Throwback Thursday -Let Them Eat Cake

agroterrorism.

There are a lot of great, albeit traditionally left-winged reasons to eat locally. Eating locally supports small family owned farms and food producers, decreases the carbon footprint of your meals, discourages industrialization of farming practices and therefore the prevalence of pesticides and herbicides, supports your local economy, increases community sustainability, decreases dependence on the migrant workforce and foreign energy sources, and generally results in healthier meals and fresher/tastier food on your table. And we wonder why more conservatives haven’t hopped onto this bandwagon.

But there are a couple of reasons for eating locally that the conservative right can get behind. Eating locally is the best protection against food-related outbreaks of illness and diesease and eating locally is the best way to combat agroterrorism. That’s right, agroterrorism, the malicious use of plant or animal pathogens to cause devastating disease in the food supply.

In 2006 Michael Pollan wrote an article for the New York Times discussing the role of industrialization in the prevalence of food-related outbreaks. While his article was written in the context of a spinach-related E coli outbreak, the recent problems with the peanut industry and the worldwide outbreak of swine flu have brought the issue back into focus. In his article, Pollan argues that the centralization of food processing and distribution centers leads to more frequent and widespread issues of infection and contamination, whereas food grown, processed, and distributed locally decreases the reach of food-related outbreaks and allows for faster and more efficient identification of sources and solutions to food-based illnesses. Pollan further goes on to note that when Tommy Thompson retired from the Department of Health and Human Services in 2004, he said “For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do.” This sentiment was reiterated by the G.AO. in its 2003 Bioterrorism report to Congress, “The high concentration of our livestock industry and the centralized nature of our food-processing industry make them vulnerable to attack.” And they’re right, in 2006 eighty percent of beef in the United States was slaughtered by four companies and seventy-five percent of all precut salads were processed by only two companies. The implications of these numbers when viewed in the context of the spread of disease and our current healthcare crisis is terrifying. And the proof, at least lately, is in the peanut butter.

What this means is that food consciousness is no longer the proprietary holding of the liberal left, but a necessary and immediate change that must be made in the daily lives of ordinary citizens for the protection of public health and safety. Take back your health from the hands of industry, eat locally, and with compassion.


To read Michael Pollans article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/magazine/15wwln_lede.html

For more information on farmers markets, eating locally, and CSA food shares:
http://www.localharvest.org/
http://100milediet.org/
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Image courtesy of:
http://www.sheknows.com/articles/803410.htm

Food Rules

Eat.

Food activism was alive and well even a century ago, but it was considered common sense, not radical eating.  The most interesting thing about these US Food Administration recommendations from 1917 is the nod to buying locally.  The local food movement is largely touted as a 21st Century phenomenon, but the value of local food sources has long been understood.  Generations that lived through contagion, wars, or the great depression all understand  the value and necessity of having food at hand, and being able to grow more of it yourself.  There are few communities that grow enough food locally to be able to sustain themselves through crises, and crises are becoming more common as food sourcing and distribution is consolidated.  Interruptions in transportation or computing systems, extreme weather events, and economic instability all threaten the current food structure, maybe it's time to start listening.

A Laying On of Hands

retreat.

One of my favorite things to advocate for in terms of the promotion of a healthy environment and good nutrition is the formation of community. Or, put differently, the loss of community in the modern way of life appears to be intimately linked to the destruction of the environment and the deterioration of public health.

We began to lose community in the process of trying to create it. In building suburbs we created lifestyles based on long, isolating, gas-guzzling commutes that eroded our personal time making social interaction and exercise harder to come by. Beyond that, we designed our suburbs without sidewalks, town centers, or public play spaces, effectively isolating our children from one another and putting them and their caretakers back in the car in order to grocery shop or go to the park. Of course, once you’re in the car, the likelihood of each person on a particular street going to a different park or grocery store increases, decreasing the casual everyday interactions between neighbors that do so much to foster community. The time and energy required to prepare meals of whole foods from local sources was also squeezed out by the distribution of our lives across a greater geography and our increasing desire for “down time” and instant gratification.

And isolation breeds isolation. Once disconnected from our neighbors and surrounding community, we are more likely to tell ourselves that video tennis is a reasonable substitute for actually going to play tennis, forgetting that going to play tennis may involve taking a walk, running into the neighbors, getting substantively more exercise and valuable vitamin D, and interacting with our children and the environment.

And infrastructure breeds infrastructure. Once we are tied to our cars for all of our activities we need an increasingly large number of roads, increasing in size, to handle our increasing numbers and increasingly large cars. Retreating to our houses necessitates larger and larger houses, filled with more and more things, to fill the void left by the absence of regular social interaction and the necessary chores of a conscious lifestyle. Consumption itself becomes a hobby. Instead of community centers, our houses become show pieces, museums to ourselves with all the accoutrements of a modern lifestyle, televisions, stereos, Jacuzzi tubs, and little evidence of actual interaction with the world at large.

I suggest that the formation and fostering of community in and of itself is an act of subversion, or at least a tangible protest of the current status quo. I believe that community is one antidote to deteriorating pubic health, eroded social services, environmental decline and climate change, and the propagation of an unhealthy and unsustainable popular monoculture. And it’s easy. And it’s free.

Bad Medicine

patience.

In the midst of the growing national debate on health care reform, I have been a patient. I participate in two diametrically opposed health care systems. Traditional western medicine, where my appointment is cancelled and I'm charged a fee if I'm late while I frequently wait up to two hours to be seen for my appointment, and non-traditional/naturopathic healing, where I usually can just call and talk to my health care professional in person, and I often don't even need to be seen in person. I understand that both sides bring things of value to medicine. But only one of them allows me to retain my humanity.

I can't even bring myself to summarize the statistics I have in front of me regarding the state of medical care in the United States. But we all know, without the numbers or references, we all know that we pay more for a less efficient or effective system than almost any industrialized nation in the world. We also know that we're fat and getting fatter, and suffering the health repercussions. We know that our health care system is entrenched in the treatment of symptoms rather than causes, and that we are more likely to demand a prescription than suck it up and make a lifestyle change. We know that the current system values the prolonging of life far beyond the preservation of quality of life. And we all know, that even giving its failings, it's the only system we have fiscally available to us. And we still can't afford it.

So we need to go off the grid. All of us. Before our collective health and well-being goes the way of climate change, way too little, way too late. There's too much money invested in the "western system" to expect tangible and substantive changes, the ones that will make us happier and healthier, in our lifetimes. So, make the lifestyle changes you need to make to be a healthier person. Eat whole foods, that you prepare yourself. Exercise. Get massages instead of muscle relaxants, eat garlic instead of taking antibiotics. Meditate. Get a naturopath, they are true healers. Laugh. Take care of your body, it's the only vessel you're given.