Funny, I don't remember him saying that you shouldn't buy from the farmer's market if you enjoy that more, or that it's ALWAYS going to be cheaper for you if you go to the farmer's market. His point is that it's not always the environmentally friendly way to go, and you shouldn't confuse ideological preferences for scientific facts.

Also, I'd question whether your knowledge of the provenance of said tomatoes doesn't colour your enjoyment of them. Check out Penn & Teller's Bullshit!: Organic foods to see their organic foods taste test. Turns out that if you think something's going to taste better, it does. Even if the person staging the test is totally lying to you about which is the organic/local food and which is the OMG evil corporate hate-energy laced food.

*not always going to be cheaper

Yeah honestly I don't think there's going to be too much of a taste difference as long as you're comparing the same varieties, on the other hand supermarkets tend to use varieties that are specifically bred for certain qualities that aren't necessarily going to include 'taste' as the number one priority.

Case in point: your standard, Chilean supermarket tomatoes are bred for surviving long-distance shipment. So they can survive a whack with a baseball bat but they taste like a mouthful of styrofoam. You can grow it with pesticides or organic techniques, it's still going to taste like shit. At the local farmer's markets, on the other hand, I can get over 2 dozen varieties of heirloom tomato, each distinct enough to suit any taste -- but the vast majority are tons more flavorful than what you can get in a supermarket.

Vegetables maybe, but you cannot argue that local farm eggs are so much tastier than store-bought ones.

The yolks are much richer, the eggs are (usually) larger, sometimes you get those two-yolks-in-one super eggs, and even though some people avoid them I think a little bit of blood gives omelets a nice punch.

Also, local cuts of meat from small farms are superior in my opinion. A slab of cheap-ass pork sirloin from the store had so much fuckin' fat on it, it took me an extra 20 minutes to prepare because I had to trim all that shit off.

Of course, in Kansas, the best cut of meat is from deer you hit with your car. Kills *and* tenderizes all at the same time!

He made it clear at the end of the video that he had not missed the forest for the trees.

I could argue that they aren't tastier, Toenails. But I don't have any data to back it up. Maybe try having a blind taste-test with the aid of a friend of yours and see what happens?

And I personally would rather trim the excess fat off of a far cheaper cut of meat than pay an extra a pound. That might be because I used to work in a butchery and it doesn't bother me that much. 20 minutes of my time is worth a pound to me. But that's just me.

"Facts have been presented which do not align with my behavior! Time to be condescending!"

But the implications are clear. People who shop locally are soft headed hippies that don't understand how wonderful chain distribution and truck farming are.

Well, in the case of the tomatoes here at Haus Wildcat, the provenance is clear. They come from my backyard. And the taste of fresh heirloom tomatoes cannot be beaten, which you will discover if you grow them yourself. Whether I use the compost to feed it or some chemical fertilizer, the taste is the same ( i've done both ). Although a hydroponic tomato is pretty tasteless. Using the chemicals in your soil creates all sorts of problems that make long term use problematic, so I usually don't. Specifically, they fuck up the microorganisms that keep the soil fertile.

But the thing is, you _can't buy_ a good tomato from a chain store to know what I am talking about. As the man points out, "the vegetable has to "tolerate" shipping" and most good ones don't. Go find a Black From Tula or a Brandywine to compare. Just try...

Let me enlighten you as to the real reason to buy locally grown produce. Many of my neighbors here are small farmers. Buying from them means much of the land in my neighborhood remains farmland. This is quite distinct from other places I have lived, where all the land was paved over and converted to minimalls and tract housing ( I'm talking to you NJ ). Again, if you prefer tract houses and traffic in your backyard to pastures, horses, and trees, you are welcome to them.

Even within the supermarket, there is a large difference in taste with, say strawberries. Those cow-heart sized ones just taste like soap.

Oscar: As I said, don't confuse an ideological preference for a scientific fact. Sure, you prefer to see farmland? Great. That's an awesome reason to buy local. You prefer to support local farmers? Great, another awesome reason to buy local. It makes you feel good and you think it tastes better? You're still winning the argument for local food on a personal, ideological basis. That doesn't mean that sometimes (sometimes) it's not factually cheaper and 'greener' (whatever that means) to ship the food across the continent/planet to get it to the consumer.

I think enjoying Penn & Teller's Bullshit! is scientific grounds to ignore everything you say, forever.

@ Toenails: Little if any difference in taste on eggs, but it's what you _don't_ get. Salmonella. I like making mayonaise and aioli, and I'd never try that with a chain store egg.

DESSERT: I think appeals to ridicule are grounds to ignore you, so I guess we're both assholes.

All the guy said was "Locally grown food is not always the most environmentally friendly way, but feel free to buy it for whatever other reasons you have" as far as I can tell. He's not being judgmental, so I'm not sure why people are getting all defensive about taste or keeping money local.

Also I like the taste of those big strawberries and think people who say they taste like soap are talking out of their ass.

