Food and Freedom

Fair trade and slavery. These are honestly not issues I know very much about. That's why I've been excited to write this particular post for a while now. My interest was piqued while working at a booth for the International Development Minor earlier this semester at BYU. We happened to be set up next to the booth for BYU's chapter of Free the Slaves. They were passing out flyers with the words "Got chocolate?" printed across an image of a delicious looking truffle. At the bottom was a statistic that cited some astronomical number of people in slavery to feed the world's demand for chocolate. Slavery. If that doesn't make you think about the impact of your food choices, I don't know what will.


Victoria and the letter-writing.


(Stay tuned for updates and revisions.)

Animal Products and Impact

Ok, I promised this post a few months ago when I had just started the blog. Here it is. (Stay tuned for updates and revisions.)

On Farmers' Markets and Local Food

"Local food" is a buzz word. It's a movement that more and more people are talking about and "buying" into. As with any buzz word, people ought to be careful and hear both sides of the issue, not just the bubbly enthusiasts. And I intent to research this one out and present it fairly. But for right now, I'm just  going to write my initial feelings on the phrase. You'll have to excuse me, but I'm definitely a bubbly enthusiast about this one. :)

(Stay updated for updates and revisions)

Farmers' markets and community

Sense of Place

etc

"Living on a Shrinking Planet"

I recently attended this fantastic lecture at a symposium held at BYU by the Environmental Ethics Initiative. This was the keynote address. It was titled, "Living on a Shrinking Planet: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainably Meeting Human Wellbeing." A perfect match for the purposes of this blog? I think so. Check it out! I learned a ton.


http://kennedy.byu.edu/archive/lecture.php?id=2792

Sustainable (Sea)food

This was one of the TED talks I watched just before starting this blog. Although it's about seafood specifically, it has a ton of great points about food sustainability in general. I've written a bit about the "protein problem" he discusses. I also love the way he talkes about "restorative food" and how food can be not just a commodity, but an opportunity to develop relationships - with people, with the earth, etc (if you've read my food & identity paper, these ideas may sound familiar).

I want to take a moment to highlight a couple of lines that he says in this video that perfectly reflect the reasons I'm writing this blog.

"Forget nuclear holocaust, it's the fork that we have to worry about." (4:08) Firstly, I'm writing because the food issues our world faces are serious. The systems we are participating in have disturbing consequences on human beings. These problems are not just going to go away. On the contrary, if we don't do something about them, they will continue to become more dire.

"Sustainability is complicated, but dinner is a reality that we all very much understand." (4:28) We all know our world is pretty messed up in a lot of ways. Sometimes those problems can seem too big for us to even dare approach. The food we eat, however, is something we can all relate to and control. It is a feasible way to begin to tackle enormous world problems.

"I expect a lot from food. I expect health, joy, family and community. I expect that producing ingredients, preparing dishes, and eating meals is all part of the communion of human interests." (7:16) It's not all about the doom and gloom. Sure, there are huge world problems associated with food, but it's also a joyous occasion! There is so much good that can come from understanding and dealing with food in a positive way. And the positive is really what I'm all about.


Therefore, I write the blog. Why? Because "there is no escaping that everything we eat has a global impact, so try and learn as best you can what that impact is, and then take the first step to minimize it." (8:37)


http://www.ted.com/talks/barton_seaver_sustainable_seafood_let_s_get_smart.html

Window Gardens and Collaboration

I love green. Since moving away from Tennessee and spending almost three years between some pretty deserty places (Utah, Arizona, and Central Mexico), I have missed my green rolling hills. Not only do I miss green scenic landscapes, I miss growing things! Growing my own food is one of the joys of Tennessee that I dearly miss, but it hasn't seemed like a particularly viable option in my Provo apartment. I would love to do something like this TED talk describes. A window garden would bring some needed green to my apartment as well as providing something tasty to eat. Crazy cool, right?

But what I found more important about this video is the collaboration that the talk describes. A lot of the message that I'm trying to communicate on this blog is that (1) we have the responsibility to make change and (2) we have the power to do so. The people in this story realized that "it's precisely when we hand over the responsibility for all of these things to specialists that we cause the kind of messes that we see with the food system" (around 1:35). If we want a better world, then we have to go out and make it, not wait for someone else to do so. And you know what the best part is? We can.

