What's in your kitchen?

Justin gave me three fabulous foodie presents this Christmas:

-A pass for cooking classes
-An anthology of the best food writing of 2006
-The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollen

I love to cook, and love to eat. I am also a well-educated consumer, and choose to make thoughtful choices every day about where I buy my food, how it has been grown/raised, how far it has traveled to arrive at my door, and how processed it is.

That is not to say that I adhere perfectly to my principles- one can occasionally find me at my local Trinidadian eatery, enjoying a succulent curry chicken Roti and choosing not to think about the fact that the chicken I am currently consuming is most definitely not organic, nor was it free range or even humanely slaughtered for that matter. If I was more principled, I would either not eat out (the horror! all that food not tasted! all those things gone undiscovered!), or I would only eat at restaurants that serve local and/or organic ingredients. We have one of those in Baltimore, and it is horrible. Actually, I take that back. The food is fantastic- the service and the prices are outrageous (and not in a good way).

But I digress. I am only a couple of chapters into the Michael Pollen book, but I am already horrified in ways that I didn't expect to be. So far there has not been a lot of new information for me to digest, it is rather that all of the disparate facts that I have already read are all presented together in one place, so that the connections cannot be ignored. That we are ruining our individual and public health, our environment and our economy all in one fell swoop with the batshit crazy ways that food is raised in this country makes me so angry.

I felt this way after reading Fast Food Nation, and was gratified to know that I was already on the right track, and that there were simple choices that I could make to ensure that was not contributing to the problems described in the book. However, I feel that the issues raised so far in The Omnivore’s Dilemma are much harder to resolve. Only buying meat and dairy products that were raised on grass- not corn, soy, animal products and byproducts, or some other food that was never intended to be consumed by those animals- not totally simple, but since the stuff I buy from our local, organic producer already meets those standards it’s possible. Not eating any corn or soy products ever again- not so much so.

Short of never buying anything that has been prepared or preserved in some way, I don’t know how to avoid contributing to the industrial agricultural complex. I am now reading my food labels even more closely, which is kind of exhausting. I am all about being a conscious consumer, but sometimes I just don’t want to have to think about whether something contains a certain product, or if it is fair trade, or if it is organic, or any number of things. I would like to be able to just take that jar of olives off the shelf and know that when it says ‘kalamata olives in olive oil’ on the label, that doesn’t mean ‘kalamata olives in oil, with some corn byproducts, and unpronounceable chemical compounds, that a little kid was forced to pick for pennies a day’. It doesn’t seem like much to ask, really.

I know that most of what I buy contributes to an alternative economic and moral landscape than that of factory farming and industrial agriculture, but what worries me is the cumulative effect of the complacency that we all have. When I look in my fridge and cupboards I can see that most of what I have in my house will meet the standards that I have set for myself, but what is even more obvious to me are the items which don’t meet those standards. Those items that were bought because I was in a hurry, or short on cash, or just feeling too lazy to read the back label to see if the front was lying to me. Those are the items that I know most people are buying for those same reasons, and I worry that the negative effect of contributing to the mainstream ends up exponentially greater than the effect of supporting an alternative. Like adding a drop of water to a tsunami, instead of a ripple, so to speak.

Comments

[Kellie]

I've been wanting to read Pollen's book, but I've been afraid of how overwhelmed it will undoubtedly make me feel. Al Gore's movie did that to me as well. I think if you do your best most of the time though, you're already helping to change the state of our nation's poor eating and agricultural processes. If everyone just made some changes for the better, that would have a huge impact. I know what you mean too about just wanting a jar of olives to be a jar of olives. :)

[John White]

I think that after an initial period of worry, you can relax a little bit. That is, once you're sure of a product after having investigated the label, you can add it to your "feel good about buy it" list. After that you might want to make sure it stays ok every 6 months or so, but no more often than that. I think that's a saner way to do things.

Pollan advocates frequenting farmers' markets where you can trust most of what you're buying (though again, you need to interview people before the first time you buy...).

And more to the point, when the things that you don't buy like that are what stick out around your kitchen, you're walking the right path. If everyone was in that state, the country would be in much better shape.

And it is a path that you walk, by the way, not a state of grace that you achieve! :-)