Potrod: It's very hard for people (in general, not saying anything about specific people here) to separate one part of an argument from how they feel about the topic at hand. We tend to be weighted more towards how we feel about something than how it actually adds up factually, which is why the scientific method had to be invented, instead of just being an obvious thing we all do.

For instance, I used to be a 'truther' (albeit a quiet one, I never got to the stage where it seemed like a good idea to talk about it). Most of my willingness to believe conspiracy theories came from feelings of spite and ridicule towards governments in general, and the American government in particular. Then the fear component came in and it became a sort of "I'm really fucking scared of this so it MUST have validity" thing. These are really, really bad reasons for believing in something. Once I realized that, it became a lot easier to take a step back and say "Oh holy fuck, these arguments are bad, and I should feel bad for making them."

It depends on the actual food a lot. Organic bananas hardly taste like the same food as regular bananas, but leafy greens are indistinguishable.

Moreover, who actually thinks local farmer's markets are cheaper? Every one I've ever been to is about 30% higher, and that's no surprise to me. If I go there I'm going because I want to get actual fresh vegetables, and I'm OK with paying a premium for that. The only markets I've been to that are cheaper are the major outdoor food markets in Boston and NYC, but there's nothing local or high quality about their products.

This reminds me of a seeming anomaly in the milk I've been drinking lately. This is anecdotal About a year ago, the supermarket in my neighborhood closed down when the local chain was acquired by a larger regional chain. So I've started going to Aldi Supermarket. For anyone who might not have one nearby, Aldi is a discount chain that sells it's own brands almost exclusively, and so everything is centralized, and the prices are often dramatically lower. Years ago, the food at Aldi's was pretty low quality, but that's since changed dramatically, in my opinion.

I've lived most of my life in Binghamton, New York, and most of the milk I've been drinking for my whole life has come from the Crowley's dairy on Conklin Avenue, on the Southern bank of the Susquehanna, roughly two miles from where I'm typing. I like the fat free stuff, which I've been drinking since my Freshman year in 1986.

The Aldi Milk apparently comes from Batavia, Illinois, like almost everything else they sell. And it seems to get to the store sooner than the Crowley Milk, judging by the expiration dates. (I always read the expiration dates for milk, since even thinking about sour milk has the same effect on me that thinking of vomit has on some other people.) In the past, I've tried to get milk with an expiration date at least one week in the future, Ten days is pretty good.

Well, yesterday, I bought a gallon of milk at Aldi. It was October 23, and the exipiration date is November 10. That's roughly two and a half weeks. I've never seen anything like that with the local milk.

There are all kinds of good reasons for buying local foods, and the farmers markets, while perhaps not the solution to cutting carbon emmisions for the whole world, is a great place to get good fresh produce at a low price. But I've been puzzling over the milk for a while now, and this video may have given me an answer.

Don't think that was meant to be a reply. Sorry.

I fucking hate tomatoes.

Check out his website (www.skeptoid.com) his podcast about this issue has links and sources at the bottom of the text version.

Also, HFCS is really just sugar (50% fructose, 50% glucose)
Can we draw a correlation between the love of sugar and giant, lardy asses? For sure we can. Does getting fat eating too much sugar cause you to put more of a burden on the health care system? Fuckin'-A it does. Does that have anything to do with WHERE the sugar comes from?

Really?

Does it?

HFCS is cheaper because of the subsidies, yeah. It's also cheaper because it doesn't need to be imported, and it's easier to use than granulated sugar because it's already in a liquid state prior to manufacturing processes.

Does any of that have anything to do with the fact that people with shitty will-power eat themselves into an early grave because they love sweet things?

I agree with the larger point. Everything should be viewed with skepticism. Now that the marketing people added "green" to their dictionaries, we have a situation like diet food where people do feel-good stuff that's either irresponsible or ineffective.

And I understand hub and spoke well enough, and the efficiencies that allows.

But I can't get over the fact that his "before" picture connects every node with roughly every other. Check out what the factorial of 10 is. Is his calculator broken, or is he refusing to submit his theory to the same scrutiny that he uses with other people's?

regarding hfcs: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/

i'm not saying that that's the last word on it, but it's more than just superstition.

Hmm. Interesting, thanks for the link.I will refrain from coming to an uneducated conclusion on this matter, and wait for the science to come in.

My general (personal) rule is to cook most of my own meals from as close to scratch as possible, and avoid eating huge amounts of sweet things regardless of the source. Except for all the sugar I put in my coffee, because I love that shit.

I kinda go with pastor here. As far as I know, my *local* farmer's market is the one (or maybe one of very few) places the *local* farmer will sell his produce.
But what do i know.

you're being too generous. as soon as it's in the cash register, it's left your community, and probably your country.

I'd say quite a bit goes back to the local community:

* Electricity costs - go to local utility boards
* Property taxes - goes to local governments
* Sales taxes - goes to the state
* Wages - goes to local people who spend it locally

If you think of the costs of owning and running a grocery store versus profits, more than you think goes back into the local community.

The only shopping that doesn't usually have a local impact is the one with the smallest footprint - and that's shopping online.

