This article originally ran at Forbes and has been republished here with permission of the author.
What happens when a liberal New York Times activist-food columnist decides to start his own business?
Grab your organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, locally-sourced, free-trade popcorn, because this will be good.
Mark Bittman, until recently a food columnist at the Times, was one of the more mordant voices among food activists, reliably unfurling the flag of the liberal elite’s crusade du jour. Along the way, we suspect he must have set some sort of record for corrigenda for his bizarre, profligate and serially ignorant pronouncements about genetic engineering. More generally, Bittman’s columns gave voice to the food movement’s various rants about the American food system, often pointing the finger at the evil U.S. food companies who somehow manage to feed 310 million American each day (plus a few hundred million more around the world) cheaply, reliably and safely.
Besides genetic engineering, some of his favorite targets included McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and the “industrial agriculture” that Bittman says is poisoning our bodies and polluting our planet. He has authored books, appeared often on TV and radio, and now (God help us) teaches journalism at the University of California Berkeley.
Bittman is the kind of pretentious food snob who says unserious things in a serious way , hoping to lend his ideas some intellectual heft. Ideas like converting suburban lawns into vegetable gardens and mandating that vending machines sell fresh fruit instead of Cheetos. And like most liberal-activist foodies, Bittman’s solution to all our problems–from childhood obesity to diabetes and cancer–is just a government-fix away: taxing, spending, regulating and subsidizing our way to a healthier America.
In an interview last month, Bittman jumped the shark-fin soup; He suggested that federally-funded cooking classes should be taught at public venues like libraries and post offices, even promoting the idea of communal kitchens:
They would be nonprofit organizations where good food would be cooked locally and could be purchased as inexpensively as possible because it would be subsidized. I know that this sounds like communism [sic], but so be it.
Comrade Bittman also favors a new national drinking age . . . for soft drinks:
I suggest we start discussing carding kids when they go to the counter to buy a Coke. In other words, you have to be sixteen to buy a Coke, because we don’t think that you’re able to make a decision about how much soda you can drink until you’re sixteen. Really it should be twenty, but I’m compromising because it’s such a far-fetched idea. But it’s not a wrong idea, it’s a right idea.
As usual, Bittman’s ideas are half-baked. He is too blinded by ideology to understand that such a “solution” would require endless regulatory rule-making and tinkering (to say nothing of an enforcement mechanism). Would the age restriction apply only to drinks like Original Coke (26 grams of sugar, 100 calories)? How about Coke Zero and Diet Coke? Or mango juice, a one-cup serving of which has 31 grams of sugar and 128 calories—both higher than Original Coke? Or Gatorade (14 grams of sugar, 50 calories)?
Bittman often sounds like a middle school C-student writing an Earth Day essay on ways that he would like to improve the world.
It may be that making the transition from the lofty heights of big-time journalism to the world of entrepreneurship is making Bittman even more unhinged than usual. In November, Bittman announced he would leave the Times to start a meal-delivery company called Purple Carrot. (Yellow Journalist might have been more apt.)
The company will ship vegan meal kits to subscribers across the country made with “ingredients of the highest possible quality, often organic, always non-GMO, and ethically sourced” (a claim that sounds eerily like Chipotle, whose policies and poor management have caused six outbreaks of food poisoning around the nation during the past year and caused their stock price to tank.). Meals for January include Katsudon with Pickled Pea Salad and Tamari Cream, and Red Lentil Stew with Cranberries. (We’d so much prefer a cheese-and-mushroom omelet, pasta or a tuna salad made from ingredients we already have.)
Bittman is giving us a front seat to his journey from a self-described anti-capitalist to entrepreneur in a series of Internet posts that will chronicle the company’s start. (Disclosure: We’re not investing.) So far, the posts are a mix of hubris, hope and honesty, the familiar musings of anyone who has ever tried to start a business. Our favorite line so far: “My mornings were filled with dread, my afternoons hope, and my evenings . . . well, alcohol.”
But unlike most people who start a business, Bittman has a long paper trail marked by goofy ideas and unchecked idealism to live up to. It’s one thing to write from a position of presumptive moral superiority at the Paper of Record about how companies should pay food workers $15 an hour and use only locally-grown, seasonal, organic and non-GMO food sourced from small, independent farmers. It’s quite another to make a food business fly while giving backers a return on investment.
Bittman’s first post was prophetically entitled, “This Is Gonna Be Harder Than I Thought.” You get the feeling Bittman is already experiencing the inevitable clash between the ideals he’s written about and the harsh truths of making a business succeed:
In my heart, I don’t believe making money is an honorable goal, even if it’s ostensibly linked to doing good things. And thus began the struggle, with both my conscience and the realities of business.
At bottom, however, many of the goals that Comrade Bittman thinks are good things in fact are not . Locavorism is naïve and overrated, organic agriculture is a marketing hoax, and the rejection of products made with the modern techniques of genetic engineering is harmful to the environment and to the best interests of farmers and consumers alike.
It’s a good thing Bittman doesn’t think making money is an honorable goal, because idealism based on flawed assumptions can be expensive. Right off the bat, some of his initial goals have been scuttled to meet the launch deadline. They kicked off “without any of the things I thought essential: the ingredients from top-notch sources, the advanced and more responsible packaging, the perfectly executed recipes. I was going to be branded as a hypocrite—at least by myself.”
We concur.
Bittman’s longtime adherence to the dubious agricultural practices called “agroecology,” which he describes as “a system that produces responsibly, sustainably, ethically produced food, a system that takes into account the well-being of farmworkers and soil,” is also on the back burner. Turns out obtaining food produced that way for thousands of people each week ain’t easy (this from the person who once scoffed at Wal-Mart’s pledge to source more food from local, small farms).
Bittman has likewise backpedaled on the company’s pledge to serve local, organic and seasonal ingredients for now, instead settling for food produced domestically and eliminating “produce that has been treated in especially harmful ways and are easily avoided.” Whatever that means. (We guess he misses the Times’ copyeditors.)
It’s clear that moving forward Bittman will continue to struggle with the conflict between his “mission” and his business. You get the sense that Purple Carrot might suffer the same fate as Chipotle, a cautionary tale of how sanctimonious idealism eventually confronts marketplace realities. In the words of the late Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, “You can’t eat potential.”
In the meantime, we look forward to indulging in a little Bittman-related schadenfreude after having endured years of his lecturing us how, what and what not to eat , while he vilified American farmers, food companies and major retailers.
Who knows–maybe a future Bittman post will be entitled: “My Apologies.”
Julie Kelly is a food writer, cooking instructor, and owner of Now You’re Cooking in Orland Park, Ill; you can reply to her on Twitter @Julie_Kelly2. Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; he was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology.
Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy & Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Follow him on Twitter @henryimiller.
