Food Food Everywhere

In case you haven't noticed, we seem to be experiencing a Food Renaissance here in America. Look in your local newspaper, turn on the TV, go anywhere online, and you will find ads and programs and articles about cooking schools and urban gardens and the slow-food movement. Entire TV networks are devoted to food, and other networks—like the History Channel— can't resist offering full-on food-focused programs. Boutique cooking schools touting classes for kids or moms' groups or bachelors seem to be popping up by the dozens, and I just read about a company that sends chefs across the country to give live cooking demos to large audiences in restaurants and expo centers.

Local food, slow food, real food, fresh food. Whatever you call it, food is on our collective mind. No wonder I have a food-related blog! And I am not even a "foodie"!

Still, we have good reason to bring our focus back to food. We have learned that our food isn't always treated very well by big corporations that grow, harvest, process, and distribute it. Issues with food safety, the environment, workers' rights, international trade and inspections, and costs add up to a growing distrust of the food industry as a whole.

So it follows that we are taking a whole new look at how and what we eat these days.

Food is at the center of our personal economics.
Food is about health — if you're eating right, you're hopefully going to be healthier, and that should keep your health care costs down.
Food is about the earth. If you buy locally-produced foods, you are no longer contributing to a global distribution system that requires huge outputs of energy to get those apples from, say, New Zealand, to your lunchbox in Boston. You also support agriculture in your own community, and you have the chance to learn about and contribute to a sustainable local economy.
Food is about community. Humans have always connected around food. It is celebratory, ritual, spiritual, divine. We live or die by its availability and quality. We work together for it and share in its abundance. Have you ever celebrated something, anything, without food?

I guess what I'm saying is,well, food is life.
Old idea, basic truth.
But modern living has had a way of distracting us from the basics. In America at least, we can really get a lot of food without knowing one thing about who made it, how they made it, or where they made it. We've become lazy-- we can grab the loaf of bread off the shelf instead of harvesting the wheat or at least kneading the dough. We're obese and disconnected and half-asleep and trusting our very lives to a system that's too large to take our welfare into consideration. That's a kind of trust we need to reconsider. I doubt the global food industry will collapse if I buy local or grow my own veggies. But maybe if enough of us do it, that industry will get wise that we're getting wiser, and good changes might come.

So hail the Food Renaissance. Let the local food fests flourish! Let the cooking classes multiply! Let the gardens grow!


Happy eating & thinking,
Margie