But I am tired of the focus on local and organic foods in these discussions. Most Americans do not eat enough fruits and vegetables. Most Americans don't cook enough. There is a huge cost issue to buying organic/local and a huge time cost in growing your own food.

We need to focus on getting people to eat more fruits and vegetables before worrying about where those fruits and vegetables were grown. And we really need to stop caring what the Obamas eat for dinner.

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Anyone else feel she's turned the Whine up to Eleven?

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Why the concept of moderation so difficult to grasp?

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...Like now.

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Moderation. I - and my President - has it.

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As someone who used to obsess over "healthy" food (which is often - and in my case - a euphemism for dieting), all I can do is be thankful that I decided to allowed myself to (gasp) eat hamburgers and fries again. I eat cheese almost every day. But because I'm still extremely active I'm still very healthy. Wow!

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I hope it's just me.

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The very reason that civilization has gotten to the stage that it's at now is because large-scale farming replaced hunting/gathering or subsistence farming. Most people in the developed world are free to pursue a career path that has nothing to do with agriculture or food production, if they so choose. Because modern farming is able to produce so much food per acre, populations can get denser. Not that I'm saying this is good for us or for the planet, but it's the reason there are so many of us, and so much art, and so much literature, and so much science, and so many cities.

Compounding the problem in some areas is the very short growing season. If I were to move back to my hometown in South Dakota and eat only local produce, there'd be about three weeks out of the year where I was vigorously canning, freezing, etc whatever I could get my hands on, and then the rest of the year it'd be frozen sweet corn and little else.

I live in NJ now, where the growing season is also pretty short, and I do stuff myself silly with local produce when it's available. But if I want to eat any fruits and vegetables for the rest of the year, I have no choice but to eat produce that's grown elsewhere.

Obviously the Obamas aren't advocating that everyone stop buying food in stores and drop everything and start a garden and ONLY EAT THAT. It's simply not possible for most of us. However, it *IS* a good idea to supplement your diet with local food whenever possible. It tends to be fresher and tastier, and it doesn't have to be transported as far, which is obviously better for the planet.

It seems a good example is to cut down on far-flung mass-produced foods WHEN POSSIBLE; it's absolutely insane to insist that we need to starve to death in the absence of our own personal gardens.

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And irritating because someone upthread (and boy am I glad I lost my ability to do @ comments) dropped some crap idea that local eaters in New Mexico (as are our neighbors to the west in Arizona) are out of luck because we can't "farm traditionally." No, no, no, no, no. I know that when most people hear "desert southwest" the Sahara comes to mind, but you've got to look past the word to the world. I live in some of the most fertile land in the nation and we're blessed with a longer growing season than most of y'all. My growers' market goodness starts in April and doesn't churn to a halt until the middle of November. I know that shouldn't stick in my craw the way it has, but I assume it'd be akin to me saying something like, "oh, those poor saps in the DC area, stuck in such a swampy area; they can't possibly have decent local food."

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