Food for Thought - Part I

In a previous post I mentioned I'd just read Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - A Year of Food Life." I have to admit, it's a book I've been putting off for a while because it's non-fiction, and I must confess that sometimes for me reading non-fiction is a struggle unless the book is something I'm truly interested in, like pirates, American history, or political commentary. And even with subjects I'm very interested in, I've waded through some writing as dull as watching paint dry.

And as most fiction-lovers, I've had to put up with so many of those rude, snobby comments from non-fiction readers about how fiction-readers are intellectually inferior, keeping my mouth discreetly shut while longing to make a retaliatory comment about lack of imagination and variety.

However, I finally beat down the NONFICTION monster and delved into Kingsolver's book. Had I not already been a huge fan of Kingsolver's fiction, I likely would've never picked up this book - and that's hard to imagine. From the first pages I never felt a need to lean on the crutch of a fiction book. I took my time, forcing myself to go chapter by chapter, stopping frequently to check out facts and web pages she's listed, and pausing to make notes in my garden journal.

This book is about Kingsolver and her family embarking on a year-long quest to eat foods only gown locally, either from their own farm or purchased from area farmers. She mixes in her reasons for taking on this challenge, and presents many facts and truths about our current mainstream food situation.

She really hit hard on some issues that have been rattling around in my brain for a while now: 1) our fragile food distribution system and the waste it causes, 2) our MEGA loss of vegetable varieties, and 3) the widening gulf between us and our food - not just that it comes from far off, but in the short span of about 50 years we've lost most of the knowledge about growing food that our grandparents just knew. Thousands of years of food-growing knowledge, now gone from our common collective in the blink of an eye. In addition, she touches on the very scary reality of lab engineered hybrid plants - some now being spliced with animal genes. Makes you think twice before diving into that plate of hybrid corn-on-the-cob.

I've mentioned before when talking of gardening that it bothers me greatly that so much of our food is imported. There is a massive gulf between a great majority of us and our food - not only in physical distance, but in the knowledge of where it comes from and how it's grown. It doesn't seem right that we can go to the grocery store in January and buy a puny-looking watermelon. It goes against my ingrained sense that watermelons are to be consumed when the temperature is at least in the 90's and you eat it while standing outside leaning over so the juice doesn't get on your bare feet and make them sticky. And if you actually buy one of these in January, you quickly find that it wasn't worth a cent of what you paid.

What I didn't know is exactly HOW FAR removed we've come from our food supply - so far that kids now don't have a clue what "out of season" means, unless they are one of the dwindling farm kids or in the small minority of gardening families. They don't realize that milk really does come out of a cow, that carrots grow underground, or that peas were in a pod before a can. In addition to our disturbing lack of knowledge, having so much of our food shipped in from parts unknown causes a pretty precarious food supply chain. If that chain were to break, what would we do? A great majority would be running around like headless chickens, with no clue how to produce any food, let alone preserve it for later. Then there's the recent salmonella outbreaks - by the time a problem is realized with the spinach from California, it's made it's way to all points of the country.

I myself know that an apple, no matter how beautiful it appears, isn't supposed to taste like mealy cardboard. A tomato is supposed to be RED (if it indeed is a red variety), juicy, and very tasty - not grainy and hard. I wonder, how many people so far removed from food production really know WHY apples taste so much better in the fall and tomatos all of a sudden gain color and taste in the summer? (Not to mention go down in price). Do they care?

Where I disagreed with Kingsolver was where she seemed to take blame for this trend completely out of the hands of the consumers and put it squarely on "evil" capitalism. It's plain where she stands politically, and she's got every right and decent arguments to that way of looking at things. I just simiply disagree. You're not going to convince me that capitalism isn't the best way to do things - it's what made our country great in the first place. However, it does come with some undesirable side-effects, such as Walmart and lazy consumers. I put the great majority of the blame on the consumer. Capitalism will supply what the consumer demands, and if the consumer demands peaches in December, by golly someone will try to make money getting them into consumer's hands. And the lazy consumer will think this is great, forgetting that peaches are supposed to be eaten in the summer when they are (here we go again), in season, not only tasting good but benefiting local growers.

In addition, Kingsolver really truly believes in global warming caused by greenhouse gasses caused by us, the evil fossil fuel-user, and therefore we shouldn't buy imported foods because of how much fossil fuel it takes to get it from one place to another. I may not agree with the reasoning - I'm not so sold on human-caused global warming as to think we're destroying the planet by eating out-of-season foods, but I do agree it's a tremendous waste, to think of the amount of fuel and resources used to get a tasteless out-of-season apple from California to New York.

I REALLY hate waste. My husband refers to me as the "Water Nazi", and also gets irked that our Tupperware cabinet is full of used butter and cottage cheese containers. Hey, why buy Gladware when you buy it already? Who cares if it says "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter"?

And that's one of my points - I believe we can be much healthier, improve the economy, and "save the planet" just through old-school common sense rather than radically changing the fundamentals of our American way of life. How many rich actors screaming about environmentalism save their butter containers and re-use water bottles?

Even if you disagree with the above sentiment, wouldn't it be at least a little better if everyone were more aware of where their food comes from? If everyone were to make a little effort at buying local food and helping the local economy? If we took a step back and re-learned a bit of the knowledge that was so common just 50 years ago? I just happened to drive by the farmer's market last week, and there were plenty of delicious-looking organic produce, at VERY reasonable prices. Yep, even though I'm going to be covered in tomatos in the next few weeks (I got mine in late), I bought some. Along with a very delicious watermelon. And yes, my first step toward heirloom gardening was saving the seeds.

I'm not at all sure I'm ready to take the year-long challenge as Kingsolver did, though I may think about it. Of course, Marden would also have to be on board. And when you think about what that REALLY means, it's a daunting proposition. But, I feel we're on the right track.

I'm sure I'll have much more on this later, lest my rambling thoughts continue to carry on in different disjointed tangents for pages. For now, just some "food for thought."