It seems to me that many people don’t realize how important food is. Food along with air, water, and shelter is the basis of life. We get grouchy if we don't eat. We are in better moods if we are well fed. And we are healthy if we eat correctly. We bake cookies for people to show we care; we break bread and bond over food. We go out to restaurants to have an experience, a girl’s night out, or a romantic dinner. And yes if you think about it eating is not the most attractive of things but still food is necessary. We bring food into our home, into our bodies, into our families and friends' bodies. That brings food to be one of the most intimate things in this world to us. If people mess with our food we get upset think GHB, irradiation, bovine growth hormone, GMO's, the organic craze, fortifying of foods and the list goes on. So food is necessary, food is intimate and lately in today's society food has been ABUSED, especially in America.
Wake up KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, Red Robins and Processed packaged reheat able meals ugh. A processed breaded chicken patty loaded with preservatives and salt is not a meal! ICKY! We have let food become impersonal, ripping open lasagna in a box and reheating it, buying pre-prepared healthy choice dinners, buying salad in a bag, meal replacement bars etc. Not only have we allowed food to become impersonal we have allowed the system of growing and buying food become impersonal and industrialized. Fruits, vegetables and meat are shipped many hundreds of miles from where they are produced, to be sold in large supermarkets. I am not completely innocent in helping these trends continue; I shop at Meijer and lord knows where that food comes from and how many miles it has traveled to get there. I've made the mistake of buying out of season foods and have paid the price. Hard tasteless pears, bruised avocados, sour grapes. I am in this situation too but I am unhappy about it and want to change it for myself and for others.
The problem is A) mindset on life and B) the system and infrastructure of what our food system is.
A) So we are busy on the go Americans. We want it all and we want it all NOW. This leaves little time for family let alone preparing a meal ourselves and having a family dinner together around a table (not a TV). Women came into the work force mostly during the war to help America and support their kids. Well they've stayed in the workforce to increase home income. Why do we want large incomes? It used to be so we all could go on family vacations and have nice things when we relax. But now work takes us away from the things that we were once striving to have. It seems we just want more and more money for the sake of having money, not for having quality family time. In lieu of these changing lifestyles fast food restaurants have popped up creating unhealthy eating habits for many people. Many food companies are responding to the demand for quick and easy meals by making easy to heat dinners, lunches and even breakfasts. This would be fantastic in my mind if only people actually ate them together.
B) Our food system is based on large farms that ship food across the country. If one of these farms has health issues people across the nation pay the price. We have turned to mono cropping and irrigating the desert to grow food enough for the country. Due to this system, huge amounts of nonrenewable fossil fuels are used to grow the crops with the aid of fertilizers and plowing. Then there comes the waste in shipping a crop (which is harvested not at the peak of flavor) to local groceries and convenience stores around the globe so Americans can have flavorless grainy tomatoes in the middle of winter.
Wouldn't it be nice to know the person that puts in hard labor to grow the food that you eat for dinner? To have a personal relationship with other families that buy from this person? To not have to worry if the lettuce you got from the supermarket is the same as the lettuce being recalled for E. coli? To know that the food you eat is organically grown and picked when it will taste the best and is at it's most nutritious? That fossil fuels were not wasted in shipping you carrots all the way from California? How come it is now a privilege for a four star restaurant to buy local produce? To have relationships with farmers down the road or even have a farm for the restaurant? How did that become a novelty practice? With the distance we have put between ourselves in cities and the areas where our food comes from, we have increased our impersonal relationship with food. Children do not know that carrots are roots and grow in the ground, and who knew that a prune is a dried plum?
Yes, "new" practices people have been “creating” such as organic, naturally grazed life stock, and polycropping have been “developed” to enhance our efficiency and the safety of the food we eat. Maybe eating local would cut down on the trucking industry in some areas, but it would be for the best. There are still going to be specialty items at stores that need to be shipped: chocolate bars, cookies, and soda. Trucking will not be eliminated due to a local food revolution but it will help to cut back on the use of fossil fuels.
How is it that we came to view food as a nuisance rather than a focal point of our lives? How is it that we have come to rip food apart and then place it back together while destroying the nutrients and increasing the fat content all in the name of preservation and convenience?
If we continue our systems the way they are now we have no hope for health in the future.
