Eating represents your most profound engagement with the natural world.
Agrobusiness puts our food supply in jeopardy. Ever wonder why there are such things as H1N1 (Swine Flu) or Mad Cow Disease and such horrible shit? Factory farms are a good way to mix maximum profits with disease, malnutrition and ill will toward animals. Cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys are confined their entire lives, breathing polluted air, then sent to the slaughterhouse, not only killed but killed in the worst way. The humans who work there are desensitized to all this. Its just a job. But take an instance of a turkey escaping from a processing plant and finding safety on the doorsteps of a home miles away. It has happened to other animals as well. They are smart and deserve better.
The sewerage from 1,000s of animals along with petrochemicals from farm fields drains into nearby streams, which drain into rivers, lakes and other water sources. Then think of the smell...it can be detected from miles away. Sure I'll have a chicken sandwich from McDonalds! Its easy to eat the shit because we're so far removed from our food source. Take an analysis of what is in that meat and you'll never eat it again. The slaughterhouse videos are out there. There are ways to treat animals with respect throughout their lives and still be a carnivore.
Ahhh...organic food. That 'O' word that is so controversial and criticized, perhaps because we're one too many generations away from farming that had any integrity and respect for the Earth and its creatures. What should be criticized (and quarantined in some cases) is our current, mainstream food.
Find your local Community Supported Agriculture here.
Organic is, simply,
pre-industry standard food. Organic is the food every creature has eaten since
the dawn of time until the rise of petrochemicals and agribusiness, which made food way too cheap. Anyone who listens to diet fads, succumbs to intentional grocery store layouts or food box labels is in danger of becoming diabetic, cancerous or sick if they aren't careful. We would be better off purchasing seasonal food from our local farmer or grow your own, like used to be done, rather than submit to our industrial food complex. What is especially disturbing is that people of lower income don't often have this option and they are the ones who end up most sick.
Where did
the real food go? What is easy and cheap are products, not food. Be wary of industry leaders who refer to their stock as 'products' rather than food. A product is any other building block of capitalist society that can be moved around to make a profit. Buy real food again and derail subsidized corporations that
rake in billion after billion to no end.
Go to farmer's market. Go to a small family farm. Grow your own garden and can vegetables. And by all means take someone who hasn't been or bring someone fresh vegetables.
*Why not to eat non-organic food. To put it simply, conventional food is making the earth sick. Everything is plastic, has MSG, preservatives, fat substitutes, sugar substitutes, are 'diet' foods and drink, etc. Look at the pattern. Are you eating a healthy diet? I compare it to whether or not humans ate it 300 years ago. Kraft Singles? Cross that off. Cookies someone brought in to the office? Throw it in the garbage. America has been trained to eat shit food.
*The nation is corn fed. Corn is the cheapest food available ($1.50 per bushel) and so it has become the staple. That's why we have the 99 cent hamburger. The real cost of a 99 cent hamburger is diabetes, obesity, antibiotic resistance, environmental devastation, etc. What does it really cost? Why do people want cheap? Look on the label of that bag of chips! What's wrong with eating a lot of corn? You can trace a lot of foods we eat back to corn and soybean fields in our country. This is what is called a mono-cultured diet, which is an invitation to disease. Listen to Michael Pollan's lecture on the politics of food. The following is corn-derived and should be a very minimal part of your diet:
- Baking powder
- Caramel
- Vegetable-anything
- Corn-anything
- Dextrose, fructose, sucrose
- Malt extract
- Starch
- Food irradiation
-
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
- Recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH)
- Corporate and payoffs
- A strong tie to the oil industry
- Obesity