Open source collaboration is a fantastic example of how people can come together to do good. And there's so much good in the world if you look for it!

http://www.ted.com/talks/britta_riley_a_garden_in_my_apartment.html

What's Wrong With Our Food System

Ok, now that I've posted one, I just want to share all the awesome food-related TED talks I've seen recently. I think I'll do a series of posts on that.

http://www.ted.com/talks/birke_baehr_what_s_wrong_with_our_food_system.html

I feel like this one will be a good way to start out: an 11-year old kid explains in simple terms "What's Wrong With Our Food System." It covers a lot of food topics (GMOs, CAFOs, local food, food education, etc) very briefly. I understand that it presents a simplistic view of the modern agibusiness system, and I definitely recommend looking more deeply into the issues. But it's a good intro at any rate.

One of the things I love about this message is that it focuses on kids' education about food. As adults, we have a responsibility to set an example that will show kids (our own as well as others') how to eat healthily for their own bodies, for the earth, and for society. We can create a culture in which these issues are taken seriously. And if we as a culture takes them seriously, we will find solutions.

(Side note: I loved hearing the shout-out to Sequatchie Farms, too - that's close to my home in Tennessee. My high school cafeteria actually gets their supply of grass-fed beef there. Hurrah for local!)

On Food Waste

"At the moment, we are trashing our land to grow food that no one eats." - Tristram Stuart, "The Global Food Waste Scandal" (TED)

Food waste has always been one of my biggest pet peeves. I'm apalled when I see people throw away barely-touched plates of food at social events or walk past garbage bins full of perfectly good grocery items approaching their sell-by date. These images strike me as symbols of injustice and ingratitude. When I bring up my distaste for waste in a world full of hunger, people get defensive and say things like, "Well, I can't really send it to Africa, can I?" No, maybe not, but come on! You can't let yourself off the hook that easily when your actions are a living reminder that our food system is broken in so many important ways. Wake up, people, you are not powerless.

Someone recently sent me this TED talk dealing with the issue:
http://www.ted.com/talks/tristram_stuart_the_global_food_waste_scandal.html

In America we are familiar with food waste. We see it all the time. But I don't think any of us really think about the full measure of what is being wasted in our food systems. Because it's not just about kids throwing away half of their lunch in school cafeterias. It's not just about the cucumbers that go bad in your fridge. The way our systems are structured create waste on a massive scale at every level. (Tristam Stuart starts talking about this at about 6:23 in the TED talk linked here. Here's the run-down with a bit of commentary from me.)

Somewhere around 1/9 of what is grown in the world is wasted while still in the field, mostly in the developing world through lack of infrastructure and preservation technologies. (Opportunity for improvement? Definitely.) Then one third of that agricultural output (and we're talking human-consumption grade crops, here) is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Think of that - one third! And the food yields from those animals is only one third of the input... so we've just lost - wasted - another 2/9 of our food supply. (I'll spare you the brunt of my opinions on this matter here. Suffice it to say... that irks me quite a bit. If you're interested, see my previous post about "Why I'm a Vegetarian.") Then we get to what we traditionally think of as waste - I'll call that "trash can waste." That by itself accounts for another 2/9 of the world's food supply. But the vast majority of that is not about what gets tossed from your household fridge or pantry. It's day-old, but perfectly edible bakery goods or vegetables that just aren't pretty enough for our supermarkets.  All told, we are wasting more than half of the world's food supply while millions of people starve. Why is no one talking about this?

Starting at about 11:20, Tristram Stuart talks about some solutions. Let's make some noise about it. Put pressure on the organizations with control over it. Learn how to keep your own food fresh longer. Figure out what to do with the inevitable food waste (aka, handle livestock production more sensibly!).

And I'm sure there are many more things we can do about this. I'm gonna do some more thinking about it. Would you do so with me? If you have ideas, please comment! Because when it comes down to it, the coexistance of food waste and starvation in the same world is a glaring injustice. And as someone striving to be "my brother's keeper" (see previous posts), I want to know what I can do about it.

Bibliography

I almost forgot! Here are all of the sources I used for my paper. (I don't want to be plagiarizing anyone's work!) This can also serve as a great list for further reading. I especially recommend Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Patricia Klindienst's The Earth Knows My Name. Those are two of the books that first got me interested in food issues. Wallace Stegner's chapter on "The Sense of Place" is also great. And, while I haven't read them yet, I expect great things from Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America and Carolyn Steel's Hungry City. I hope to find the time to read them, uh, relatively soon.

Works Cited

Bell, David, and Gill Valentine. Consuming Geographies:  We Are Where We Eat. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.

Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America:  Culture & Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977. Print.

"Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook: United States." Central Intelligence Agency. CIA, 28 Nov. 2012. Web. 06 Dec. 2012.

