Is it possible to make smart yet economical choices in a world where we must coexist with a $1 double cheeseburger? Oprah.com writer Lynn Okura attempts to heed the advice in the documentary Food, Inc. by eating locally, ethically and organically—oh, and on a budget.
A few years ago, an organic bakery opened up a just a couple of blocks from my apartment. I, for one, was baffled. Organic chicken I get. Organic tomatoes, sure. But organic cupcakes? The organic movement was getting a little too trendy for my taste, and I was finding it hard to grasp.
I’m still confused about organic frosting, but I’ve decided to educate myself. After seeing Michael Pollan on The Oprah Winfrey Show, my fiancé and I watched the documentary Food, Inc. together. It’s smart, eye-opening and refreshing in that it doesn’t feature a celebrity telling me the “cool” thing to eat. It also made us realize that a lot of what we have been consuming isn’t really food. Low-wage labor and practices have made food more affordable, but not more nutritional. I’ve been living in a bubble, wherein the only thing that mattered about my food choices was how they would effect the size of my wallet and my thighs.
The truth about the way foods are grown and processed is something I’d avoided. I can’t even handle the Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercial, so watching a documentary about the animals I eat was not high on my to-do list.
The good news is that our food system is full of choices. I hope to make better decisions now, but I’ll admit—I’m a little lost. Now that I’ve seen Food, Inc., I can’t go back to the way I used to eat. I’m left to figure out how I to implement healthy foods into my already busy, budgeted lifestyle. Less processed foods! Free-range meats! Cage-free eggs!
My trip begins at my local grocery store, Dominick’s. It’s not a specialty store, just your regular ole grocery chain, similar to a Safeway, Food Emporium or Winn-Dixie. I went in with a few goals in mind:
•Buy less packaged, processed foods full of ingredients my grandma wouldn’t recognize, as Pollan says. I never bothered to look at the ingredients before. Sure, I’d turn the box around, but it was always to look at the calories, fat and sometimes the carbohydrates. Maybe sodium. It’s amazing what you find when you read the ingredients.
•Buy more fruits, vegetables and foods that are overall healthy, low in fat and nutritious.
•Buy free-range meats that do not contain antibiotics and hormones.
Produce Up first: fruits and vegetables. I wasn’t expecting to find much, but when I took the time to look, I found a good selection of organic produce. I’ve always assumed organic was more expensive and never bothered to price check. As it turns out, the organic bananas are 20 cents more than nonorganic bananas. Organic oranges, 40 cents more. Tomatoes, 50 cents. Celery,15 cents. We’re talking small change here! Opting for organic is feeling really easy right now.
My best discovery is the apples. Regular Fuji apples (my favorite) are $1.99 per pound. The organic Fuji apples just so happen to be on sale—for the exact same price. Score! One point for me.
Blueberries are on Dr. Oz’s anti-aging checklist for their antioxidants, and I’ve recently begun to eat them for breakfast mixed with yogurt and granola. I’ve been very pleased with this healthy new me—until I examined the label a little more closely. My blueberries hail from…Chile. So much for eating locally; minus one point for me. I live in Chicago, where there is still snow on the ground and no farmer’s markets to visit until summer. I search the store in hope that I can find at least semi-local blueberries, but no dice. Confession: I bought them anyway.
Something to keep in mind: A printable list of produce worth buying organic based on pesticide contaminations levels.
Poultry Following the perimeter of the store, my next stop is the meat department. It starts off well. I pick up a package of ground turkey meat, clearly marked as organic: “No antibiotics ever administered, vegetarian feed, humanely raised and no growth hormones.” Sounds good to me, and at $4.49 per pound, it’s only $1 more than the nonorganic ground turkey.
Chicken is up next, and it’s a moral minefield. A package of brand-name chicken is on sale for $2.99 per pound. The organic chicken, stating “no antibiotics, free range, vegetarian feed and no hormones added” is $8.99 per pound. Triple the price!
My thrifty side is panicking, but I can’t bring myself to buy the cheap chicken—I think Food, Inc. has changed my taste buds. (It could be the guilt.) My solution: I buy neither. By no means am I turning vegetarian, but I’m starting to think I don’t need to eat as much meat as I have been in the past—a shocking concept for me.
Beef I stay away. For this week, my budget isn’t going to allow for grass-fed steak, and I’m okay with that.
