Growing up in Brooklyn, our refrigerator was home to the imitation Idaho potato, sticks of Parkay, and the lone liter of Schweppes ginger ale. One summer, my mother and I subsisted on bags of potatoes cooked every which way one could fix a potato. We cut them into wedges and fried them on the pan. We boiled them. We baked them. We cooked them in a wok we found discarded on the street. When we were flush from peddling our wares on Thirteenth Avenue or when my mother made a few extra dollars in tips at the run-down luncheonette, the spuds were side dishes slathered in butter and sour cream -- minor accoutrements -- to the main course of chicken legs crackling on the skillet. Those nights we were delirious, feigning prosperity; we gnawed our chicken to the bone. The sound of our chewing was symphonic, resembling something on the level of church.The sound of our chewing was symphonic, resembling something on the level of church. We would leave the potatoes cold, skins undone, at the edge of our plates. Leftovers for another day, for the inevitable day that hunger was as normal a state as breathing.
Fancy food was reserved for the holidays; we feasted on tough cuts of beef, a wedge of wilting iceberg lettuce, an overripe tomato drowning in mayonnaise dressing. Fresh legumes and butcher meat -- what extravagances! Never did we imagine ourselves the patrons of artisanal cheese, drinkers of cabernet, connoisseurs of cured meats. Watercress was not in our vocabulary. Fine food did not exist in our cabinets, which were stocked with bland, packaged food, pillaged from bodegas and discount stores.
Years later, outfitted with a decent income, I discovered what is now my life-long passion: eating local & organic food. Food that makes a short sojourn to my dinner plate. Food cultivated on farms with crop rotation. Food that I had never as a child conceived of having. I started making educated decisions about the food I bring into my home. I read ingredients, did the research. And there became something wholly gratifying in appreciating what goes into my body.
We as Americans spend only a fraction of our disposable income on food -- a tenth, down from a fifth in the 1950s. Americans spend less on food, as a percentage of disposable income, than any other industrialized nation. Frankly, to me, it's a matter of choice. One could choose to spend $50-$100 a month on a cellular phone (where cell phones are used broadly, not by the fashionable, rich and elite), we could choose to spend upwards of $150 on cable and internet service per month. We could choose to toss $1000 for a designer bag whose production costs are a slight fraction of retail. We could choose to spend $20-$40 when we go out drinking with friends.
Essentially, we could forseeably spend more on clean food if we chose to. Now, this is not to say that everyone is in this financial position -- certainly not folks living on the margins or folks who are poor -- for its true that cheap industrial food is heavily subsidized, Pollan says, "in many ways such that its price in the supermarket does not reflect its real cost" and until the rules that govern our food system change (rules that strip power from giant food companies and feed suppliers, rules that favor single crop farming which is not only depleting our soil, contributing to green house gasses (upwards of 25% of carbon emissions come from conventional farming methods), but it's yielding sicker animals and failing crops, rules that ease our dependence of oil), organic or sustainable food will always cost more than industrial food. And the poor, who are not in the position to make a choice between organic and conventional, will continue to be at higher risk for heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other significant health-related issues that stem from eating highly processed (high fructose corn syrup, anyone? partially-hydrogenated oils sound yummy, yes??!) and foods sprayed with lethal chemicals and grown in recycled toxic waste and chemical fertilizers rather than real manure and compost.
However, if you are in the financial position to make such a choice, why choose conventional? Why add to your carbon count? Why break ecological and evolutionary chains (cows are not evolved to eat corn -- it's just cheaper for us to feed them corn and fatten them up for slaughter)? Don't you want to know how your food is grown, really grown? Isn't it odd that kill plants for animals don't let anyone (reporters, writers -- anyone other than government regulators, who, in a sense support their practices) in them to view their slaughter practices (which are inhumane and beyond filthy) while local farmers have no problem giving you access to their slaughter process? Why not make an investment in your health now rather than risk future health-related problems? Do you want to support a government that is ruining our land and environment and making it easier for us to access food from countries where there are no environmental laws/restrictions? I could go on and on, but why would you chose to eat garbage over delicious, clean food? Sorry, this issue gets me a little miffed.
In all of his books, Michael Pollan talks about an analysis of the health benefits between farmed salmon (cultivated to eat processed corn and feed which contains the byproducts of other animals) and naturally raised beef and found the grass-fed and humanely raised beef was actually healthier and had lower fat content than the farmed salmon. because, we're learning, that it's not about the animal, it's about what the animal eats.
So why not start making small swap-outs? You don't have to go wild in the supermarket buying organic like it's going out of style, but perhaps try some produce, dairy, chicken. Taste the difference. Check out a CSA. Support a local farm cooperative. Go to the farmer's market. Try the organic eggs (and there is a huge difference). It's no sort of magic that I've been eating local and organic for over two and half years and I haven't been sick (save for a food allergy that I'm still trying to get diagnosed), once. I haven't had a cold or flu in four years, and my immune system is stronger. Why not at least try it?
Click here for a top ten list of produce items you should swap out, immediately. And click here for top items you should try to stop purchasing. and if you haven't had your fill, here are five more things you should avoid purchasing.