 "Convenience (food) - at Any Price? When It Works." IBeamforLife. N.p., 2012. Web.

 "English Proverbs | The Phrasefinder." The Meanings and Origins of Sayings and Phrases. Ed. Gary Martin. Web. 21 Apr. 2011. <http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/proverbs.html>.

 Gabaccia, Donna R.. We Are What We Eat:  Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Print.

 Gurian, Anita, PhD. "Family Meals Matter - Staying Connected." NYU Child Study Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.

 Harris, Patricia, David Lyon, and Sue McLaughlin. The Meaning of Food:  The Companion to the PBS Television Series. Guilford, Conn.: Globe Pequot Press, 2005. Print.

 Jordan, William R.. "Chapter 2." The Sunflower Forest:  Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 28-53. Print.

 Kingsolver, Barbara, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. 1. ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007. Print.

 Klindienst, Patricia. The Earth Knows My Name:  Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Print.

 McLean, Fiona. "Introduction: Heritage and Identity." International Journal of Heritage Studies 12.1 (2006): n. pag. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.

 Steel, Carolyn. Hungry City:  How Food Shapes Our Lives.. London: Chatto & Windus, 2008. Print.

 Stegner, Wallace. "The Sense of Place." Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs:  Living and Writing in the West. New York: Random House, 1992. 199-206. Print.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 6: Conclusion and a Call to Action

Understanding of and involvement in the genesis of the food one eats shapes an individual’s identity by forming relationships between the individual and other people, ancestry and cultural heritage, and place. Distortion of these food-based relationships in mainstream American food systems muddles identity. Eating alone and on the run, the consumer is rarely aware of the ingredients in her meal. She gives no thought to cultural or historical associations, the place of origin, grower, conditions, or process of production or preparation of her food. She makes no attempt to understand and use food as a medium to engage the other and thereby develop her own identity. Her identity is obscured by her reduced awareness of her limits, context, and relationship to the other in the categories discussed above and by the limited extent to which she incorporates these into her understanding of self.

            If we are to preserve a strong sense of individual and collective identity, Americans can no longer afford to “let food take a back seat” (Steel 5). It is imperative that Americans take a more active role in their relationship to food in order to preserve the relationships that food mediates. As we choose to devote time and attention to understanding where our food comes from in every sense—biologically, geographically, culturally, and otherwise—we will develop stronger, clearer personal identities and create a vibrant food culture through which we can connect to other people, to heritage, and to the places where we live and eat. We will understand our food better as we engage it on every level, from seed to plate. Instead of heating up a TV dinner in the microwave or grabbing a burger to go, take the time to cook a meal with your family. Use fresh ingredients. Get familiar with what is grown in your area. Visit your local farmer’s market. Make friends with the farmers and ask them to show you their fields. Talk to your ancestors about foods they used to eat. Create food traditions and pass them down to your kids.  These and other activities can help us to better understand not only what we are eating but, by extension, who we are.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 5: Loss of Connection to Food

Food is fundamental to human life and the development of personal identity, yet understanding of and involvement in one’s food is not the norm in modern American society. Fewer Americans are involved in food production than ever before. In 2009, less than 0.7% of Americans were employed in the agricultural sector (CIA World Factbook). Having moved off of the farm, the vast majority of Americans are now largely separated from the biological origins of their food and the place from which it comes. With convenient access to diverse, abundant, and pre-prepared foods at supermarkets like the one pictured in figure 1, it is no longer necessary for the majority of us to understand or participate in the origins of our food. Few modern Americans’ diets reflect any certain ethnic or cultural background or distinctive food culture. As with fast food or the frozen TV dinner, the food itself has suffered a “loss of identity” by being stripped of differentiating characteristics and becoming “just another part of the blend, an anonymous commodity” (Kingsolver 161). With the advent of“convenience foods” many Americans have moved not only off of the farm but also out of the kitchen. Fast food, microwavable meals, and other packaged foods reduce necessary thought and preparation time to almost zero. As a result, individuals come together around the preparation and consumption of their food less and less frequently. The NYU Child Study Center reports a 33% decline in family meals over the last 20 years as all family members put in longer hours at work, school, and extra-curricular activities (Gurian). As Carolyn Steel says in her book Hungry City: “Few of us know much about food, or care to invest our time and effort in it. … [We are] happy to let food take a back seat as we get on with our busy lives, unconscious of what it takes to keep us fuelled” (Steel 5). As Americans have become more specialized, we have lost our understanding and stopped engaging in the origins of our food. In doing so, we have weakened our food-based relationships to place, heritage, and other people and thereby obscured the parts of personal identity that come from them.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 4: Sense of Place

Individuals also form their identity partly from their connection to place. In his chapter entitled “The Sense of Place” from Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Wallace Stegner echoes renowned author and essayist Wendell Berry in saying, “If you don't know where you are … you don't know who you are” (Stegner). Stegner and Berry are two of many authors who affirm the importance of sense of place in the development of a personal identity. Stegner goes so far as to say of his rootless childhood, “Some towns that we lived in were never real to me. They were only the raw material of places, as I was the raw material of a person” (Stegner). For Stegner and many others, sense of place is central to identity development.

