This American Meal: A Tale of Two Dinners

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Conventional strawberries from California: Big and red, but sometimes tasteless and hard, they’re bred to withstand long journeys and often are picked before they’re ripe to make the 3,200-mile trek to Boston. Tagging along are residues from the average of 142 pounds of pesticides applied per acre to California strawberry crops. These neurotoxins, carcinogens, and developmental toxins are not appealing additions to strawberry shortcake, and they’re even worse for the farmworkers exposed to them. Coming soon: a genetically modified strawberry that incorporates DNA from a flounder to make it frost-resistant.

Sustainable Supper

Organic chicken: Organic chickens roam freely, eat organic grain free of genetically modified organisms, receive no growth hormones, and get antibiotics only when they need them. Organic certifiers monitor the farms where the chickens are raised as well as the processing plants where they are killed. And taste? The Washington Post voted Eberly’s, an organic Pennsylvania brand available in Boston, number one in taste in 2000. Unfortunately, local farmers find it hard to break into the Boston market. No poultry processor in Massachusetts will take the smaller number of birds that many sustainable and organic farmers raise.

Organic local lettuce: For 22 weeks, red and green leaf, romaine, and Boston lettuces are bursting from New England fields. While they cost a little more, local lettuces can stay fresh in the refrigerator two weeks, while lettuces that make a cross-country trip may last only a week. One of the best ways to get local lettuce is through a CSA (the common abbreviation for community-supported agriculture)—a subscription farm that delivers produce weekly to a specific group of “shareholders.”

Organic local potatoes: All Blues, Kennebecs, and Katahdins are the varieties—some old, some new—that the Crown of Maine Organic Cooperative sells in Boston. Instead of using chemical fertilizers, these farmers enrich the soil with clover, field peas, and ground fish meal. They rotate their crops to cut down on infections and burn the weeds before planting. And if potato plants are plagued by disease or pests, they use organic control methods, often removing insect eggs by hand.

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