Eggs I’m happy to see my grocery store carries three options of cage-free eggs. The most expensive dozen stands out with its “USDA approved” label, but the other cartons use the exact same cage-free, no-hormone wording. None claim to be free farmed, which would have been ideal. As I’m standing in the refrigerated section for far too long, a couple comes up next to me. They are also looking for cage-free eggs, but clearly aren’t willing to spend 10 minutes thinking about it. “Let’s just pick one,” he says. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” I notice they pick the cheapest cage-free dozen, and I grab the same. At least they have a system.
Packaged Goods and Pasta Chips, crackers and other packaged snack foods are always in my cupboards. They’re convenient, delicious and there is a low-fat version of every chip, cracker or cookie I could ever want. I’m beginning to realize that equating low fat (and nothing else) with health has been my problem. In my attempts to eat healthy, I wonder if I’ve been doing just the opposite.
I consider weaning myself off packaged products altogether and eating leafy greens between meals. I’m curious how much money I would save if I stopped stocking my shelves with these products. Two seconds later, I’m back to reality and looking for a box of crackers to snack on. My goal is to find a reasonably low-calorie snack that doesn’t list “partially hydrogenated oil” as an ingredient. This proves to be difficult, but I eventually find a box of organic roasted garlic and rosemary crackers that I conclude to be a relatively guilt-less snack.
Wheeling my cart over to the pasta aisle, I find that organic whole wheat pasta is on sale. It’s even slightly less expensive than the regular kind, believe it or not. Whole wheat pasta with sautéed spinach, mushrooms, garlic and olive oil is one of my favorite (and easiest) meals to make.
The Frozen Food Aisle Something tells me I’m not going to have much luck with the microwaveable meals that I’ve relied on in the past, so I head over to the veggie burgers and meatless meals. As with everything else, I read the backs of the packages and find that some brands seem have more questionable ingredients than others. I’ve tried many meat-free options in the past and have recently found a brand I love called Dr. Praeger’s. The veggie burgers are loaded with vegetables and only ingredients I recognize. I’m a big fan of the taste and hope I’ve found an inexpensive, healthy staple to my diet.
Dairy Moving on to milk, the price difference between organic and nonorganic is obvious—a gallon of fat-free organic milk is $5.99, while regular fat-free milk is $2.49. What’s more, the organic nonfat yogurt I buy is exactly double the price of the nonorganic, which is on sale. As I’m reading the labels, I notice the vanilla yogurt has a whopping 26 grams of sugar per cup, while the plain has only 9 grams. I put the vanilla down and pat myself on the back for noticing.
My fridge is already stocked with cheese (my weakness) but I still want to examine the packages. Some of the ingredients in the processed cheeses I have been eating worry me. I’m going to have to find a middle ground between low-fat, processed cheese and high-fat, organic cheese. I fear the answer may be to eat less cheese.
Drinks, Soft Drinks and Juices I skip this aisle completely. You know what’s cheap? Water. A year ago, my sister and I decided that we would stop buying all drink products, other than milk. Drinking water saves me about $25 a month, or $300 a year.
It’s more than two hours later, and my cart isn’t very full. I didn’t spend much, but it’s probably because most of what I picked up went back onto the shelf. When all was said and done, I spent $47.19 on foods that were mainly organic, or at least “real” food. Had I dismissed the challenge and gone the cheapest route on my items, I could have saved $5.39. Significant? No. Over time? Yes, but I’m hoping to look for ways to save elsewhere.
Shopping for real food is confusing and time consuming…but, ultimately, rewarding. I’m still new at this, and I’m not going to be perfect, but I’m willing to readjust my habits and look for food that has a positive impact on my health, the planet and the people who work to produce it. I still love cheeseburgers, my mom’s meatloaf and hot dogs at baseball games, but if I can make better choices most of the time, I can justify an indulgence every once in a while, right?
How do you think Lynn did at the grocery store? Read Food & Water Watch’s critique of her shopping experience. Have you changed your shopping habits after watching Food, Inc.? Share your comments and tips for navigating the grocery store below.
When you’re newly single, or simply going through a dry spell, your basic human needs can override your common sense. Once your guard is down and you’re feeling vulnerable, you’re more likely to make big personal mistakes, like having sex with your ex. Here’s how to keep it from happening.