Understanding and engaging in the genesis of one’s food helps an individual to develop this sense of place. Kingsolver asserts that the need for a sense of place can be met in part by understanding and engaging in a local food culture. “A food culture is not something that gets sold to people. It arises out of a place, a soil, a climate, a history, a temperament, a collective sense of belonging” (Kingsolver 17). For Kingsolver, a food culture is a reflection of the place from which it springs. It is a method of accessing, engaging, and developing a relationship with that place. In a very real sense, understanding food as coming from a place helps the individual make that place part of him or herself. In The Earth Knows My Name, interviewee Gerard Bentryn relates a conversation he had with a local while surveying in British Columbia that illustrates this point:

“‘Oh, so you’re out in the woods, and you’re learning about this valley.’ He said, ‘I’ve never left this valley. Everything that I eat comes out of this valley. Everybody that I’m related to, all of my family, is buried in this valley. When I eat, I eat the people and the place. I’m made out of Vancouver Island. But look at what you’re eating.’ I said, Yeah?’ and he said, ‘You’re made out of tin cans. Because that’s what you eat out of.’ … We use the phrase ‘We are what we eat,’ but I also think we are where we eat. That’s the thing people miss. This need to be of a place.” (Klindienst 85)

Bentryn here emphasizes the connection between place, food, and identity. Through developing a food-based relationship with a place, a person can develop an identity that is “rooted” in and shaped by that place.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 3: Connection to Heritage

Connection to ancestry and heritage allows individuals to understand themselves in the context of a people and a culture. In her introduction to the International Journal for Heritage Studies’ special edition on heritage and identity, scholar Fiona McLean reminds her audience that “it has long been held that heritage has ‘an identity‐conferring status’” (McLean 2006). Her article discusses several levels on which individuals derive their identity from their heritage. Heritage allows the individual to incorporate a national identity into his or her personal identity. By participating in a national identity, the individual is able to understand him or herself in the context of the larger “story” of the nation in which he or she lives. On a non-national level, heritage also places the individual within the story of an ethnicity and a familial line. The individual connects to each of these levels or components of identity through traditions and a feeling of belonging to that particular heritage. This connection allows the person to understand him or herself within the context of that heritage and incorporate it into his or her personal identity.

Understanding food’s ancestral and cultural origins and significance develops identity by connecting an individual to a heritage or a people. Individuals connect to their memories and heritage through eating the food associated with them. Different cultures often have traditional foods that bear special significance for their participants. For example, some countries relate their traditional foods to their national identities in phrases like “as American as apple pie” or “tan tico como el gallo pinto,” which is Spanish for “as Costa Rican as gallo pinto (the traditional breakfast dish of beans and rice).” In Mexico, special events such as weddings and quinceñeras are nearly always celebrated with mole (pronounced [mo’-lay]). Because it is traditionally eaten in these settings, the dish has developed a special significance for people of this culture. Use and understanding of foods in their traditional cultural context connects an individual to the culture and heritage from which they come.

The sum of all food traditions, customs, and meanings within a culture make up a distinctive “food culture,” and participation in a strong food culture helps shape personal identity. One of the most commonly cited examples of a thriving food culture is that of the Italians. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver writes, “It’s my observation that when Italian genes are present, all others duck and cover. … After arriving on the ancestral soil I figured out pretty quickly why that heritage swamps all competition. It’s a culture that sweeps you in, sits you down in the kitchen, and feeds you so well you really don’t want to leave” (Kingsolver 243). According to Kingsolver, relationship with food in a strong food culture causes individuals to develop a strong sense of cultural identity. In her book The Earth Knows My Name, American Book Award winner Patricia Klindienst echoes these ideas using another example drawn from Italian food culture. The Pellegrinis are an Italian-American family for whom food signifies a deep cultural connection. Klindienst writes, “Food is not about fashion for the Pellegrinis; it answers a hunger for continuity. Food is a form of deep memory. Through food they are linked to their native landscape, to its soil, its water, and its trees” (Klindienst 145). Understanding the food one eats as coming from a specific ancestry or culture causes an individual to understand himself or herself within that context and incorporate that culture into his or her personal identity.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 2: Interpersonal Relationships

