I mean healthier).

While food prices overall rose about 25 percent, the most nutritious foods (red peppers, raw oysters, spinach, mustard greens, romaine lettuce) rose 29 percent, while the least nutritious foods (white sugar, hard candy, jelly beans, and cola) rose just 16 percent.

This is probably not a surprise, but what is a surprise is how government programs reinforce the problem. There are also some creative solutions out there that local governments are coming up with to help, like making your food stamps worth more if you use them at a farmers market. Another interesting finding is how Americans think of food versus other countries, most notably France. If you have ever been to France you know they have quite an incredible foodie culture, but did you also know they all tend to eat lunch at exactly the same time (and they see it as a time for social interaction, not a time to provide nutrition):

In surveys, (researchers) found no single time of day (or night) when Americans predictably sit together and eat. By contrast, 54 percent of the French dine at 12:30 each day. Only 9.5 percent of the French are obese.

In case you are wondering, more than 30% of Americans and 17% of American children are obese. And obesity is more prevalent among the poor than the rich. The USDA found that people on food stamps are more likely to be obese than those who are not. One of my favorite food writers, Michael Pollan puts it in succinct terms, “Essentially, we have a system where wealthy farmers feed the poor crap and poor farmers feed the wealthy high-quality food.”

So, I will leave you with the most startling paragraph in the article, and the reason I can't stop thinking about income inequality:

According to studies led by British epidemiologist Kate Pickett, obesity rates are highest in developed countries with the greatest income disparities. America is among the most obese of nations; Japan, with its relatively low income inequality, is the thinnest.

I am glad that is over

If you are a University of Texas football fan, this has been a long and painful year. The misery ended with a well fought, but mistake prone loss to in-state rival Texas A+M. This game was a microcosm of the entire season. The Longhorns gave-away four turnovers, they had stupid penalties at the worst times, and the ball never seemed to bounce their way. The coup de grace came on the final play of the game. UT got the score to within seven and forced the Aggies to punt with a few seconds left. Instead of fielding the punt, they let it drop and the referees run the clock out as the players stood around wondering what was going on.

There seemed to be a lot of people standing around wondering what was going on this year. Coach Mac Brown did not have an explanation for the Longhorns reversal of fortune, going from the national championship game to 5-7 in one year. All the players on the team were highly recruited and all the coaches who put together a 13-1 season last year were still there.

So, what happened? There is no doubt the coaches attempt to become a running team was a bust. We didn't have the offensive line for it and the receivers not only didn't do a great job of blocking, they didn't master the fundamentals of catching either. There are a lot of opinions and I don't think anyone really wants to hear mine, but I have one theory that I have not heard elsewhere. The team and coaches never seemed to be focused on the opponent of the day. After the first two losses there was talk of still winning 10 games or still winning the Big 12 South. After a few more losses all the talk was of getting bowl eligible and getting the 13 extra practices. Don't get me wrong, we needed those 13 extra practices, but I don't think a bunch of teenage kids are motivated to win by the thought of more practice. I never heard the coaches talk about what they were going to do to beat OU or A+M. The years UT has done well, there was no looking ahead. The coaches only talked about the next game, they didn't talk about 10 wins, or national championships; they talked about what they had to do to beat Iowa State, even if they were a terrible team.

To get on back on track, the coaches need to spend the next nine months thinking about how they are going to beat Rice on Sept. 3rd, 2011, not how to get back to winning 10 games a year.

Wartorn 1861-2010

Wartorn 1861-2010 documents America's battle with the mental injuries our soldiers have suffered from the Civil War, when it was called hysteria, to the current Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The official diagnosis is now Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but it was called shell shock in WWI and battle fatigue in WWII. The only consistency is how poorly the military and the US government have treated soldiers with mental injuries.

The film opens with the reading of a letter from a gung ho, young Union soldier to a friend back home, who calls the 100 or soldiers who are going home due to hysteria or melancholia, cowards. Over the course of the next couple of years, the letters from this same soldier, become more and more dark and it becomes obvious he is suffering deeply from what he has seen and done. After he is sent home, his friends are so concerned about him they won't allow him to go hunting with them. Unfortunately, they leave him alone with his gun and he takes his own life.

From here we see the pattern repeated over and over again. Parents, wives and other family members plead for help from the VA to save their returning soldiers from themselves. The stories are heartbreaking and infuriating. Executive Producer Jame Gadolfini does a great job interviewing current soldiers and the medical staff who are trying to change the protocall in the armed forces, making it easier to get help.

This is an extremely powerful film, and while it is not the feel good movie of the year, it is well worth your time.

