The Entree: What is your food ethic?

Food is huge.  And not just in a "sustains all life" kind of way--although it is right up there with water and oxygen on the existence-requirements list.  Food is enormous in many other ways, and the choices that we make ourselves or let others make for us about what goes in our mouths have ramifications long after the heartburn has faded away.

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What kind of food to eat is something that everyone thinks about from time to time, usually because of a wish for better health--whether that is personal or familial health or planetary health, animal health, the health of a water supply, or a family downwind of a huge pig farm wishing for healthy air to breathe.  I grew up in a household where we certainly ate meat with many meals, but where it also wasn't uncommon to have a vegetarian main dish.  I also grew up eating mainly whole foods and meals made primarily from scratch--no one, and I mean no one, would trade their Snickers bar at school in the cafeteria for my thermos of chicken noodle soup or my natural peanut butter sandwich (no sugar added?  Hand me the Jif!!).  I dreamed of seductively bright orange mac 'n cheese from a box, or--holy of holies--sugared cereal for breakfast!

And now I say, thank you thank you, Mom, for such a healthy start to life.  You cannot be a gardener for very long without discovering that a plant given the right nutrition is a healthier plant, capable of combating disease and insect pests without needing much intervention.  You cannot be an organic gardener for very long without realizing that chemical fertilizers are similar to fast food--they provide nutrients, sure, but they undermine the fundamental health of the soil and therefore the health of the plants growing in it.  Why did it take me so long to make the same connections about human health and human diet?  We've all heard the adage that we are what we eat--when do we start really grasping that message?

For me, it was almost a decade ago.  My roommate and I began to consider vegetarianism.  We were never out to be martyrs, but the conditions in which animals are raised in order to become meat in the refrigerated cases of the grocery store are unequivocally shameful and almost too horrifying to believe.  Beef and pork were easy to give up; chicken was a little more difficult--but a few pamphlets from PETA later, and we had no problem giving up the poultry.  We continued to eat eggs, dairy, and fish and so were barely vegetarians at all; in comparison with the rest of our friends, however, we had a substantially altered diet.

http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/2010/07/26/100-foot-diet-challenge

People always wanted to know why--usually with a smirk, and a patronizing comment about not wanting to hurt little baby ________ (whatevers).  Or, maybe, they would ask with a hopeful tone, is this a health thing?  I'm sure that I gave many different answers over the years, but I always wondered why it was deemed naive, childish, and sentimental to care about the living conditions of the animals we eat.  With some hindsight, I wonder if it is just easier to pretend that misery is only a human condition--that otherwise compassionate people have to draw a line somewhere and this issue is where they choose to draw it.  Industrialization has had many ugly ramifications for all types of life--this, we say with a shrug, is the price we pay for progress. 


For quite some time, I was very happy with my dietary choices, but after several years, I started to have some new questions.  The world's fisheries are getting closer and closer to collapse, and farmed fish is typically as ugly for the environment as any other corporate animal farming...and yet I need protein for a healthy diet.  Soy protein is certainly an option, but most of it is genetically modified unless it is organic--and even organic soy travels vast energy-consumptive miles to reach my plate.  It is tragically ironic that I might be trying to save the rainforests from being felled to raise cattle for American hamburgers by eating soy that is also grown in the decaying bones of a destroyed jungle.  Plus, most "veggie" meat substitutes are extremely processed things with a lot of mysteriously chemical ingredients--owned by enormous companies like Kraft.

In the end, for me, food choices are boiling down to a question of--of all things--science, or more specifically, evolution.  While vegans and vegetarians certainly help to balance out the rampant carnivory of most Americans, the basic truth of us as creatures is that we are omnivores.  We evolved to eat both meat and plant--and we co-evolved with certain animals that are now fully domesticated, dependent upon humanity, and markedly unable to exist in the natural ecosystems of their ancestors.  Just as surely as we have lived in relationship with Spot, our domesticated wolf, we have lived in relation to our back yard chickens.

While I agree with the vegan camp that we are blessed with the ability to choose what we eat, I would counter that when we stray too far outside of the natural laws, we always always do so at the peril of the natural systems that sustain life.  As aberrant as a feedlot is, so too is an enormous monocrop of genetically modified soy or corn.  Even an organic vegetable field carries the karmic load of the destroyed ecosystem that once existed there, whether forest or prairie or desert--all of those exquisite living systems, developed to live in tandem over the millenia, now obliterated so that we can congratulate ourselves on eating in a more environmentally responsible way....  Unless you are a plant and can soak up some sunlight and manufacture your own food internally, the meal that you eat only exists because other creatures died.  And that's OK.  Actually, that's the way the whole food chain was designed to work.

So, my eating habits are changing again.  I buy from the meat- as well as the veggie-farmers at the farmer's market, and I feel good about supporting the farmers in their determination to raise healthy, happy fruits, vegetables, and animals in an environmentally sustainable way and one that encourages a vibrant local economy.  I have rediscovered the joy of a whole chicken cooking fragrantly all day in the crockpot; moreover, I like to see how many meals can be based on that one small creature's gift of protein:  roasted chicken & veggies, then chicken & noodles, then the bones boiled into rich golden stock for the freezer. We still eat far less meat than most people in this country--and we pay more for local organic stuff, but this feels like a balance that is genuine.  At least for me.

There is a staggering amount of information about the whole gargantuan food debate, and advocates of all sides are unerringly certain that theirs is the only right choice.  I say, as long as we are brave enough to look at the honest truth about how the food we eat gets to our plates, then we are on our way to a better reality, however that reality looks in the end.  We live in a silly bubble of wealth that allows us the previously unknown privilege of having no concept of or connection to where our food comes from--and while I am not ready to butcher one of the girls for dinner, I like knowing that the chicken I am eating lived in normal chicken-ish conditions a few miles away.  Even better, I love that the potatoes and onions bubbling away in the crockpot with the chicken came from the rich, composty soil that I am building in my garden.  Any thoughts?