A while back, I posted a portion of Dan Barber’s editorial on the Farm Bill.

Now plans for the new bill are getting a little more concrete, and the editorials are a bit more frequent. First, Michael Pollan wrote a sensible, succinct piece for the New York Times Magazine, last Sunday, “You Are What You Grow.” As usual, he cuts to the essential problem in a very tidy way: Twinkies, calorie for calorie, are cheaper than carrots, which makes no sense. Produce prices have risen 40 percent over 15 years, while soda prices have dropped 23 percent. This is all due to the Farm Bill’s support of large-scale commodities farmers, rather than farmers who actually grow immediately edible food.

The Albuquerque Tribune also has a nice editorial, “Food Fight,” by Daniel Imhoff, which gets into the politics of the bill a bit more. It also points out (I didn’t know this) that about half the money from the bill goes to food stamps, school lunches and similar programs.

So there’s this nasty irony that if the antihunger people want to preserve food stamps, they have to get together with the large-scale farmers–who are getting a grossly disproportionate amount of the money, and who then produce soy, corn, etc. to make the super-cheap food that makes people on food stamps fat and diabetic.

Now is the time for cranky letters suggesting that Farm Bill money be used to encourage food crops, rather than commodities crops. Contact Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer and (if you’re in Queens) Carolyn Maloney.

Here’s a suggested outline for a letter you could send (just scroll past Bono at the top).

Burger King to Serve Up Cage-Free Food, go the reports on the wires today. The fast-food co. plans to order more of its meat and eggs from producers who “do not keep their animals in cages and crates.”

This looks like great news, but the cynic in me is just counting down the seconds till the words “crate” and “cage” get redefined. Also, the current percentages of BK ingredients from such enlightened producers is 10 percent of its pork and all of 2 percent of their eggs–the latter is set to double by the end of the year. And it’s not like I go to BK to order pork or eggs.

Still, it’s a start.

Skipping over the gastronomic adventures of the past couple weeks, I’ll get right to the terrible bit of information I just discovered.

We got into Amsterdam day before last. Yesterday morning Karine popped out to the grocery store to pick up some breakfast provisions, including a small jar of Nutella. When I saw the Nutella, I sighed. “Delicious,” I thought, “but all that nasty hydrogenation!” I felt a bit wistful for the days before I knew how horrible hydrogenated fat was, before I could graphically envision every Jif sandwich I’ve ever eaten, all still stuck there on the walls of my arteries.

Later, when I was savoring my Nutella on a day-old baguette (what? you thought I wouldn’t actually eat it?), I looked at the ingredients: sugar, peanut oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, skim milk powder, whey powder, soya lecithin, unspecified “aroma.” No word, in Dutch or French, remotely resembling “hydrogenated.”

About the same time, Karine said, “A friend of mine says European Nutella is better than the American version, but I can’t remember why.”

A flurry of Internet research ensued, and lo, American Nutella contains:

Sugar, Peanut Oil, Hazelnuts, Cocoa, Skim Milk, Reduced Minerals, Whey, Partially Hydrogenated Peanut Oil, Soy Lecithin; An Emulsifier, Vanillin; An Artificial Flavor.

So–what?! Americans are so squeamish that any possibility of visible liquid oil needs to be eradicated? Americans stock their bunkers at Sam’s Club, and require their Nutella have a shelf life of 10 years? Americans only have one mental category for bread-spread, so everything must behave exactly like Jif? Either one of these things, or the American food industry is actively trying to kill its customers, which is untenable from a business standpoint.

Now I feel it’s my duty to eat as much Euro Nutella as possible before I return to the US next Wednesday. Excuse me–it’s breakfast time.

Peter’s at it again. I’d say he’s kicking my ass, but then I remembered my spirit of non-competitiveness. But that orange juice thing is truly horrifying. When I read that, I felt like I was in one of those nightmares where everywhere you turn, the door slams shut and then you’re trapped in this little corridor. Like the hydrogenation-industrial complex is actually devoted to ferreting out the little loopholes to healthy food, like normal OJ, and closing them right up.