On several occasions, I have participated in Blog Action Day, an annual event wherein bloggers from around the world post simultaneously about a chosen topic of global importance. This year, food is the topic of concern, and thousands of bloggers from more than 80 countries are posting about the subject food on this day, the 16th of October, 2011. The following is my own rumination about food, from the personal to the global and back again. You can read more entries at the Blog Action Day website and blog.
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Throughout my adult life, I have generally tended to view
food as being medicinal in nature, and this tendency has only grown as I have
entered middle age. While food represents many things to many
people---including culture, pleasure, sustenance, survival, identity, a sense
of belonging---my connection with food remains solidly in the categories of
health and well-being, with a generous helping of pleasure.
Being from a family with a Jewish heritage reaching as far
back as the genealogy can see, one would think that Jewish cultural foods would
figure strongly in my predilections and preferences. While my mother did indeed
make matzo ball soup and other Jewish foods when I was a child, that Jewish
identity never really took hold, especially since we were raised, ironically,
with all of the Christian holidays, albeit celebrated in a thoroughly
assimilationist and secular manner.
So, with no real cultural identity per se, I was unleashed into the
world to find my own gastronomic way, and, for the majority of my adult life,
that road has been paved with health food.
The term “health food” is somewhat of a misnomer, since many
foods can be readily associated with health, even as more and more foods have
had the health literally stripped out of them in the processing plant. Still,
health food conjures images of bins of granola, honey, fresh fruits and
vegetables, tofu, and any number of items that can be easily lumped into that
broad category. “Whole foods” is, in my view, a much more apt definition of the
way in which I like to eat, but a very large health food corporation (which
shall not remain altogether nameless in this case) has now trademarked that
name for its own. Thus, telling someone that you eat a “whole foods” diet will
only bring sneers and a chuckle, and perhaps a sense from the listener that you
spend so much money on groceries that you probably have to give up other things
like cars, gasoline, and a telephone. (They don’t call the aforementioned store
“Whole Paycheck” for nothing.) Still,
“whole foods” explains one’s dietary preferences much more aptly than “health
food”, but we’ll leave the name issue for someone else to tease out.
For my wife and me, food is where the rubber meets the road
in terms of our health, and we have generally opted in our two decades together
to spend more on good healthy food rather than put our money elsewhere. While
other families eschew organic produce due to its relatively high cost, we would
much rather cancel our cable or cut back on other expenses rather than buy the
mainstream non-organic alternative. We recognize that organic can be more
costly, and we understand which foods are most important to purchase
organically and which are safe to buy that are conventionally grown. We also
recognize that many people simply cannot afford organic food, and as a health
coach and nurse, I would far prefer that a client purchase non-organic produce,
wash it well and enjoy it, rather than processed foods with little redeeming
qualities. And in areas that are known as “food deserts”, many people simply
have no access to fresh produce or even a supermarket, relying on fast food and
highly processed foods from convenience stores.
Amazingly, the organic movement has grown (Wal-Mart is now
one of the largest vendors of organic produce in the United States), and as
demand has risen, prices have come within reach of more and more Americans. And
as more Americans wake up to the fact that genetically modified foods grown
with petroleum-based fertilizers on corporate farms are not in their best
interest---or the country’s best interest, for that matter---demand will only
continue to rise.
In a world where food insecurity is increasing, famine is
spreading across portions of Africa, and topsoil erosion and access to water
are increasingly problematic, the issue of food is central to our very
survival. With free trade agreements decimating certain farmers’ ability to
sell their crops at a profit, family farms being foreclosed in record numbers,
and corporate agribusiness growing at an alarming rate, we are at a moment in
history when the security, quantity and quality of our food supply is in
jeopardy. It’s all well and good to espouse the benefits of a healthy diet,
proper hydration and plenty of aerobic exercise, but there is no getting around
the fact that millions of people around the world---many of whom live in your
home town---go hungry every day, or simply don’t have the security of knowing
where their next meal is coming from.
Food is a loaded issue, and it carries a great deal of baggage
for all of us. My memories of my mother’s matzo ball soup may linger in my
cellular memory until the day that I die, and meanwhile I have the economic
privilege of buying just about anything I want at the grocery store (within
reason), never personally knowing the stresses and concerns of those who
cannot even afford to adequately feed their children each morning.
I can rail against Monsanto for genetically modifying corn and depleting the
topsoil through poor farming practices in favor of profits and high yields, yet
I also need to remember that some unknown neighbor of mine just down the street
doesn’t have enough cash flow to stock the fridge as his children clamor for
the sugary and marginally nutritious cereals they see happy people eating on television.
Yes, food consumes us just as we consume it, and it is the
future of food itself that should truly consume us day and night. “Give us this day our daily bread” should
be our rallying cry, and if our collective moral compass was not somehow askew
in this world out of balance, we would have already figured out how to feed
every person on the planet.
In the optimism that I have cultivated---or discovered---in
this second half of my life, I know in my heart that change is indeed coming.
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement is
only one example of how the world is changing as people individually and
collectively wake up to the many stark realities that we face on a global
scale.
In my small world, it can feel like a crisis if I can’t find
the item I’m seeking when I walk the aisles of the health food store or I
forget something important during a shopping trip. But my personal crises hold
no water in the larger scheme of things. Proportionality is the operative word
of the day, and the proportion of hungry people in this world must be contended
with, lowered, and eventually brought under control. As we mine the human
genome and monitor the universe for signs of intelligent life, we continue to
demonstrate that we have the collective intelligence and technology to solve
the food crisis for ourselves.
What we need now is a collective will to feed the world, and
to transform this crisis into an opportunity. We can indeed feed the world, and
if we decide to do so, there is no force on earth that can stop us from moving
unequivocally towards that goal. Be it “whole foods”, “health food”, or just
simply “food”, the name is not as important as the intention. We know how to
grow healthy foods, we know how to produce foods that are less processed, more
nutritious, and more affordable, and we know that we have the ability to do so
if we truly desire to. So we say again, “give
us this day our daily bread”, and when we say “us”, we realize that we truly understand the meaning of that word.
#bad11