How it Happens
On paper, practically everyone knows it’s not a good idea to go back to the source of your pain. You split up from your ex for a reason. Maybe they cheated on you, treated you badly, or perhaps your personalities and aspirations were completely out of sync. You know what you don’t like about them, and you’re fairly certain it hasn’t a chance of working out. However, that’s on paper, out in the flesh-and-blood world, it’s far easier to gloss over the facts.
The problems can start when you get a little distance from the relationship. Suddenly the details of your split become something of a blur. You can remember a vague dissatisfaction, maybe even some specific events, but was it really that bad? Did you give them enough of a chance? Were you in some way to blame yourself? Perhaps you’d have been tempted to have an affair with your best friend under the circumstances too?
Of course you wouldn’t, but when you’ve created distance from your ex, it’s easy to start rewriting the past. Suddenly, the idea of having sex with them again seems comforting. Add in a hint of loneliness and you have the beginnings of a recipe that when fully cooked is going to be nothing but bad for you. Suddenly you’re short of a partner to see that new blockbuster with, or you’ve no one to try out that romantic new restaurant or spend the holidays with. It’s when you’re at your most vulnerable that intimacy with an ex doesn’t seem that bad.
Perhaps you’ve moved on to a newfound love and you’re just not feeling it, you’re not clicking like you did with your ex. Maybe you haven’t found your rhythm together. It can be enough to make you want to reach out for the familiar, who knows what you like and don’t like.
It’s all completely understandable, and it’s in these moments of weakness that we’re most likely to hit the redial button on a number we should have deleted. After all, it can’t be that bad, can it?
Why it’s Bad
Actually, it can be that bad. While it’s not unheard of for couples to reconcile after taking a break, more often than not it leads to a cycle of break-ups and get-back-togethers that delay the inevitable – and it often starts with sex.
Maybe you’ll convince yourself you’re not getting back together again, that it’s “just” sex – you can handle that. You’re a person with needs, desires, and the quick fix you’re looking for is just a phone call away. Why shouldn’t you?
Well, for former couples, sex is rarely that uncomplicated. It’s loaded with issues, promises, hopes, fears, and a first step back into a relationship you were once clear you no longer wanted. Having sex with someone is an incredibly intimate thing, and it’s bound to open up the wounds of your relationship. Maybe you can handle it and they can’t. Maybe it’s the other way round. Either way, it can lead to a breeding ground of anxiety.
It will also stop you from genuinely being able to move on. While you’ve still got such intimate links to your ex, how are you expecting to make a real connection with someone new? It just doesn’t leave you emotionally available.
And what message does it send to your ex? That you’re willing to accept their bad behavior? That you’re sorry you broke up? That they’re your only option? You’re worth more than that. Before you waste all of your good years backsliding, you’ll need to find a way to move forward.
How to Prevent It
First of all, you need a healthy cooling off period. When a relationship ends, with each passing week there’s a little more peace and hopefully more clarity. Of course you’re going to miss them when it’s raw and when the dynamic you’ve created is broken. This is when you need to be strong. Set yourself goals. Mark in a calendar the very earliest that you’ll be OK to contact them. Make it at least two months, enough time to at least have begun establishing a new life without them.
Then think about changing the scenery. You know the places you went together, or the places they’re likely to go on their own. Make a strong and determined effort to go elsewhere. If you need some support, round up some old friends. Yes, they may be put out that you didn’t get in touch as much when you were dating, but that’s life … they’ll get over it.
Throw yourself into distracting activities. Take that language class you promised yourself. Head out to Europe like you always wanted to. Break your patterns, and delete their number from your phones. Plan the “event” holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving in advance and spend them with friends and family.
And if you’re not clicking intimately with your new love, work on it rather that running back to your ex, and give it the time to find its own rhythm
If I were the New Museum, I’d have whiplash by now. Since opening its spiffy new Bowery building in 2007, the place has gone from being champion of the underdog and advocate of the experimental to starstruck promoter of A-list artists and international cool hunter. With “Skin Fruit: Selections From the Dakis Joannou Collection,” curated by the artist Jeff Koons, this much beloved yet deeply frustrating institution has crossed some invisible line, its already-thin credibility stretched to the breaking point.