Individuals use food to develop interpersonal relationships that build their own identities. As food is a universally shared human need, individuals can grow together around the food they eat. When people deepen their understanding of and participate in the genesis of their food, families and friends can deepen their relationships as they grow, choose, cook, and eat their food together. One of the most important examples of this process occurs within the context of the family. In her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver highlights the gathering of families around food and the identities they develop through this interaction. She writes, “The choreography of many people working in one kitchen is, by itself, a certain definition of family, after people have made their separate ways home to be together” (Kingsolver 130). Through engaging food together, Kingsolver says, individuals develop an identity as a family. She emphasizes the vital role food plays in family relationships when she says:

Some of my happiest family memories involve making and eating elaborate meals for special occasions. Food turns events into celebrations. It’s not just about the food, but the experience of creating and then consuming it. People need families and communities for this kind of experience. Kids need parents, or some kind of guide, to lead them toward the food routines our bodies need. Becoming familiar with the process of food production generates both respect and a greater sense of calm about the whole idea of dinner.

(Kingsolver 292-3, italics added)

Here Kingsolver stresses the benefits of understanding and participating in the genesis of food to developing family roles (parent-child, etc) and the identities that come from them. As individuals gather around the production and consumption of food, they strengthen the relationships by which they define themselves.

Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 1

“Men are made of what is made,

The meat, the drink, the life, the corn,

Laid up by them, in them reborn.”

-Edwin Muir

 

The common English adage “you are what you eat” is by no means a new idea. In the early 1800s Frenchman Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es”: “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” Less than forty years later Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach echoed, "Der Mensch ist, was er ißt," or “Man is what he eats” (English Proverbs). However, new circumstances give this old proverb new meaning and intriguing questions. In a society in which fewer and fewer people are directly involved with their own food production, understanding one’s food is becoming less common. This combination of old wisdom and new circumstance begs the question: if you are what you eat and you don’t know what you’re eating, do you know who you are?

Identity is formed from an individual’s understanding of the limits, separations, relationships, and contexts in which he or she operates. According to William Jordan, director of the New Academy for Nature and Culture, “Everything is defined by difference” (Jordan 49). The self exists because it is distinct from the other. Thus, the first step in developing an identity is “achieving awareness of the other” (Jordan 51). He gives the example: “A human infant regards itself as omnipotent or co-terminus with the world, making no distinction between what it desires and what the world has to offer.” The development of an identity, then, requires “the breakdown of this illusion of an all-inclusive self, as the other appears on the horizon of awareness” (Jordan 51). Jordan calls this recognition of limitation and separateness “shame,” affirming that “this shame is inseparable from any experience of relationship for the simple reason that any relationship forces on us an awareness of difference, and therefore of limitation” (Jordan 47). In order to develop identity, we first recognize the other, establishing the boundaries of the self, and then engage the other, building relationships through which we understand ourselves as individuals.

One of the most common ways we engage the other, and thereby develop identity-forming relationships, is eating. In their extensive study on The Meaning of Food, Patricia Harris, David Lyon, and Sue McLaughlin write, “Food is the universal human experience” (Harris et al 2). As such, the food one eats is central to forming his or her identity. Engaging the other through food establishes or influences various relationships, including relationships with other individuals, cultures or peoples, and places. As we come to understand ourselves and build our identities in part through these food-based relationships, we “are what we eat” in much more than just a physical sense. Understanding the genesis of and profoundly engaging the food we eat therefore becomes of the utmost importance.

Intro to My Food & Identity Paper

Sorry things have gotten a bit dusty around here again. I was recently talking to someone who reads this blog and whose opinion I value a lot. He mentioned that it can sometimes be hard to find the time to keep up a regular blog, and recommended that I post installments of one of my old papers that he recently read. (I'm glad you liked it so much, Brother Forsyth!) It just so happens that I took a lot of the ideas and research from that paper and wrote a new one this week for my Persuasive Writing class. It's long, so I'll spread it out over several posts so people don't get overwhelmed.

I think the paper will fit well with the rest of the content of this blog. It deals with the impact of food on a different level - the level of our personal identities. The basic question of the paper is "If you are what you eat, and you don't know what you're eating, do you know who you are?" As always, I'd love to hear your opinions and experiences relating to that question, or the topics of food and identity in general.

Thanks again for reading! I hope you enjoy the paper!