I am not a fan of Nina Planck. I do not enjoy her writing, I do not enjoy the content of her articles. I am not impressed by her thinking or by her methodology for backing up her contentions about food. I am, in fact, so turned off by her and her schtick that I won't even link to her book on Amazon or any of her opinion pieces in the New York Times.
How is it that Nina Planck went from self-proclaimed savior of the family farm and fresh food in London (via the Farmers Market movement) to New York Greenmarket Director to darling of the New York Times and a poster girl for a rather elite form of 'civil disobedience'?
Three answers - at least as far as I know- and likely more that I don't know:
1. She's coupled up with Rob Kaufeldt, the very visible personality behind Murray's Cheese, which many in New York believe to be the best in the US. And he's raising her baby as his own.
2. Her book Real Food presented a fresh perspective (eat lots of food, as long as it is from the farm, and here's why....) in a casual voice. No one seemed to notice that the evidence for her contentions about the benefits of the foods she extolled was flimsy at best.
3. She's cute, in a horsey sort of way.
Why all this vitriol today? Because of the most annoying article I've seen in the NY Times food page in a long time - Joe Drape's "Should This Milk Be Legal" article (which I will not link to either).
Here's an excerpt:
"Nina Planck, the author of “Real Food: What to Eat and Why,” defied the F.D.A.’s warning and drank raw milk while she was pregnant. She not only continues to drink it while nursing her 9-month-old son, Julian, but also allows him the occasional sip. She has an arrangement with a couple of farmers to deliver it to New York City.
“We drink raw milk because we trust the traditional food chain more than the industrial one,” said Ms. Planck, who knows a number of farmers from her days as director of the New York City Greenmarkets and through her boyfriend, Rob Kaufelt, the owner of Murray’s Cheese in Greenwich Village.
“We’re willing to spend more money the higher up the food chain we go,” she said. “We’re not alone, either. You cannot categorize the people who are drinking raw milk. They are people from the blue states and red states, farmers and yuppies and Birkenstock wearers.”
Don't get me wrong - I like drinking raw milk. I spent a summer on a goat dairy drinking raw goat's milk and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss it. It just tastes better.
But I find Nina Planck's very public role as spokesmodel of the food ultra-aware to be irritating at best and infuriating at worst. And Mr. Drape's hyperbolic writing, e.g., "Nina Planck...defied the F.D.A's warning and drank raw milk while she was pregnant," commits further idolatry at her feet as if she were the Rosa Parks of the raw milk movement.
She's not. But she just looks really good with a raw milk mustache. And she's got all the right friends to make sure she stays in the spotlight.
