Sustainable Foods?

One of the new buzz words in the Foodie community is Sustainable foods.
 
Could someone name one food that is "NOT" sustainable. 
 
they all seem to be sustainable to me. 
 
Are their foods near extinction that I should know about and eat before it is too late.
 
Thank you
 
Al

Actually it has two meanings. One is agricultural/ecological and the other is product life.
 
The first one is pretty obvious. Changing weather or enviorment patterns, ecological disturance due natural or unnatural effects such as urban encroachment, naturual and unnatural disasters such as the oil spill in the gulf or the Tusunami/radiation in Japan, plant and animal diseases and epidemics. You get the idea. Some of these disruptions can eithr cause extinctions, very limited availability, or diversion such as corn to biofuel that futures might takes it out of the food marketplace. Add to this economic pressures such as govt and local regulations that are all but limiting or completely locking out non-corporate farming that don't have the infrastructure to deal with crushing new regulations and beaurocracy.
 
Then there is the other definition that would directly affect food vendors much like any other industry that depends on sourced products. Not much is prepared from scratch anymore, nor is it worth it even with minumum wage workers to prepare foods and products that were common place just a few years ago. If you have a restaurant that is dependent on something that is pre-processed and you have no means to replicate it yourself, you have a food product that is not sustainable. For example, you start a sucessful fried chicken restaurant and base your breader on Chixmix All Purpose Coating with your own added spices and then the restaurant takes off and you franchise, at some point either the company has you where the hair is short or they may cease operation and no suitable replacement source can be found. In the case of a proprietary product that defines your business like a BBQ sauce or other signature item that uses currently commonly available ingredients may find itself years ahead with diminished or no available ingredients due to corporate takeovers, low sales, shifts in public consumption due to reasons of dietary or otherwise regulatory changes that eventually no companies are making the product any longer. No company(ies) is/are obligated to offer the same product(s) forever for much the same reasons. You can no longer offer that signature product that people have come to expect from a multitude of selective pressures that can't be anticipated in the future unless over time you gradually adulterate or change the product with little, if any public notice. 
 
 

DawnT


Actually it has two meanings. One is agricultural/ecological and the other is product life.

The first one is pretty obvious. Changing weather or enviorment patterns, ecological disturance due natural or unnatural effects such as urban encroachment, naturual and unnatural disasters such as the oil spill in the gulf or the Tusunami/radiation in Japan, plant and animal diseases and epidemics. You get the idea. Some of these disruptions can eithr cause extinctions, very limited availability, or diversion such as corn to biofuel that futures might takes it out of the food marketplace. Add to this economic pressures such as govt and local regulations that are all but limiting or completely locking out non-corporate farming that don't have the infrastructure to deal with crushing new regulations and beaurocracy.
 
OK, so tell me what food has vanished because of one of these "problems".


Then there is the other definition that would directly affect food vendors much like any other industry that depends on sourced products. Not much is prepared from scratch anymore, nor is it worth it even with minumum wage workers to prepare foods and products that were common place just a few years ago. If you have a restaurant that is dependent on something that is pre-processed and you have no means to replicate it yourself, you have a food product that is not sustainable. For example, you start a sucessful fried chicken restaurant and base your breader on Chixmix All Purpose Coating with your own added spices and then the restaurant takes off and you franchise, at some point either the company has you where the hair is short or they may cease operation and no suitable replacement source can be found. In the case of a proprietary product that defines your business like a BBQ sauce or other signature item that uses currently commonly available ingredients may find itself years ahead with diminished or no available ingredients due to corporate takeovers, low sales, shifts in public consumption due to reasons of dietary or otherwise regulatory changes that eventually no companies are making the product any longer. No company(ies) is/are obligated to offer the same product(s) forever for much the same reasons. You can no longer offer that signature product that people have come to expect from a multitude of selective pressures that can't be anticipated in the future unless over time you gradually adulterate or change the product with little, if any public notice. 

So, from what I understand, the "Secret Recipe" for Kentucky Fried Chicken is not know by any one person.  Parts are known by several people.  So if all these people vanish from the face of the earth, then Kentucky Fried Chicken is no longer a "Sustainable" food.  And right now, we can consider KFC Sustainable food.  Interesting.  Nice Try.

There is something called the "Sustainable Food Movement." The idea is to get away from large, corporate farms and move towards eating food grown in small, local farms, and to use as much land as possible for farming, and farm in such a way as to preserve the soil, and, in general, use a minimal amount of natural resources.
 
While there is nothing wrong with this and much to recommend it, it is also a relatively inefficient system in terms of actually feeding people. If the sustainability advocates got their way, Malthus would be back in spades, and there would be a lot of starvation. One of the founders of the movement literally said that if poor people spent less money on expensive sneakers, they could afford to eat sustainable food, one of the reasons why critics say that they have a "let them eat cake" attitude.
 
Bart

Did you actually read what I wrote? I said nothing about any food source vanishing. This is about economic sustainability. How would it impact consumers beyond a price they could afford if there were any of these disruptions.
 
What does KFC's internal security protocols have to do with this either? You simply don't have a sustainable product if your sources that you've become dependent on cease to be available.

Actually, food sources have vanished in the wake of natural disasters-especially in Japan.

I did read what you wrote,  did you?
 

DawnT


Did you actually read what I wrote? I said nothing about any food source vanishing. This is about economic sustainability. How would it impact consumers beyond a price they could afford if there were any of these disruptions.
 
And to quote from your first paragraph  "Some of these disruptions can eithr cause extinctions....."  to me, extinctions mean vanishing

What does KFC's internal security protocols have to do with this either? You simply don't have a sustainable product if your sources that you've become dependent on cease to be available.
 
And again I will quote you from paragraph 2  "For example, you start a sucessful fried chicken restaurant and base your breader on Chixmix All Purpose Coating with your own added spices and then the restaurant takes off and you franchise, at some point either the company has you where the hair is short or they may cease operation and no suitable replacement source can be found."   That is basically the same as the people who hold the recipe no longer exist and it can not be duplicated

Yeah I think that all foods are sustainable and the reason they existed is for us to consume. It may not be all are on the same level of nutrients but they can sustain human needs.