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.