Texas A+M vs. UT

Texas A+M is an all male college located in Bryan/College Station, Texas, which are the worst two towns in Texas put together to make one even crappier city.

They have many strange traditions at TAMU, like having a small portion of the student body dress up as World War I reenactors every day and parade around the campus waving their swords. At TAMU you are supposed to greet other students by saying "Howdy." If you don't do this, they assume you are a visitor from the University of Texas and they beat the snot out of you for not being polite. They also build a large bonfire every year before their big football game against the University of Texas. This is the one thing they know how to build, but unfortunately it frequently falls down, sometimes with lethal consequences.

Another strange tradition is that their fight song is all about beating the University of Texas, and they sing it no matter who they are playing. This can be confusing to out of state visitors who are often heard saying, "maybe they would be playing better if they knew they were playing Ohio State and not UT." It's also strange that they are called aggies, but their mascot is a small sheltie dog. Maybe they are trying to deny their history and would be embarrassed to have the all-male cheerleaders dressed as auto mechanics (in case you didn't know the A+M stands for auto mechanics).

While they started as a school for auto mechanics, TAMU has also branched out into landscape services and animal husbandry. They also have a campus in Galveston, on the Texas coast, that trains people to clean aquariums and sell small fish. They don't call their alumni, graduates; they refer to them as "Former Students," this is probably due to the low graduation rate.

Over the years, aggies have been the but of many jokes, which is unfortunate that more abuse is piled on top of people that have already made a bad college choice. On top of being academically inferior they are also not very good at sports. TAMU's biggest football rivalry is with the University of Texas, but it seems to be a very one sided rivalry as UT leads the series 75-36-5. This year however, it looks like the tea-sips (this is how graduates of the University of Texas prefer the aggies refer to their academic and societal betters) are venerable. Usually a win against the "varsity" is enough to make an aggies year and save an embattled coach. This year it is the other way around, and it's the Longhorns that are desperate for a win to earn a bowl game and avoid a loosing season.

Unfortunately it is not looking good for the home team today, and it is very possible there might be a big crowd of future farm hands and auto mechanics out on 6th street in Austin tonight looking for women to celebrate their sporting achievement with.

Blinded by Science

For years I have heard about the evils of the AMA from chiropractors and dietitians, and sometimes doctors have done themselves a disservice by barely listening in consultations and only offering up a drug or surgical solutions to problems. But I am not here to tell you to avoid doctors or not to use antibiotics when you need them. The advances in medicine over the last 100 years are mind boggling and almost all of us know someone who's life was saved by a great doctor. What I would like to advocate for is some balance from the AMA. Doctors can be a skeptical bunch (it took them years to believe that sterilizing their hands before surgery could stop infections) but they need to see that there may be alternatives other than drugs and surgery.

The NY Times article Epilepsy’s Big, Fat Miracle chronicles the story of a writer who's son has epilepsy. The child was experiencing as many as 130 seizures a day. These are not the kind of seizures where you fall to the ground and convulse, but they are very debilitating. The kid blacks out for a few seconds at a time, making it hard for him to learn to read, watch a movie, ride a bike, swim or do just about any other kid activity. The family tried almost every drug available, but the side effects were terrible and the seizures continued. Finally they heard about an alternative dietary treatment that made a huge difference. The idea is to put the body in ketosis, where you drastically reduce the amount of carbs you take in and the body begins to burn fat. Amazingly this has an antiepileptic effect and reduced the child's seizures by 80%. The problem is the diet is very hard to maintain. The mother in the family had quit her job so she can take care of her son full time. The hope is that after two years on this diet and a reduced drug regimen the child will be seizure free and able to return to a regular diet.

All this is to make a point. The doctors in this story were initially very resistant to look at diet as a course of treatment. I imagine it seemed too simple to them or not worthy of their scientific training, but now over 100 hospitals offer this treatment. The ironic thing is that dietary treatments are not even a new idea:

In the 1930s, three scientists won a Nobel Prize for discovering that a substance in raw liver cured pernicious anemia, a disease that was almost always fatal. Eight Nobels were awarded just for work related to vitamins. And, it turns out, the ketogenic diet was developed back in the early part of the last century, too, only to disappear from medical literature for two generations.

The article goes on to suggest there may be dietary regimens that can help in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cancer, as tumors need glucose to grow and there is very little sugar in a keto diet. It is already reducing tumors in test mice. How ironic would it be it after all the ridicule he took in the 1990's if Dr. Atkins was right?

