SFS Books: May 10th – Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak That Changed the Way Americans Eat

 

 Our May book club selection is Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak That Changed the Way Americans Eat by Jeff Benedict

This will be an active, open conversation and all are welcome – please come even if you haven’t had a chance to finish the book! We’ll be meeting from 6-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 10th. Roy Street Coffee and Tea is located at 700 Broadway East. Limited free parking is available in the lot below.

Interested in food safety? Curious about how the common, yet sometimes deadly E. coli bacteria shows up not only in ground meat, but also strawberries, spinach and sprouts?

Join the Slow Food Seattle Book Club for a discussion of Jeff Benedict’s Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak That Changed the Way Americans Eat. Benedict tells the story of the 1993 E. coli break-out in Jack in the Box hamburger meat through main characters nine-year old Brianne, who came close to dying and still lives with the impact of the episode, and Bainbridge Island-based lawyer, Bill Marler, who took on her case as a young lawyer.

“Over a period of a few weeks, more than 700 cases scattered across four Western states; four children died gruesomely, with bleeding intestines and kidney failure. But Mr. Benedict, a lawyer turned journalist, pays relatively little attention to the story’s medical complexities; his focus is the gruesome and complicated legal tangle that ensued. Nowadays we are all too familiar with the practices of giant processing plants, but back in those innocent times it was all new and appalling — the poorly regulated slaughterhouses, the batching of meat for grinding, the wide distribution of product, which maximized the spread of any contaminant.” — Abigail Zuger, M.D., New York Times, June 27, 2011

Author, Jeff Benedict (left) and attorney, Bill Marler (right). Photo: WSU Photo Services

Poisoned is as relevant today as it is to the 1993 story it tells. Just months after the book’s 2011 publication, another E. coli outbreak, this time in Germany, was traced back to salad vegetables.

“Although much more is known about food safety now than in 1993, the book speaks to our times. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that six more strains of E. coli will be banned from ground beef. That move follows pressure from Marler and represents a step forward in the fight for safe food, which is what “Poisoned” is all about.” — Lynne Terry, The Oregonian, September 24, 2011

Please join us! If you haven’t had a chance to read the book, find an excerpt here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/health/28excerpt.html?_r=1&ref=views#

RSVP to books@slowfoodseattle.org and/or on the Facebook event page

About Jeff Benedict
Jeff Benedict is a contributor for Sports Illustrated and a writer for SI.com.  In 2011 he launched Inspire Books, his own book publishing imprint.  He published Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. coli Outbreak that Changed the way Americans Eat under the new imprint.  Poisoned is Benedict’s tenth book and critics consider it his best.  The New York Times called it “the full literary experience of a medico-legal thriller in a work of nonfiction.”

Benedict was born in 1966 in New London, Connecticut. He has a Bachelor’s in History from Eastern Connecticut State University, a Master’s in Political Science from Northeastern University, and a J.D. from the New England School of Law. He previously practiced law in Connecticut, where he has spent most of his life. Today he lives in Virginia where he teaches Writing and Mass Media at Southern Virginia University and lives on a Civil War-era farm with his wife and best friend Lydia Benedict and their four children.
http://www.jeffbenedict.com

My fish has issues; it’s complicated – Sustainable Seafood in a Multimedia World

By Amy Grondin

Join Slow Food Seattle for My fish has issues; it’s complicated – Sustainable Seafood in a Multimedia World, a conversation with Chefs Barton Seaver and Becky Selengut at the Broadway Performance Hall on Monday October 17th from 6:30pm to 8pm. A cookbook signing and reception featuring Snoqualmie Vineyards, The Pike Brewing Company, and an oyster bar from Taylor Shellfish will follow from 8pm to 8:45pm. Tickets available now through Brown Paper Tickets, $12/pp.

It’s time to cut through the fog of confusion that surrounds choosing and eating seafood. Sustainable seafood can be enjoyed in such a way that our personal health and the health of the oceans are of equal consideration. There are lots of sustainable seafood options to be had but how do we identify them?

