With our summer solstice dinner featuring spinach, mache, lettuces, mustard, snow peas, strawberries, garlic scapes, and herbs, from the garden, it was easy to believe for an evening that good food is within easy reach. Though this backyard garden harvest was not truly easy, per se, as many hours go into planting, tending, harvesting, cleaning, preparing food from the garden- the unfortunate reality is that the food within easy reach for most Americans is bad food. The food that is most easily accessible, both financially and most convienently, is processed food that offers little nutrition- in schools, in the corner stores, and in the fast food outlets that litter our streets. So how can we design our lives, individually and collectively, so that our food actually nourishes us?
What we must consider in order to create a functional food system is a fundamental shift in the way we go about procuring our food. Eating real good food takes some thought. On a personal level, this means spending more time on food preparation and planning- planting, visting farms and markets, cooking, preserving...or spending money for someone to do this for you. On a community level it can mean making land available for urban gardens, supporting neighborhood programs to teach kids and adults to grow and cook food, changing ordinances to allow composting and hen keeping and opening community kitchens. On a national level it means reprioritizing nutrition and changing our industrial-get-big-or-get-out-cheap-food farm policies.
And certainly, we must first acknowledge that our food system is dysfunctional. Not only has the quality and safety of our food system suffered by making production so large, energy intensive, and cheap, it has hidden environmental, health, and financial (in current subsidy system) costs that disproportionately harm people with little incomes or social safety nets.
In an exciting development in the movement to change our food system, the new food movie, FOOD Inc, promises to "lift the veil on our nation's food industry" and offer up some solutions. Watch the trailer here and visit the website to learn more.
Sustainable Nutrition Bottomline:
Learn about your food, share what you learn, and act on it- work to get more good food within reach. Spend more time planning and making your meals- for the week, for the season, and for the years to come. Weekly plans can include visiting a farmers market, cooking dinners, and bringing your lunch to work. Season plans can include getting a CSA share, farm trips, preserving food and growing a garden. And long term plans can include planting perennials or fruit trees, moving to a location that allows for more food production, or investing in local farms.
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