10th Annual Pie Contest

If you are a regular reader, you know our boss Dan Wieden prefers pie to cake, so every year for the last 10 years we have had a pie making contest. There are seven categories and anyone in the agency can enter as many pies as they like. Judges pick the category winners which then go to the winners table where Dan picks the overall winner. One lucky baker wins a trip to NY for two, and gets bragging rights for a year. This year Michele Lefore, the head of the studio, won with her banana cream pie. Unfortunately I didn't get to taste it was gobbled up by the time I could find a plate and get to the table.


This year we had a new addition to the pie making contest, pie throwing. Several of the the big wigs at the agency, as well as an IT person, the girl who always bugs you for your time sheet, and a couple of others lined up to get a pie in the face from the highest bidder. We raised over $3500, which the agency matched, so we donated over $7000 to the mission for Thanksgiving dinners.

Found Watch

Today I found a watch out on the street. At first I thought I had a real find, but I realized when I picked it up it was probably abandoned. I showed it to some of the girls at work and they described it as "a watch a women who works in a nail salon would wear." I don't think that is a compliment.


My friend Susan found a watch on the side of the road when she was a kid and it turns out is was a $10,000 Patek Phillippe (and that is 1980's prices). When I find a watch it's made in china and worth $15.

Spirit of '77

Spirit of '77 is the latest offering from the folks who brought us Clyde Common and Olympic Provisions and it is what you would imagine these folks would do if they were challenged with creating a sports bar for a show on HGTV. Only, it's real. The name celebrates the Trailblazers national championship in 1977 and it is located just down the street from the Rose Garden, where the Blazers play.

It has all the trappings of a good sports bar, a really big TV screen, a coupe of big TVs, a great bar, pop-a-shot basketball and a Foosball table. The difference is that the beer offerings are a little more upscale and the food is a lot better than any other sports bar in town.

I was there with a large group and one of the owners, so we got to sample a lot of the menu. Must haves include, the fried baked potato in aioli, which are really good jo jo's, the mini ribs, the hush puppies with a killer jalapeno jam, and awesome boiled eggs with Russian dressing (deviled eggs). As an entree I had the chicken pot stew which was amazing. Other folks really enjoyed the fish sandwich, the patty melt and the chop chop salad. All the portions were very reasonable and not over sized.

After we ate we all had fun playing pop-a-shot (I came in second). I think this would be a great place to watch a game and I am looking forward to returning on a weekend. They are open 11 am- 12 am on weekdays and 9 am - 12 am on weekends when they have a breakfast menu 9 am - noon.

Spirit of '77
500 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd.
Portland, OR 97232
(503) 232-9977

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

David Sedaris is one of my favorite writers and it is always great to hear him reading one of his stories on NPR, but lately I have felt he was running out of things to talk about. He has pretty much strip-mined his early years and his family for all the good stories and the life of a middle aged gay couple living in France was starting to wear a little thin. Luckily he has now turned to animal stories. Stories that would be benign if told with human characters, but are seriously funny when played out with animals.

The illustrations by Ian Falconer are a great compliment to these short absurdest tales. I won't go into any of them in particular, but I will relay a joke that Sedaris told on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart that conveys the tone of the book.

A man answers the door and notices a snail on the stoop. The snail asks the man, "would you be interested in buy any life insurance?" The man reaches down, picks up the snail and flicks it out into the street. Two years later the man gets a knock on the door. When he answers he sees the snail, who looks up at him and says, "what the hell was that about?"

Gearhart Golf Links

This weekend I played in a Nike Golf outing at the Gearhart Golf Links on the Oregon coast. Opened in 1892 as 3 holes across the sand dunes, it is the oldest course in the northwest and after Tokatee Golf Club in central Oregon, my favorite municipal course in the state.



In 1901, at the hands of Marshall Kinney, Gearhart was officially opened as a 9 hole course. In 1913-1915 Gearhart grew to 18 holes and began a long heritage as one of the state's premiere golf venues. Between1926 and 1935 the course underwent a series of changes including a redesign by Chandler Egan resulting in the layout which remains relatively unchanged.

It is a little tight on some of the fairways, so you have to be careful in the summer that you don't get hit by a wayward drive. Luckily there are not as many people out there in November, so I felt pretty safe. The course is short, playing 6218 yards from the back tees, with a 71.3 rating and a 134 slope, but we didn't get any roll with the amount of rain we have had lately. There are some challenging holes, number five demands a precise second shot to a very small green with water on the left and the 18th hole is 581 yards uphill with a small green tucked back in the corner, which makes it hard to reach in two, even for big hitters.

They also have a nice clubhouse called The Sandtrap which is run by McMenamins. It has been redesigned since they took it over, so it has the flavor of many of their other pubs. They have a great deck, which is the perfect place for a beer after your round in the summer. The food and beer is great, but as with all McMenamins the service is pretty slow.

