In keeping within the vein of what is real, I have been pleased with our national culture’s current discourse concerning food and the significance of returning our society’s eating habits back to, what I call, real food. The authentic, substantial stuff that is naturally and originally grown and sown from the ground.
Food documentaries, novels, articles, blogs all have gained increasing momentum within our culture exposing the detriment of our attitudes and habits regarding food. We have created discussion that is disrupting the hegemonic basis of an industry that has little concern for our actual well-being; and we are taking control over what we and our families ingest.
Yet, we are a nation still caught within a spectrum of diet fads and confusing food labels; how might we navigate what is genuinely beneficial for our bodies? To be sure, entire novels and movements have ensued in response to this single question, but there is one simple tenet that I am motivated to adhere to when I am discerning how to feed my body and this is it: is this food really real?
So much of our food is grown and processed and pumped with pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones, sugar and synthetic who knows what. And before I eat, or go out to eat, I want to know if the food I am consuming and my kids are consuming is unhampered, real, original.
Of course there is that Portlandia episode where before ordering chicken at a local restaurant, the customers desire to know the name of their chicken (Colin) and his family and details of his life on the farm (and p.s. this portrayal of Portlandians isn’t as exaggerated as you might think!)
Eating whole and good and real needn’t be this radical. But there is an inherent custody of an awareness to what is going inside our bodies. Our bodies that live and breathe and feel and act and react and experience the life we are all living. And the fuel we are absorbing to keep going in this life can greatly enhance or detract from the overall experience.
“We are part of nature. We depend on it. It’s really what is giving us our nourishment and we need to treasure [it] (food), we need to take care of the land. That’s a beautiful pleasure of life.”
I think this short video is quite wise. And so I wanted you to see it. It was created by Michael Pollan, food journalist and author of pivotal works such as, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In the Defense of Food.
This simple video has influenced my own cognitive regard and physical choices in relation to food, and I hope it conveys more clearly my point. Eventually there is a hope in which our entire culture will value food that is wholesome and real above that which is cheap and easy. And eventually our society will free itself from its bondage of food issues and will more readily relish in the celebration and joyful life giving source that food actually and really is.
(Photography above by Adam Ferguson for The New York Times)