Living in Our New World Part 5: Food

There's two kinds of food in the world today: real and artificial.

Real food is what our grandparents and great-grandparents ate. It was what I grew up on in New York in the 1950s and early 1960s. Just down the road from us was a farm owned by an elderly Polish couple. One day one of their cows died. My father heard about it and drove his tractor over, dug a deep hole, and buried the cow. It would have taken a long time to dig the hole with a shovel. After that, we would often open the front door to find a basket of fresh produce on our porch. (They also made dandelion wine--the only alcoholic drink my father ever drank. But that's another story.:-)) My mother canned every summer and we enjoyed the results of her work often in the winter. Mom cooked simple food. Real food.

But times changed. Women started working outside the home in larger numbers in the 1970s. There was more disposable income and less time to cook. Convenience foods became the response to "What's for dinner?" With the addition of chemical preservatives and the inclusion of whatever was left over from the production of other foods, we moved from real food to artificial food. Try to understand, or even pronounce, what's on the ingredients panel on that box of breakfast cereal or that microwave dinner and you'll see what I mean.  

In the US, Australia, and Canada, where about 70% of my readers come from, we see a lot of artificial food. Even the meat that people eat is largely artificial. Cows, designed to eat grass, are now fed corn because it's cheaper and easier. Factory-raised farm animals are injected with chemicals and antibiotics to increase corporate profits. Most people eating meat and fish have no idea what is in their food. Suffice it to say it's not "real."

Or read the headlines. We're seeing more and more foods banned from import or being recalled due to contamination scares. From spinach to beef to milk, there are serious problems with our monoculture farms, factory farms, and processing plants.

Then there are all the attendant problems of getting our food to us. Our fruit and vegetables are raised to look good rather than taste good, picked before they're ripe, shipped a few thousand miles, wrapped in plastic, and plunked down on the store shelves under artificial lighting designed to make them look good.

We're already seeing the risk of this corporate-based farm system as even in the U.S., there have been food shortages this year. Try googling "wheat rice shortage." Then add "Costco" and you'll see what I mean.

The answer?

Raise your own, buy local, swap with neighbors, shop at farmer's markets, join a CSA. Get to know the people who grow your food. And the closer to home your food is grown or raised, the better it will taste, the less it will harm the environment, and the healthier it will be for you and your family. The food scandals we've been hearing about are because everything was done behind closed doors. When you isolate yourself from the people who eat what you produce, it’s easy to think only of your own personal gain. Another indication of the sad state our food industry is in? When you visit a factory farm for chickens or cows and have to put on a hazmat suit (garment worn as protection from hazardous materials or substances) you know they're not producing healthy food.

As we transition into our new normal way of living, food will be one of our primary concerns. We have to change the way we think of it. Most homes in the U.S., Australia, and Canada have about three days worth of food on hand. The supermarkets also stock about three days worth of food. In the U.S., both FEMA and the Red Cross are urging people to have two weeks of food and water on hand. FEMA expects people to be self-sufficient in an emergency. So consider that for those first two weeks, you and your neighbors are on your own, and plan accordingly.

After Ike hit Galveston and Houston, there were reports of American Red Cross workers not eating all day. Food was so scarce that volunteers didn't want to eat in front of the people who were desperately in need of food. So the volunteers didn't eat. Many local families could only get one meal a day. In the few weeks after the hurricanes, in the southeastern U.S. there were long lines at gas stations as supplies were severely restricted.

We've gotten used to getting what we want, when we want it. In the "new normal," this will no longer be possible. We're going to need to do some planning. Like our grandparents and great-grandparents did.

(Tomorrow: Living in Our World Part 6: Back Down the Ladder)

Comments

[EJ]

This sounds a lot like Michael Pollans advice: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
From his book The Omnivores Dilemma, I think.

[Venerable Wuling]

EJ,

Thank you for visiting! I've read both Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food and recommend both. Next on my list (among others!) is Paul Robert's The End of Food.