Food in NYC and the world

Two ‘New Yorker’ articles on our lack of food

By Culinate staff

May 27, 2008

Because the Pony Express delivers our New Yorkers to us, sometimes it takes a while for the magazine to make its way out here to the West Coast. Which is why we didn’t notice back-to-back articles, in the May 19 and May 26 issues, until just recently.

The first, by Sunday Telegraph food writer Bee Wilson, is a round-up of the recent news and book coverage of our crashing food system. Why is the Third World rioting over food shortages while the First World (and such rapidly changing nations as India and China) continues to get fat? Wilson gives a neat, if depressing, wrap-up of the situation.

The second, by Ian Frazier, is a first-person account of a writers’ workshop (taught by Frazier) at a church soup kitchen in Manhattan. Think New Yorkers have it good? Think again; as Frazier writes, about one of every six New Yorkers is classified as “hungry.” And he means right now, not some abstract statistic:

Talking about hunger and being hungry are two different things; talk can wait for a convenient moment, but when you’re hungry you’re hungry right now.