The "What we eat is what we are"-Thread

[Fischkoepfin 1]

I'm a food nut, or that's at least what a lot of my friends say. But when I received my copy of "The Nation" last week, I felt vindicated in my concern about what I eat.

And because I know I'm not the only "food nut" on VJ, I thought I'll share this with all of you. You might not agree with everything said in the issue, but take a look at an issue that will gain more importance in the coming years.

Slow Food Nation

by ALICE WATERS

[from the September 11, 2006 issue]

It turns out that Jean Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin was right in 1825 when he wrote in his magnum opus, The Physiology of Taste, that "the destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they are fed." If you think this aphorism exaggerates the importance of food, consider that today almost 4 billion people worldwide depend on the agricultural sector for their livelihood. Food is destiny, all right; every decision we make about food has personal and global repercussions. By now it is generally conceded that the food we eat could actually be making us sick, but we still haven't acknowledged the full consequences--environmental, political, cultural, social and ethical--of our national diet.

These consequences include soil depletion, water and air pollution, the loss of family farms and rural communities, and even global warming. (Inconveniently, Al Gore's otherwise invaluable documentary An Inconvenient Truth has disappointingly little to say about how industrial food contributes to climate change.) When we pledge our dietary allegiance to a fast-food nation, there are also grave consequences to the health of our civil society and our national character. When we eat fast-food meals alone in our cars, we swallow the values and assumptions of the corporations that manufacture them. According to these values, eating is no more important than fueling up, and should be done quickly and anonymously. Since food will always be cheap, and resources abundant, it's OK to waste. Feedlot beef, french fries and Coke are actually good for you. It doesn't matter where food comes from, or how fresh it is, because standardized consistency is more important than diversified quality. Finally, hard work--work that requires concentration, application and honesty, such as cooking for your family--is seen as drudgery, of no commercial value and to be avoided at all costs. There are more important things to do.

It's no wonder our national attention span is so short: We get hammered with the message that everything in our lives should be fast, cheap and easy--especially food. So conditioned are we to believe that food should be almost free that even the rich, who pay a tinier fraction of their incomes for food than has ever been paid before in human history, grumble at the price of an organic peach--a peach grown for flavor and picked, perfectly ripe, by a local farmer who is taking care of the land and paying his workers a fair wage! And yet, as the writer and farmer David Mas Masumoto recently pointed out, pound for pound, peaches that good still cost less than Twinkies. When we claim that eating well is an elitist preoccupation, we create a smokescreen that obscures the fundamental role our food decisions have in shaping the world. The reason that eating well in this country costs more than eating poorly is that we have a set of agricultural policies that subsidize fast food and make fresh, wholesome foods, which receive no government support, seem expensive. Organic foods seem elitist only because industrial food is artificially cheap, with its real costs being charged to the public purse, the public health and the environment.

The contributors to this forum have been asked to name just one thing that could be done to fix the food system. What they propose are solutions that arise out of what I think of as "slow food values," which run counter to the assumptions of fast-food marketing. To me, these are the values of the family meal, which teaches us, among other things, that the pleasures of the table are a social as well as a private good. At the table we learn moderation, conversation, tolerance, generosity and conviviality; these are civic virtues. The pleasures of the table also beget responsibilities--to one another, to the animals we eat, to the land and to the people who work it. It follows that food that is healthy in every way will cost us more, in time and money, than we pay now. But when we have learned what the real costs of food are, and relearned the real rewards of eating, we will have laid a foundation for not just a healthier food system but a healthier twenty-first-century democracy.

Source

Be sure to check out the forum.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Thanks for sharing. We just bought some peaches from a farmers market. No twinkies for us.

[Fischkoepfin 1]

Thanks for sharing. We just bought some peaches from a farmers market. No twinkies for us.

You're welcome. I never thought of the fact that Twinkies are cheaper than peaches; probably because I don't eat much candy. But farmers' markets rock...

[ChristinaM 0]

Fischkoepfin, the issue of cost came up recently in this thread: http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.ph...c=29312&hl=

I don't recall if you replied on it already, but I thought I'd link it.

The article was interesting, another thanks for sharing from me.

[samir_shannon 0]

Thanks for sharing. We just bought some peaches from a farmers market. No twinkies for us.

mmmmmmmmmm... i love good 'ol Georgia peaches

here in north carolina i love going to pick fresh strawberries and blueberries ... i freeze them and make pies in the winter with fresh fruit

[Fischkoepfin 1]

Fischkoepfin, the issue of cost came up recently in this thread: http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.ph...c=29312&hl=

I don't recall if you replied on it already, but I thought I'd link it.

The article was interesting, another thanks for sharing from me.

I did see the other thread, but haven't read it yet. The reason I decided to start a new thread was mainly that I wanted to make more people aware of this special issue on food and of some aspects which are not considered in most debates on obesity, such as the environmental impact of factory farming. Thanks for the link though.

[belize 0]

Good thread....i've read a lot about the slow food movement....my husband and i are both organic farmers, hoping to save money and continue education in the US and then return to our farm in Belize...

On anthother note, when I move back to Belize I would like to educate the locals about factory farming. When mennonites moved to Belize, the modern ones took over the agricultural industry with copious amounts of fertilizers and pesticides and now supply meat and eggs for the entire of belize....imagine shells that crack when you touch them, with milky yellow yokes (vs. the hard shells and dark orange yokes of the non-hormone-pumped local chickens)....anyway, i'm all for the organic and slow food movement....

