Foody Feelings

I think it’s fair to say that, at least in North America, our relationship to food has become Frankenstein-ish. We created a monster that repulses us, confuses us and slipped from our control.

hand-made buns & an orange

Consider how many of us relish with great gusto a well-prepared meal. Also, the iconic characteristics we imbue to certain foods such as bread, apple pie or coffee. 
We love food; have relationships with it and even impart it with special powers. Chicken soup cures colds. Chocolate revs up engines and wine loosens lips. 

You can even say that a persons’ style of food preparation and consumption can speak volumes about their character.

Flax in flower

It’s no surprise food holds a prominent place in our lives. We do after all need it to some degree; although we consume it for many other reasons.

In times past, food creation occupied much more of our time. So much so that anthropologists assert that food surplus is a necessary part of civilization advancement. It was not until we could take time away from hunting or growing food that we had time to think about anything else. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs points to this as well with food and shelter needs overshadowing all else. It is not until we meet these most basic needs that we can turn our thoughts to other things. In fact, food beats out sex!

Jared Diamond, through his book Collapse, taught me how human civilizations have repeatedly out-grown the capacity of their environment to feed them and subsequently perished. Then David Montgomery’s book outlined how our food production system is now global and, therefore, the next collapse will be as well.

All the while more people move into cities as we cut them off from natural resources through industrial activities that include farming on large scales as well as mining and activities that deplete or poison water resources making subsistence farming impossible.

This might be wheat or rye
- can't remember

Today, in Canada, I eat fruit from around the world all year long. A fond childhood memory is that an uncle sent our family a Christmas box of fancy apples from Ontario. We loved that glut of fresh colorful fruit so full of flavor and otherwise scarce in December. It was a box of riches and it looked like it when you opened the lid to see all the shiny apples of different variety.

I also recall childhood joy derived from a huge garden my mother and aunt created at the summer cottage. Snacks were right there! Beans, peas, carrots and radishes

Peas on the vine

soaked up the sun and waited for little hands to come pick them. The earliest days of summer offered asparagus over by the hedge and the fall supplied apples along the driveway. Food was part of the landscape of my childhood. I remember tomatoes that curled my toes, Hubbard squash too big for me to lift and beets sweetening the aroma of the whole house while cooking.

Wow! I sound 150 years old! Truly, we have abandoned our creative relationship with food in less than half a century! These memories are only 45 years ago.

Now, I have no way of knowing exactly where my food originates, what it might contain or which of my ethics it may insult. Sometimes I find myself looking at a food product and wondering if eating it is the right thing to do for my body, for the planet, for compassion and for balance between what I value and what I will tolerate to satisfy my desires.

Consider that I’m not an ignorant city girl that knows nothing of modern agriculture. I work with agricultural research hubs. I talk to farmers. I go to manure injection equipment demonstrations!

Oats ripening

But food production has become a subject that is so complex, so compartmentalized, specialized, scientific and diverse that it is impossible to know all aspects of it. It is diverse in type and in practice. Also, agriculture is only the beginning. Food processing has its stories too.

My best advice is to buy food as close to the way God makes it and take it from there yourself. If you have a spot, grow some food for yourself and share it.

We may have to survive the collapse to reboot the system, so knowing how to produce your own food could be helpful.