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Good Food, Good Thought
So I’m still reading (aka listening to the audiobook) The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Pollan made a quick comment in passing. He said a lot of people are starting to see the connection between good food and good thought. That “Good Food, Good Thought” has in a way become a sort of motto for a lot of the pastoral farmers, local eaters, and slow food proponents.
What I think he meant by this is that good food equals good thought. Or to say it more bluntly, what and how we eat is a direct reflection of what we think about the world. Pollan was echoing this comment made by Joel Salatin earlier in the book,
You know what the best kind of organic certification would be? Make an unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmer’s bookshelf. Because what you’re feeding your emotions and thoughts is what this is really all about. The way I produce a chicken is an extension of my world view. You can learn more about that by seeing what’s sitting on my bookshelf than having me fill out a whole bunch of forms.
In this light, eating moves from being a utility to being a theological and political act. Food moves from being a commodity to being a hinge upon which we see the world. I’m not so sure I ever write anything worth reading twice, but if I did that might have been it. Eating is not a utility but a theological and political act.
You can extrapolate that out to how and what we shop for. How and what we drive. How and what we entertain ourselves. These are not utilities. These are theological and political acts.
I know. I know. I’m probably taking myself too seriously again. But I wonder if I come off like an extremist because of how far culture has moved. I’m certainly not advocating we go back to the “good old days”. Or even attempting to romanticize the past when in fact it involved way more sweat and way more tears than I’m willing to shed. Technology and science play to vital a role in my life and the lives of others for me to think otherwise. But I start to think about how most “extremists” today in regards to alternative living are in fact not doing something new, but rather are rediscovering old ways.
These days you sound like an extremist or a hippie when you start talking about eating and shopping locally. But this is something that was as normal as normal gets back in the day. To talk about eating food that is grown without added hormones and done so in sustainable ways gets you labeled as 1) elitist or 2) a zealot. But this was the only way our ancestors knew how to eat.
Good food means good thought. What we eat and how we eat it says a lot about our view of the world. Even about ourselves. Cheap, fast, processed, watered-down, accessorized, injected with junk, artificial, mass-marketed, over-marketed, over-packaged, dressed up, and the list could go and and on. It doesn’t take long to start to see the connection. Our food says a lot more about us than I think we might care to admit.
I’m working on a rather extensive project that I hope to be blogging about soon that shows just how far we’ve come and how integrated our eating is with almost everything else we do. But first I’ve got to finish up some research and crunch a lot of numbers. In the meantime, please be patient with me as I shift all of my economic talk to food talk. Which I think is the only natural progression.
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In this light, eating moves from being a utility to being a theological and political act.
God calls us to be holy like He is holy. I want to eat holy food what would be on the menu for my theological holiness?
God save us from high-fructose corn syrup.
I was surprised to find the situation a little bit better in the UK. Most meat and produce is sourced from on the island itself, while anything imported has the country of origin clearly marked on the front. Anything flown in by air (such as bananas) must be fair trade-certified as well.
That’s not to say things are great here. Organic food is of course more expensive - US$3.65 for a small jar of pasta sauce, for instance. But with some laws and labeling requirements in place, it seems like a good place to start.
You might check out a grocery store in Portland called New Seasons. Think of it as Wild Oats for the people. Of course, it’s hard to beat a good farmers’ market.
Your explanation between eating as a theological and political act and a utility was helpful, and it sums up what I’ve been trying to tell my friends and family for quite a while.
A couple of weeks ago I was visiting my parents in Ohio. My father and I went to the grocery store, the local-ish store. Halfway through shopping he stopped at the single-packaged hot chocolate mix (nice) and told me that this was the reason he shopped at Wal-Mart. These single-packaged hot chocolate mixes were three times the price at the local grocery store vs. Wal-Mart.
What people don’t understand is that by looking at individual food prices we focus only on micro-economics, and I’m afraid that as the economy goes down a quick death micro-economics will be justified more and more.
What I tried to get my parents to understand was it is all connected. Driving twenty minutes to Wal-Mart when there is a grocery two minutes away, working 45 minutes away when there are companies looking for employees just down the road.
When will we ever see that the way we live isn’t about individual survival, but is instead about living in a way that declares boldly that I/We put our security in God.
I’ll get off my soapbox now.
Thanks again for the post.
thanks for the comments.
and you make a good point dustin. those packets at wal-mart don’t factor in the “true-cost” but rather by doing things in scale and paying workers (in store and in the fields) next to nothing, they are able to use them as a form of cheap labor to give us the cheap costs. which is a nice way of saying that we are complicit in their slavery.
The hardest thing I’ve discovered is helping people just stop being “me centered” and to admit that caring for the needs of other people is how we should be living. Its impossible to be ethical or see the rationale for paying a few cents more for something if you don’t give a crap about others. My atheist and nominal Christian friends literally laugh in my face when I bring these issues up. My Christian friends generally tell me that I shouldn’t be dictating morality to the world (although they are quick to support abortion and gay-marriage bans).
Our food says a lot more about us than I think we might care to admit. Great point, and like usual, one that I’d never looked at before.
As for the true cost of walmart, I don’t think we can really factor all of the economic downturns it causes when we begin to shop there instead of other stores, but one of the hardest things about living in the suburban world- you have a hard time finding local grocery stores, unless we count whole foods as local (As they try to buy from local farms).
word, Julie.
I’ve been stunned by the reactions of some people when I have mentioned stuff like Kiva. The initial response of so many is to write if off because they aren’t rewarded with interest when they fund someone’s loan. really heart-breaking.
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in lands of abundance the basic necessities of life are not food and clothing, but generosity, compassion and a social morality. Even our eating needs to be a relational activity. There is a lot of imagining yet to be done.
I’ve managed at a local health food store for about 13 years. Most of our shoppers are ‘average Joes’ who want their milk or meat to be hormone free; or who want their eggs to come from free range chickens. What makes me a little sad, however, is that most of these customers are only doing it for their health. Sustainability doesn’t seem to be an issue for them. I wish they would see the bigger picture and take the logical next step.
Josh,
Have you seen this?
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/214
I loved his organic farm concepts. They were so simple and so utterly amazing.