[Reba 2]

I'd love to eat more organics, and there's more and more of it showing up in grocery stores around here. Even Kellog's is making organic cereals now, much to my delight! Its so very hard to find anything that's good for you anymore, even when its labeled Smart Start Healthy Heart, its still full of ####### and more #######.

Hubby wanted to go to Checkers for dinner today, I said nope, we've got hamburger, we'll make 'em at home.

He'll swear up and down that my having almost eliminated ####### food from the house has anything to do with his weight loss Its not easy, but I'm tryin'!

Watkins has even just introduced a line of 19 organic spices. Fairly priced too!

Edited September 4, 2006 by Reba

[Fischkoepfin 1]

I'd love to eat more organics, and there's more and more of it showing up in grocery stores around here. Even Kellog's is making organic cereals now, much to my delight! Its so very hard to find anything that's good for you anymore, even when its labeled Smart Start Healthy Heart, its still full of ####### and more #######.

Hubby wanted to go to Checkers for dinner today, I said nope, we've got hamburger, we'll make 'em at home.

He'll swear up and down that my having almost eliminated ####### food from the house has anything to do with his weight loss Its not easy, but I'm tryin'!

Watkins has even just introduced a line of 19 organic spices. Fairly priced too!

Yeah, I think it's great that you can get more and more organic food across the country, but there's also a problem with that. On the one hand, the "organic"-label had been watered down quite a lot so that not everything that says organic is truly organic. On the other hand, one of the positive side effects, namely that eating organice food supports local farmers, is being diffused because grocery chains don't buy locally (for the most part).

But maybe the general availability of organic food will make people more aware of local farmers. That would be good not only from an environmental perspective, but also in terms of national security (according to bio-terrorism experts the centralized food-supply is a major weakness).

Good thread....i've read a lot about the slow food movement....my husband and i are both organic farmers, hoping to save money and continue education in the US and then return to our farm in Belize...

On anthother note, when I move back to Belize I would like to educate the locals about factory farming. When mennonites moved to Belize, the modern ones took over the agricultural industry with copious amounts of fertilizers and pesticides and now supply meat and eggs for the entire of belize....imagine shells that crack when you touch them, with milky yellow yokes (vs. the hard shells and dark orange yokes of the non-hormone-pumped local chickens)....anyway, i'm all for the organic and slow food movement....

Interesting, especially the connection between Mennonites and agri-business in Belize, since in large chunks of the US, the old-fashioned Mennonites as well as Amish are a mainstay of locally produced organice food. Also, your info on Belize shows that this is more than a national issue by now.

Good luck with your organic farm!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Great post!

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

We are what we eat? Oh boy. I might be in trouble...

[garya505 2]

I'd love to eat more organics, and there's more and more of it showing up in grocery stores around here. Even Kellog's is making organic cereals now, much to my delight! Its so very hard to find anything that's good for you anymore, even when its labeled Smart Start Healthy Heart, its still full of ####### and more #######.

Hubby wanted to go to Checkers for dinner today, I said nope, we've got hamburger, we'll make 'em at home.

He'll swear up and down that my having almost eliminated ####### food from the house has anything to do with his weight loss Its not easy, but I'm tryin'!

Watkins has even just introduced a line of 19 organic spices. Fairly priced too!

Yeah, I think it's great that you can get more and more organic food across the country, but there's also a problem with that. On the one hand, the "organic"-label had been watered down quite a lot so that not everything that says organic is truly organic. On the other hand, one of the positive side effects, namely that eating organice food supports local farmers, is being diffused because grocery chains don't buy locally (for the most part).

But maybe the general availability of organic food will make people more aware of local farmers. That would be good not only from an environmental perspective, but also in terms of national security (according to bio-terrorism experts the centralized food-supply is a major weakness).

Good thread....i've read a lot about the slow food movement....my husband and i are both organic farmers, hoping to save money and continue education in the US and then return to our farm in Belize...

On anthother note, when I move back to Belize I would like to educate the locals about factory farming. When mennonites moved to Belize, the modern ones took over the agricultural industry with copious amounts of fertilizers and pesticides and now supply meat and eggs for the entire of belize....imagine shells that crack when you touch them, with milky yellow yokes (vs. the hard shells and dark orange yokes of the non-hormone-pumped local chickens)....anyway, i'm all for the organic and slow food movement....

Interesting, especially the connection between Mennonites and agri-business in Belize, since in large chunks of the US, the old-fashioned Mennonites as well as Amish are a mainstay of locally produced organice food. Also, your info on Belize shows that this is more than a national issue by now.

Good luck with your organic farm!

Organic doesn't always mean organic.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/Consumers/brochure.html

[Saddle Bronc 124]

We made a trip (driving) to Marietta for July 4 weekend (actually we came back on 3rd, and watched fireworks at Inner Harbour) and bought a case of GA peaches (about 9.08 kg, consumed by 7/23) and bag of pecans (about 1.82 kg, of which we so far consumed 0.91 kg in a sweet-making attempt; the sweet was excellent, but its consistency was powdery rather than solid pieces).

Twinkies, HoHo's etc., we can't even buy (Hostess products are definitely NOT Levitical).