Food Trends, Writ Small

Upon perusing Time magazine's Top 10 Food Trends of 2008, Tom Philpott of the environment-news site Grist concludes: "Don't read top 10 trend lists of deep thinking or rigorous research."

That's always a good idea. But aside from a couple of clunkers, the list, by Time reporter John Cloud, provides a decent, if predictable, snapshot of the year from a consumer's perspective: the top trend is "recession dining," another is that bottled water is losing favor. Also, goat meat is in.

Still, though such lists are by nature superficial, they shouldn't mischaracterize. Like many critics of the "eat local" movement, Cloud vastly oversimplifies the thinking behind the idea that we should shift more toward local and regional food systems. There is a "backlash" against it, he writes. "Until recently, one tenet of enviro-foodie wisdom was that eating ethically meant eating locally." Not anymore, he said, because this year, "skeptics offered reasons to doubt that a local diet is always the moral way to eat."

Never mind that such debates have been going on for a few decades, even as the world has increasingly shifted to global, industrialized food systems. While some "locavores" are as absolutist as Cloud describes them, most people recognize that sometimes, it's better for the environment to eat imported food, and often, there aren't local producers for local eaters to rely on. In general terms, however, shifting to regional and local food systems would do all kinds of good. (How likely or possible it would be is another matter.)

Cloud's answer to this complex issue: "Buy fresh foods locally. If you must have frozen waffles, don't sweat their origin."

Check.