I know it is a little out of the way, but this is a great course to include on your Oregon golf tour.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

With a title like A Short History of Nearly Everything, you might think that Bill Bryson has bit off more than he can chew, but you will be pleasantly surprised how readable it is. Much of what Bryson covers are things you would have learned in a good undergraduate program, but have forgotten over the years.

The book covers general sciences topics such as chemistry, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics. Bryson explores time from the Big Bang to the discovery of quantum mechanics, via evolution and geology, to try to answer big questions like how old is the earth? Where did humans come from? And what are our chances of being around for a while?

Bryson is a great story teller who keeps you interested in some pretty dry topics by weaving in the stories of the people who made the discoveries, such as Edwin Hubble, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. The biggest take away for me as I read this book was how little we actually know about the planet we live on, and how many mistakes we have made in trying to explain it over the years. Another interesting thing is how shaky some of our trusted theories are. For example, no one knows why Denver is a mile high. It has no tectonic plates under it, pushing it up like the mountains do. It is basically a mystery.

If this kind of thing interests you, you will love this book. For me it was a great opportunity to ponder all the things I really should have taken a little more time to think about in college.

The Millennium Series Movies

The first two books of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire are now out on DVD and On Demand. I am sure these films are already being remade with America actors, but I'll stick with the Swedish versions. I am not going to apologize for liking these books. I understand they are not great literature, but they were a lot of fun to read, and somehow I get a little bit of pleasure not seeing them Hollywoodized.

The Swedish films are dark and the casting is excellent. Lisbeth Salander is not a star, she is flat chested and a little scary looking. Mikael Blomkvist is rumpled and looks his age. In fact, almost everyone in these two movies looks like a real person not an actor. The two directors have also stayed very close to the story. Some elements have been simplified, but the storyline is all there.

Before I saw the film, I heard a review that made me laugh, but as I was watching the movie I couldn't believe how much it captured the difference between Hollywood and foreign films. At the end of the second book, Lisabeth Salander is in a fight for her life. Meanwhile Blomkvist has figured out where she is and has to make his way out into the countryside to save her. For the next several minutes, we see Salander getting shot, hitting her father over the head with an axe, and trying to kill her brother as Blomkvist puts on his seat belt, gets caught in traffic and all but stops at a drive-through Starbucks on his way to save her.

If you enjoyed the books, make sure you see the Swedish version of the films before Hollywood gets to them.

Income Inequality reaches all time highs

Do you worry about income inequality as much as I do? Probably not, because ultimately everyone wishes they were rich and they really don't care how much of the wealth is held by the richest Americans as long as they can one day be among them. I also know this topic is unlikely to gain much traction as income redistribution is a "socialist" concept to most Republicans. But just as it looked like all hope was lost, there is some new research that suggests that when the income gap between rich and poor becomes too large it can actually hurt the economy.

In an interesting op-ed piece in the NY Times, titled Our Banana Republic, Nicholas D. Kristof points out that the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. As evidence: the richest 1% of Americans now take home almost 24% of income, up from almost 9% in 1976. If that doesn't surprise you, try this: from 1980 to 2005, more than 80% of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

OK, so those are just some boring statistics that show the rich are getting much richer while the rest of us are treading water. What's the problem? The problem is that these mega-rich folks are buying bigger houses, fancier cars, and putting caviar on everything while the folks on the next rung down are going into serious debt trying to keep up. Credit card companies and mortgage brokers took advantage of this increasing need for credit and before you know it, we have a full blown financial crisis.

As we are now realizing, the average American has seen real income decrease over the last 20 years and like the government, we have been financing our flat screen TVs with the hope that our house prices would always go up and we'd some how never have to pay more than the minimum payment on our credit cards.

You can read the research by Robert H. Frank of Cornell University, Adam Seth Levine of Vanderbilt University, and Oege Dijk of the European University Institute at the Social Science Research Network. They looked at census data for the 50 states and the 100 most populous counties in America, and found that places where inequality increased the most also endured the greatest surges in bankruptcies and divorces.

Another disturbing statistic to close - the last time America saw such a large income inequality was in the years preceding the Great Depression. Something to think about as we debate extending the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans.

Flu Shot

I got a flu shot today. I was hesitant to get it, because the last time I got a shot (over 10 years ago) I got the flu. Before that I never got the flu, so I was convinced that I got it due to the shot. Now after a lot of research, I see that I was wrong and that is virtually impossible to get the flu from the shot. So hopefully I will flu free this year and the pain I am feeling in my arm right now will be worth it.

