We’re all familiar with the saying, “you are what you eat.” But two recent articles got me thinking that perhaps this old adage would be better stated, “you are what you think you eat.”

The first is a unnecessarily hateful article called “Extreme Eating” by Joel Stein in this week’s Time magazine. Stein decides to stick it to the “luddite” locavores, by making a meal strictly with ingredients grown 3,000 miles from his Los Angeles home and purchased at Whole Foods. (He must mistakenly believe that locavores revere Whole Foods as some sort of local food Mecca.) Stein writes:

“I want the world to come to me, to see it shrink so small it fits on my plate. I want Maine lobster in broth flavored with Spanish saffron. I want Alaskan salmon, truffles from Europe, a bottle of Beaujolais, a damn pineapple. And I want them much more than I want that carrot you grew in your garden. Because I know you’re going to talk to me for 20 minutes about your carrot.”

I’m not about to fight to the death for locavores or stop supplementing my CSA share with the occasional avocado or grapefruit. And as I’ve said before, there’s bound to be some backlash against sustainable food this year. But Stein’s “distavore” meal is little more than a petulant and obvious attack on a movement that has caused a lot of people to consider more carefully the impact of their food choices.

In his article, Stein likens his meal to one fit for a “European king.” Well, he’s right. European kings were known for cutting off people’s heads to get what they wanted, and in a sense, that’s exactly what his meal (ahem, publicity stunt) accomplished.

The second article, “Is Kosher Food Safer?” in U.S. News by Deborah Kotz, reports that the term “kosher’ has trumped “organic” and “no additives or preservatives” as the most popular claim on new food products. Turns out consumers think food stamped with a kosher seal is safer than non-kosher products. Kotz writes:

“…sales of kosher foods have risen an estimated 15 percent a year for the past decade. Yet Jews, whose religious doctrine mandates the observance of kosher dietary laws, make up only 20 percent of those buying kosher products.”

Most of these consumers believe that the extra inspection and stringency over kosher food production makes them “safer” (e.g. less likely to have food borne pathogens.) And in a country where e.coli-tainted beef is recalled what feels like every week, who can blame them? But as Rabbi Avi pointed out today on this blog, (and as many others have commented elsewhere), the kosher food industry is as likely to certify “unsafe” food (e.g. food stuffed with chemicals and perservatives that Joan Gussow would define as “non-food”) as any other food company.

Sadly, when these consumers purchase kosher-certified Cheese Curls or similar crappy kosher snacks thinking they’re doing something good for their health, they end up letting the industry turn them into suckers.