“Skin Fruit” is a shapeless amalgam of big names, big dicks, and big price tags, crowded into too little space. Koons’s intention in taking these 83 works from the star collector Joannou’s huge trove was, he said, to choose art that deals with “a vocabulary that people can respond to.” Based on the art he’s chosen, I interpret that language to be big, brash, and bold. Though the title is explained only obliquely, the erotic content suggests it might be Koons’s way of taking “skin flute,” the slang term for phallus, and feminizing it, making it more suggestive, juicier. But trying to think like Koons is almost an oxymoron. And the overwhelming impression I came away with was, Wow, these two guys are really sick puppies. They’ve got sex, shit, birth, and death on the brain. Maybe we all do. But the work displayed here is especially aggressive, and short on nuance, subtlety, and seduction. Perhaps to the New Museum’s credit, much of it would never be shown in any other major New York museum. It’s hard to imagine Kiki Smith’s life-size sculpture of a man performing autofellatio displayed in MoMA’s atrium, for example. Or Pawel Althamer’s live crucifixion reenactment at the Whitney. The sheer amount of transgressiveness, at least, brings a bracing real-life quality of grit and truthfulness to the show. It’s also in keeping with the museum’s stated aim, “to support new art … not yet familiar to mainstream audiences.” There’s plenty of work here that people outside the community of specialists and aficionados don’t often get to see.
The art world has not embraced the show (to put it mildly), and here’s why. In playing to its largest audience to date, the New Museum is not only pandering, but trying to trump the competition with the undeclared game of “collect the collector.” At the show’s core is a distorted and depressing reality: Joannou’s collection is drawn from a tiny slice of the art world—the superrich, the super-hyped and the supermale. (Barely a quarter of the work is by women.) It includes far too many famous artists who sell to major collectors for vast sums. It’s a history of the winners of one particular game—a narrative that’s simultaneously blinkered, elitist, and annoying.
What especially irks me is that the curating tells us more about Koons than it does about contemporary art, and he says it better in his own work. On his own, he takes sex into strangely decorative, materially obsessive, convoluted, and psychotic directions: A bouquet of flowers is all about vulvas and desire and much more. A lot of the art he selected here is less nuanced, simply body-obsessed and often heavy-handed. Koons has said that he “tried to choose iconic pieces … works that seemed to have a really strong voice.” He succeeds occasionally, like when he plays with monumentalism (size apparently does matter). The standoff between Charles Ray’s bizarre eight-foot businesswoman and Liza Lou’s beaded sculpture of a gun-toting Pam Grier enacts Koons’s idea of a psycho-sculptural race war. (Another terrific Ray piece nearby, Revolution Counter-Revolution, is a carousel rigged so it appears to be going backwards and forwards at once.) Roberto Cuoghi’s nineteen-foot Assyrian-Babylonian god and David Altmejd’s mixed-media The Giant—an overscale naked man with squirrels nesting in his limbs—reign, alternately threatening and chimerical, over their respective rooms.
There’s another theme of terror, foreboding, and paranoia. Cady Noland’s 1989 figure of Lee Harvey Oswald, tucked away in a staircase nook, should be installed on the Mall in Washington, a haunting monument to what William Burroughs called “the evil … there waiting” in America. Maurizio Cattelan’s shrouded marble bodies lined up on one floor constitute a chilling allegory to both fear and history, and are made all the more eerie by a nearby Tino Sehgal performance in which a singer intones “This is propaganda, you know you know, this is propaganda.” The room becomes a morgue with a manic mourner. And Robert Gober’s uncanny, surreal paired installation, Highway and Two Spread Legs, in which mannequin legs stick out of a wall papered with cartoon roads, implies how alive museums can be.
But, overall, there’s too much junk: Matt Greene’s amateurish paintings, and sculptures by Takashi Murakami, Paul McCarthy, and Tim Noble and Sue Webster. And what is lacking throughout is a coherent vision.
I hope “Skin Fruit” is the final scene of the New Museum’s uneven first act in its new building. For two years, the institution has emphasized cheek, playing to the obsolete mind-set of “Love it. Hate it. See it!” It’s time to change the formula. Shock value, savvy, and being adversarial are fine if they are backed up by credibility and vision. Too many shows here have lacked both.
The key to a great sex life is a healthy brain, according to psychiatrist and brain imaging specialist Dr. Daniel Amen. Having accumulated a database of over 36,000 brain scans taken over the past 15 years, Dr. Amen says the way the brain looks and functions says a lot about the way a person will behave.
In his book Sex on the Brain: 12 Lessons to Enhance Your Love Life, Dr. Amen reveals how to use practical brain science to enhance your sex life and your relationships. Here are just a few of his findings:
•The brain is the largest sex organ in the body, Dr. Amen says.