Muirfield. Home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers

One of the highlights of my trip to Scotland last month was getting to play golf at Muirfiled for the first time. Muirfield is one of the five oldest golf clubs in Scotland, founded in 1744 in Leith, and probably one of the most exclusive. It is home to the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers and lays claim to having written the original 13 rules of golf before turning over governance of the game to the R&A in St. Andrews.

Located just outside of Edinburgh in East Lothian, Muirfield runs along the same coast line as the great Gullane and Luffness Golf Courses. It has been home to the Open Championship fifteen times (and will host it again in 2013), as well as many amateur championships and the 1973 Ryder Cup. The course was originally laid out by Tom Morris in 1891. In 1923, 50 acres were purchased north of the course and course designer Harry Colt introduced 14 new holes. His design included two loops of nine holes, one played within the other in the opposite direction, so the direction of the wind changes on nearly every hole. Most of the changes since then have been to extend the tees back to account for the improvements in equipment to keep Muirfield on the Open rota. One recent change, that is very evident, is the lengthening of the tee on number nine. They actually had to knock down the wall that surrounds the course to move the tee 25-30 yards further back. They also added a new bunker to catch the pros, but all the members are hitting into it off their forward tees.

The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers prefer to play two-ball match play, or what we refer to as alternate shot here in the U.S. A morning round is easily completed in two or two and a half hours, followed by a large lunch and cocktails, then a second round of golf in the afternoon. As visitors we were allowed to play our own ball, which was a treat. You never know when you'll get to play there again, so it was great to get to see and play the entire course. And it is a great course. It is a classic links layout running along the coast with amazing views of Fife across the Firth of Fourth. The rough is very high and can make it very hard to find wayward shots. There are also a lot of bunkers that are extremely steep and almost always result in a stroke added to the scorecard. Good players are well rewarded for being long and straight off the tee.

Contrary to popular belief, women are allowed to play Muirfield as guests, but there are no lady members and no mixed facilities in the clubhouse. Dogs are also allowed on the course. Above is a picture of our playing companion Rocket.

After you play, you change into a jacket and tie and enjoy a large lunch. We had a two hour drive back to St. Andrews, so there was no drinking for us, but there is one famous story I can't resist repeating. Supposedly one of the members was pulled over on his way home one evening after being at the club and administered a breathalyzer. Much to his surprise he passed. He was surprised because he had just finished off several large drinks before getting in the car and by rights, knew he should be on his way to jail. He immediately headed back to the club and accused the bartender of watering down the drinks, which he indeed was doing, and was fired on the spot.

If you are a golf lover, you should make plans to play Muirfield on your next Scottish golf adventure. Luckily I played with a member, so it didn't cost me anything, but the course is open to visitors on Tuesdays and Thursdays for £190 ($315) for one round and £240 ($400) for two rounds on the day.

Metrovino

Last week I got an e-mail from Genoa, one of my favorite restaurants, and they suggested I vote for them for restaurant of the year. When I got to the choices, I was embarrassed to see that I had not been to a few of the other choices. This weekend, we started to rectify that.

Metrovino is a hot new place in the Pearl District, that is dedicated to pairing great wine with great food. They use an Enomatic wine system and a Perlage sparkling system, to keep over 80 wines and champagnes fresh for 30 days so they can serve them all by the taste, glass or bottle. We started with a great glass of champagne, the Dama del Rovere, which was very reasonably priced. I had the salmon tare tare to begin with, which was great, but strangely it was served with onion rings, which did not go together, but were great separately. Barbara had the escargot, which was good, but had a strange almond crust. We both opted for the rib eye for our entree which was a mistake. Both steaks were very fatty and a little chewy. The only savior was the amazing potato fingers in horse radish and the chantrelle mushrooms.

We paired the entree with "The Heavyweight" wine flight, tastes of an '04 Eyrie, DDO Laurene, and a Beaux Freres for $28. I have to say they were all amazing, but when we went to order a glass they were all over $30 a glass, so we opted for a less expensive Bordeaux, the Chateau Croix Mouton at $12.

Metrovino is a very nice space, the service is great, but I am sad to say it is way too expensive for the quality of food we had. If I were to go there again, I would try the bar menu, which is not served in the main restaurant.

Dinner 5:30 PM nightly.

Metrovino
1139 Northwest 11th Avenue
Portland, OR 97209-3469
(503) 517-7778

I'm Back

Since we last talked I took a little vacation to Scotland, played a lot of golf and now that I've been back at work for a week, it's time to start blabbing again.