Unfortunately, a lot of grocery store chains actually aren't set up to handle local farmers.

Personally I buy almost all of my produce at the local Mexican grocers, who get all the leftover stuff from the various distribution channels that were rejected because it wasn't pretty enough for the major markets. There's an amazing amount of perfectly-good food that's just discarded by the traditional grocery system for stupid reasons, and it seems that making better use of these leftovers is also a huge win for the environment.

Also, the stuff I get from the Mexican grocers is usually *fresher* than the stuff at Safeway, and costs about 1/4 as much. But of course the selection is generally limited based on what happened to be available. The staples are almost always there, but a lot of stuff is just more like "hey this is cool, I could do something with that."

No offense to you, BorrowedSolution, but he strikes me as more of a defender of the status quo than a skeptic. Again, his argument here is based on a straw man that one literally couldn't pull off without breaking the laws of physics.

His article on the Pacific Trash Vortex follows the same pattern of setting up a straw man ("everyone believes there is a giant solid island of trash in the Pacific") and then debunks it with things like "it's where Hawaii should be" (meanwhile, Hawaii has plastic beaches), but not before misrepresenting a Greenpeace diagram as something that describes such a solid mass (that literally says "transparent soup" on it). I expect that sort of thing from Fox News, but he claims to be the voice of reason. I think that's what TheOtherCapnS is miffed by as well.

Likewise, his article on AGW begins with an actual refusal to read up on the subject, then progresses to canned political views and "South Park"�style false objectivity. He does mention Al Gore a bunch of times, though...

Crap, that is supposed to go below TheOtherCapnS's comment.

From what I've heard him say he purposely responds to the most outlandish claims that people make, and that can make it seem like he's setting up a strawman. Obviously not everybody really believes there's a huge patch of garbage floating in the pacific, but he finds it more enjoyable to address the people who do.
It's sort of what Penn & Teller do, picking on the stupidest looking people around. It may not be that fair and even-handed, but it does draw a lot more attention than just quibbling about minor details with more reasonable people. Penn & Teller: Reasoned Debate Tactics probably wouldn't be so popular.

so he's a jackass that has an idea and then hunts down data that only supports his idea?

Welcome to how Flawed Science works!

Also, I probably should point out that a good portion of my local shopping is not really shopping at all... I will either get a lot of eggs, and jerky via the barter system and the cost of fuel (usually when I deliver tractor starters to old farmers and they pay my father for the repair and I get eggs for going out of my way to get it to them). And I get corn, cucumbers, jalapenos, tomatoes, chilly peppers, and other produce for no charge at all. All you need in this case is either a hobbiest with surplus of produce, or a sweet Mexican family next door that will let you pick shit out of their garden any time you want.

Totally tangent on the subject: All the illegal immigrants in the surrounding area have trampolines. What's up with that?

Yeah, it is nice to disagree without being huge children about it. Since I've learned about the joys of critical thinking I've found it a lot easier to give people the benefit of the doubt and not just go "Bloobloobloo you disagree with me because you're a bad person!!!"

Nobody, and I mean nobody, holds an idea because they think it's a bad idea, or because they think they're intentionally doing harm or being misguided. We all have our different ideologies and that's a testament to the complexity and strength of the human mind, not an indictment of it.

You'd rather have an agenda pushed on you? That's interesting. Might I ask why?

I guess because having an agenda pushed on me doesn't really affect me, as I'm capable of critical thought and skepticism on my own. I don't like having an agenda pushed on me, but I prefer it to this nonsense.

This is just some guy being disagreeable because it's in his job title. I'm sure he's produced thoughtful posts in the past, but this is poor work. It doesn't even seem to have a point, he's just politely flailing about going "watch me being skeptical!" I see your post saying he posted research links, but he's cherry picking arguments, ignoring valid lines of thought, and completely missing the mark simply to suit his own ends (just having something to post); these are things of which the worst pseudo-scientists are often guilty.

Well, it's easier to provoke debate by going all the way to one extreme than presenting both sides of the argument. I'd say the other side of the argument gets ample presentation in general, so it's not like you only have his word to go on. As you say, there are other lines of thinking on this, and we're all free to have them.

His podcast on this issue is about 10 minutes longer and I seem to remember him doing more to present the other side. His inFact series is more about provoking skeptical inquiry in short dosages than actually doing the comprehensive hours and hours and hours of explanations that would accompany getting any real information about anything across, which A) is just unrealistic and B) would be pretty boring to the layman.

And yeah, he does seem like a bit of a smug prick, but I happen to enjoy that, so nah-nah-nah-nah-boo-boo.

He's so packed full of FACT that his tendons just can't handle it.

Yeah, but my tunnel is gonna have awesome tasting food, and your tunnel will be stocked with happy meals...

I think the strain of nerd on the poe network is of the highest pedigree, sir, and you sir, are a fool.

Vertical farming looks and sounds awesome.

Yeah, he be chaody.

AHEM, choady.

Pardon me.