•Brain health and brain illness have a powerful affect on sexuality. “When your brain works right, you work right,” he says. “You can be loving, thoughtful, attentive, consistent, romantic, playful.”
•There are many “brain issues” that get in the way of great sex, such as Attention Deficit Disorder and depression. Treating these issues can enhance our ability to connect with others and perform sexually, Dr. Amen says. He recommends omega-3 fatty acids in the form of fish oil, exercise and l-tyrosine (the amino acid building block for the neurotransmitter dopamine) for increasing the activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, thereby diminishing these conditions.
•Changing the way you think about a problem can change your brain scan, hence your brain function. “If you focus on five things you’re grateful for every day, you’re going to have a lot less problems with depression,” Dr. Amen says, “And depression is a huge turn off when it comes to sex.”
•Male and female brains are different. Understanding these differences is critical to a healthy sex life, Dr. Amen says.
•According to Dr. Amen, women need to ask for what they want sexually, and must teach their men through repetition, practice and good coaching.
•A foot rub really is foreplay. “What a lot of people don’t know is that the foot area in the brain—the area of your brain that feels your feet—is right next door to the area of the brain that feels your genitals,” Dr. Amen explains.
•There are real aphrodisiacs, Dr. Amen says, and it’s all about blood flow. Dr. Amen says he uses Asian ginseng, gingko biloba and L-arginine, all of which boost blood flow to the brain. On the flipside, Dr. Amen says anything that decreases blood flow to your brain decreases it to your genitals, including caffeine, nicotine and a lack of sleep. In addition, Dr. Amen says some natural aphrodisiacs for men are cooked cinnamon, pumpkin pie, donuts, lavender, cheese pizza and roast beef. He says baby powder works well for women.
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Michael Rosenfeld, a founding partner at Creative Artists Agency who shaped such showbiz classics as “West Side Story,” “Mary Poppins” and “Rich Man, Poor Man,” died March 25 of respiratory failure in Los Angeles after a long illness. He was 75.
Rosenfeld, whose son Michael Rosenfeld and daughter-in-law Sonya Rosenfeld have followed in his footsteps at CAA, played a huge role in the growth and success of the Hollywood talent agency. He started the firm’s literary department, developing relationships with two giants in the field, Mort Janklow and Sterling Lord, before leaving in the early 1980s for a career as a producer.
A Philadelphia native with a talent for music, Rosenfeld began in the mailroom at William Morris in 1957, then moved to the firm’s Los Angeles office in 1959. He co-founded CAA with Bill Haber, Ron Meyer, Michael Ovitz and Rowland Perkins in 1975.
Rosenfeld represented Rita Moreno and George Chakiris and secured their roles in the 1961 film version of “West Side Story,” for which they both won Oscars (the film took home a staggering 10 trophies). He also persuaded Disney to cast Dick Van Dyke in his iconic role in “Mary Poppins” (1964); the film was nominated for 13 Oscars and won five.
Rosenfeld also represented William Link and Richard Levinson, the creative team behind TV hits “Columbo,” “Mannix” and “Murder, She Wrote,” and sold the first miniseries, “Rich Man, Poor Man” (1976), to ABC (that project collected four Emmys and 23 noms). He also brought together the creative elements for MGM’s musical hit “Fame” (1980).
Rosenfeld also represented Marlo Thomas, Joanne Woodward, Ann-Margret, Eva Marie Saint and Dyan Cannon, among others.
After leaving CAA, Rosenfeld produced the skateboard cult classic “Thrashin’” (1986) and “Flowers in the Attic” (1987). He also produced the 1984 miniseries “Fatal Vision,” which won an Emmy for actor Karl Malden, and the 1989 telefilm “The Case of the Hillside Stranglers.”
Rosenfeld was born June 28, 1934, to Maxwell Rosenfeld, a Pennsylvania state senator, and Edith Rosenfeld Ginsburg. At 11, he appeared on the “Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour” playing the guitar, and began composing music at 16, first at Lower Merion High School in Philadelphia and then at Penn State.
In addition to Michael and Sonya — who both have a hand in literary work at CAA — Rosenfeld is survived by his sons Maxwell and Jackson; his daughter Molly; his daughter-in-law Glenele; his grandchildren Casey, Willy and Hannah; and his aunt, Gertrude Mandell.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. April 8 at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the CAA Foundation.