Becky Selengut and Barton Seaver

East coast meets West coast for this fun and informative sustainable seafood presentation with Becky Selengut, our own local fish whisperer, and Barton Seaver, who’s visiting from D.C. While cooking is a hands on activity that engages all your senses, these two chefs have also engaged their minds and ethics in the process without finger pointing at those of us who are still learning about sustainable seafood. We can benefit from their research and hours in the kitchen by reading the sustainable seafood cookbooks each chef released in Spring of 2011

The evening’s conversation will appeal to folks who receive their information in many different ways, from slow as the printed word to speedy as devices can deliver. As part of the presentation our chefs, led by edibleSEATTLE editor Jill Lightner, will talk about how technology allows them to engage with eaters who may be new to seafood and not necessarily cookbook readers who specifically sought out a sustainable seafood book. Love your smartphone? Smart and sassy blog and Facebook posts, Tweets, websites and YouTube videos by Becky and Barton are just a click away.

Or perhaps you would rather meander printed pages that are glossy with images of seafood briny and sweet from the ocean? A person can pick up either chefs’ cookbook and get the full story – recipes with a dash of science sprinkled in as seasoning. Pick up your copy of For Cod & Country, Barton’s cookbook or Good Fish, Becky’s cookbook after the presentation.

  

What might you learn from our chefs? Both Becky and Barton encourage us to eat a variety of fish besides the perennial favorites of shrimp, salmon and tuna.

Eating a variety of seafood protects the health of humans and fish populations. Creating a marketplace demand for many types of fish eases the pressure on the whole ocean food web by spreading harvest efforts over many species and not over fishing a one popular fish.

An example? Small silver fish – once popular, then over fished due to market demand but on the rise again – just might make it back to everyone’s dinner plate as Barton and Becky’s followers learn from reading a computer screen or a cookbook page about recipes that balance the fishes intense flavor so the rich, nutritional qualities of these environmentally friendly fish are enjoyed.

And in or out of a tin, we need to get over our national suspicion of small silver fish; they are delicious, not scary! Join us on Monday October 17th and we’ll talk about it.

Speakers:

• Barton Seaver, chef, National Geographic Fellow and author of For Cod & Country
• Becky Selengut, chef, instructor and author of Good Fish
• Jill Lightner, Editor of edibleSEATTLE

Thanks to our event sponsor, Seafood Producers Cooperative for their generous support and also to our presenting partners: Readers to Eaters, Snoqualmie Vineyards, Pike Brewing Company, Taylor Shellfish, and edibleSeattle.

  

     

Slow Food Seattle Books: September 8 – Food for All: Fixing School Food in America by Janet Poppendieck

Our September book club selection is Food for All: Fixing School Food in America by Janet Poppendieck.

We’ll be meeting from 6-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 8th. Roy Street Coffee and Tea is located at 700 Broadway East. Limited free parking is available in the lot below. This will be an active, open conversation and all are welcome – please come even if you haven’t had a chance to finish the book!

How did our children end up eating nachos, pizza, and tater tots for lunch? Taking us on an eye-opening journey into the nation’s school kitchens, this superbly researched book is the first to provide a comprehensive assessment of school food in the United States. Janet Poppendieck explores the deep politics of food provision from multiple perspectives–history, policy, nutrition, environmental sustainability, taste, and more.

Drawing from extensive interviews with officials, workers, students, and activists, she discusses the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs and turns a critical eye on the “competitive foods” sold in cafeterias. How did we get into the absurd situation in which nutritionally regulated meals compete with fast food items and snack foods loaded with sugar, salt, and fat? What is the nutritional profile of the federal meals? How well are they reaching students who need them?

Opening a window onto our culture as a whole, Poppendieck reveals the forces–the financial troubles of schools, the commercialization of childhood, the reliance on market models–that are determining how lunch is served. She concludes with a sweeping vision for change: fresh, healthy food for all children as a regular part of their school day.

Janet Poppendieck

Janet Poppendieck is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America; (University of California Press, 2010); Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement (Penguin, 1999); and Breadlines Knee Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression (Rutgers University Press, 1985).

“In her extraordinarily well-thought-out, beautifully written, sympathetic, and compelling book, Jan Poppendieck makes clear that Free for All has two meanings: how pressures to reduce the cost of school meals put our children’s health at risk, and how best to solve this problem–universal school meals. Anyone who reads this book will find the present school lunch situation beyond unacceptable. Free for All is a call for action on behalf of America’s school kids, one that we all need to join. I will be using this book in all my classes.”–Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics