Political food for thought from Ruth Reichl: from Kielbasa to Clark bars to ... tasty-if tainted spinach.

For some, mealtime heavy lifting consists of forkfuls of cheesecake.

For Ruth Reichl, it's all about the food--where it comes from, how it's produced, and what's really in it.

The Taste of Pittsburgh dinner at this year's NCEW convention included some serious food for thought. Reichl topped off a buffet ranging from kielbasa to Clark bars with a talk on the politics of what we eat.

And it wasn't about Red State steak versus Blue State sushi.

As editor of Gourmet magazine, Reichl knows her food. That insight isn't necessarily comforting. She informed and, at times, probably appalled NCEW listeners. Reichl was on a mission not only to articulate her views on food-related issues, but also to enlist the support of her opinion-writing audience in spreading the gospel of change.

Ironically, the day Reichl spoke, we learned of an E. coli infection outbreak across the country that investigators blamed on bagged spinach.

Making it a little personal was the nice spinach salad NCEW conventioneers enjoyed for lunch that day.

It was delicious.

After much investigation and at last report, wild pigs wandering onto a spinach field were targeted as the source of the outbreak. At least that's the theory. The tainted spinach wound up in a large California processing plant, which shipped its produce under different names all over the country.

The incident offered a timely endorsement of Reichl's advocacy of locally grown produce. Industrialization of the spinach trade made it difficult to pinpoint the source of the contamination. And instead of containing the infections to a small region and population, they were everywhere.

There was indeed weight behind many of Reichl's observations. But after hearing her describe the horrors of corporate hog and milk production, the ocean vacuuming of assorted fish species, and the health and policy consequences of importing much of America's food, more than a few in the audience were no doubt wondering: "So what's left for me to eat?" Practicality becomes a problem.

Modern technology and government subsidies make it possible to produce lots of food at a ridiculously low cost. Reichl's vision of organic farms--kept small and close to consumers--translates into higher prices, because of the techniques employed and the lack of economies of scale.

How many Americans will accept the trade-off? And doesn't an allegiance to locally grown produce mean we must accept restrictions on our food choices?

Still, there's that nagging question of sustainability. Can current agricultural practices continue indefinitely?

In many parts of the United States, irrigation and water use is draining aquifers. Recent studies show decreases in the nutritional value of crops, as chemical fertilizers fail to replace the soil's trace minerals. Agricultural biotechnology brims with unanswered questions.

It's possible to conclude that Reichl's response to food issues is unrealistic. But do we dismiss her out of hand? To automatically assume time and technology will resolve problems within modern agriculture demands a level of optimism that's unwarranted.

Of course, any deeper discussion about the future of world food production must include an assessment of the planet's exploding human population.

But that's a different dinner topic.

Mitch Olszak is editorial page editor of the New Castle News in Pennsylvania. E-mail mitcho@ nowonline.net