Buy cheap or buy green?

With the whole up-and-coming recession thing, I'm seeing two retail trends.

1. Recessionista: Making it trendy to pay less for stuff. [Pictured here: Coco Chanel in the 30s. Buying accessories was one way to make dresses last longer during the Depression.]

" Grant Barrett, a lexicographer who specializes in new words and slang, said the word is being used to give Americans an excuse to buy more stuff. “It’s kind of permitting consumers to have justification for their spending habits,” he said. Mr. Barrett included “recessionista” as an up-and-coming catchphrase earlier this month on his Web site, DoubleTongued.org. “The idea is, because they are spending less or getting more value, it is still O.K. to shop,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It’s a very self-serving message.”

2. High End Eco Brands: The other trend is putting out super-duper eco friendly products, which cost more (with the idea that people are more willing these days to pay the *real price* for Christmas cards, wrapping paper, and such. Click here for example.)

[Pictured here: A dissolvable dress!]

Not sure how I feel about both. On one hand, they both continue to promote buying more stuff than you need. Crap in landfills is still crap in landfills. Or even if it's recyclable, it still requires money and energy to recycle-- the first R in the green trio is "reduce" (reduce, reuse, recycle.)

I guess I still lean slightly more towards Option 2--pricier goody-tqo-shoes stuff--since pricier usually means you'll buy less, won't buy impulsively, and the products have a smaller footprint to begin with. And then for things you need to buy more frequently, perhaps the Recessionista option works better. I've switched over to higher priced products in my goal to go greener, organic and vegan--ee-er, but I can't afford to buy everything this way.

Option 2 is also, more often, made locally. Making stuff that's eco-forward and local is where many western politicians are trying to move their countries as a way out of the financial crisis. For example, the US economy was once built on Ford Motors--can the economy be rebuilt on green technology imagined and built in the US? Option 2 would support that kind of innovation and job creation.

Anyway... interesting!

Yay! Less dieters! Amaaazing!

Excerpts from a nice good-news story in the New York Times about the decrease in dieting, and increase of home-cooking. Especially interesting is this idea that cooking is a practice we've lost and need to pick up again. I used to think I was "not a good cook" (except baking!) until two summers ago when I said to myself: Self, you is an academic. And if academics are good at anything, it's learning the basics of ANYTHING... from a book.

So I started picking up vegan cookbooks that were well reviewed on amazon, and that looked quick, and I taughts myself how to cook well. I've been so amazed at the results, Eating Out doesn't hold much allure for me anymore, because good vegetarian food is so hard to find--even what I cook is usually better. And I've followed the books enough now that I can experiment a little without things going horribly wrong. (I toyed with a black bean salad recipe this week and it worked! I toyed with spaghetti sauce and it worked!)

The bottom line is... if I can learn to cook decent (and often delish) meals in one summer, so can any fool. It can't be that much of a lost art. I will add, however, that it requires lots of base ingredients to be on hand, and to have an organized kitchen.

*

AFTER decades of obsessing about fat, calories and carbs, many dieters have made the unorthodox decision to simply enjoy food again.

... The percentage of those consumers who are on a diet is lower than at any time since information on dieting was first collected in 1985. At the peak in 1990, 39 percent of the women and 29 percent of the men were dieting. Today, that number has dropped to 26 percent of women and 16 percent of men.

The diarists also report eating more organic foods and whole grains, said Harry Balzer, an NPD vice president.

...In May, the market research firm Information Resources reported that 53 percent of consumers say they are cooking from scratch more than they did just six months ago, in part, no doubt, because of the rising cost of prepared foods.

...“We need to demystify cooking,” Ms. Waters said. “It creates feelings about food that make you feel cared for, and that’s the kind of food that really changes habits.”

The cookbook author and television personality Rachael Ray has attracted both loyal followers and harsh critics for creating food that doesn’t focus on calories, fat, carbohydrates or even portion control. She intentionally doesn’t include calorie information with her cookbook recipes.

“I think that puts your head into science and away from what I think the experience of food should be,” Ms. Ray said.

...“If everyone ate more plant-based and more whole foods and unprocessed foods, that would be major,” said Arlene Spark, associate professor of nutrition at Hunter College in New York. “But that would mean people going back to cooking, and what we’ve lost is people’s ability and knowledge of how to cook.”

...Last year, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported on a study of 97 obese women, all of whom were avoiding high-fat foods. Half the women were instructed to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. By the end of a year, the women who were focused on adding vegetables lost an average of 17 pounds, 20 percent more than the women who were just paying attention to fat consumption.

Also, the more time people spend on tasks like food shopping, cooking and kitchen cleanup, the more likely they are to be of average weight. The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture found that people of normal weight spend more time on meal-related tasks than people who are overweight or underweight.

Getting off the grid... the Corn Grid

Side Project: Finding an alternative drink.

Right now I drink Crystal Light, not for diet reasons, but for sugar-sitting-on-the-teeth reasons. But I've always known I need to find an alternative, and now that I'm conducting my anti-corn experiment, this must be The Time. Corn dextrin is the main ingredient.

I know, I know, I should just drink water. Well... I can't. It makes my stomach glurgly! And I can't just add some lemon to water, because I'm allergic to citrus--I get cankers like a moze-foze. So I'm experimenting with herbal tea, and then I'll experiment with adding a little sweetener (agave or maple syrup)... juuuust enough to give it some pizazz. Will keep you updated.

I've got to work on my hot drinks too. Right now I use faux sugar (probably made from CORN!) to sweeten my hot chocolates or chai lattés, but I think I'll switch over to Stevia. It's a real sugar, but doesn't rampage through your blood sugar the way refined sugar does.

It's all very exciting.