food ethics

[2eclipse]

yesterday I listened to speaking of faith on NPR. Krista was interviewing Barbara Kingslover (author of the poisonwood bible) about the ethics of eating. Barbara and her family moved to southern Virginia (god help her) and made a project of eating for a year only those things they could grow/raise themselves. It seems the family has written a book about the experience, called animal, vegetable, miracle.
In the interview, kingslover talked about how we in this country have forgotten to ask questions about where our food comes from and what it takes to get it to us. She brings up hurricane Katrina and addresses the fact that it isn’t simply the government’s responsibility to provide infrastructure….but that the tragedy was also a result of the vulnerability caused when an area cannot support itself on what it grows. She asks the question “how long can we live like this and expect to not pay a price” in light of how much of the world’s resources we are using. Some people give up meat in order to eat more sustainably. She gave up bananas, citing the use of fossil fuels to provide them(for transport and refrigeration). She did some thinking about it and decided it wasn’t cruelty free in light of the resources being used.
I find myself convicted by the points she brought up. I love sushi! How much of my food comes from china or japan? How much of my food comes from California instead of being grown locally? It used to be that almost all the food a community consumed was grown locally and organically. Now it has become a “special” thing to eat that way. We import exotics from overseas while the farmers around us are struggling! How many fossil fuels are burn to bring me the food I eat? I am very interested in reading this book….and in talking with ross about what we can do to change our eating habits. I agree with her that we have a responsibility to think about the overall economic and ecological impact of our habits, not only locally, but globally.
I am also torn up about it…..because some people have allergies and some people have such strong dislikes of certain foods that they need more specialized foods. If everyone started being more conscious about what they ate to the point where there was no market for imported foods, the prices on those items would go up proportionally. Is it really such a smart thing to shift the market in this way?

Comments

[frog-lady.livejournal.com]

Unless someone has really serious allergies (like a friend of mine who's allergic to all nightshades), it shouldn't be too hard to find at least most of their unprocessed food locally. If people in Maine can do so, I'd guess that it's possible in most of the US. That said, eating only local food takes more time and energy, especially to store produce for winter, and not everyone can do so. This post goes into some of the associated issues...but I think the major thing for people to consider right now is that eating some locally grown and/or processed food is better than eating none.

Oh, and re. local foods and allergies/special foods--if one makes one's food from basic ingredients instead of eating processed foods, it's a lot easier to avoid the things to which one is allergic, especially if those things are common additives.

Sorry my comment got so long. :)

(By the way, I'm enting on Ravelry. I saw you were also on lj and friends with crowyhead, and friended you here as well.)

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

don't worry about the length. many of my comments are longer.:)
i friended you on ravelry because i liked your projects, but i am also amused by your username, enting. is this a tolkien reference?

not everyone has storage space for local foods that's true. kingslover mentioned harvesting 200 onions and braiding them for the winter. i only wish i knew how to do that. it seems like anything i keep out of the refrigerator(even garlic) goes bad. but i am a big fan of doing my own berry-picking and such. i just need to learn how to preserve more things. homemade jam is better than storebought, but it is too expensive if you buy from the grocery store instead of going berry-picking. one of my friends is going to teach me to pickle at the end of the summer.

the allergy thing is more difficult with things like wheat allergies. i suppose you could find a local baker and go that route, but bread from other grains is difficult to find at most grocery stores and local wheat isn't often found at your farmer's market....also i don't know anyone who has time to make ALL their own bread.

[frog-lady.livejournal.com]

Well...wheat-free is only really difficult if you insist on eating bread. If you go the corn tortilla/cornbread/etc. route, instead, you just don't put wheat in things. It's true that flours and grains of various sorts are the things I have the hardest time finding local sources for, and my wheat-allergic advisor would have real trouble finding local rice. That's the kind of thing I think it's fairer to get from far away, since it doesn't require refrigeration.

(I would also really, really not recommend ever making bread with all rye flour. I tried it once, because we were running low on wheat flour...bad idea.)

And yes, my ravelry/flickr username is a Tolkien reference. My initials are ENT, which my parents thought would be cute since my dad's a forest ecologist...and I'm certainly not old in tree terms.

[knitthenight.livejournal.com]

Why would a nightshade allergy prevent one from finding sufficient unprocessed local food? I strongly dislike nightshades and they're pretty easy to avoid.

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

aren't tomatoes related to nightshade?

[knitthenight.livejournal.com]

Yeah, tomatoes and peppers are the only actual foods that I know of. I can't stand either.

[frog-lady.livejournal.com]

I was mostly thinking of how much of the super-abundant summer produce is nightshade. It'd probably only really be a problem for someone allergic to both nightshades and wheat, and that'd be an issue whether eating local food or not. Eh, maybe it just wasn't a good example.

[knitthenight.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is what I was thinking. My family's garden may be producing tons of tomatoes and some peppers, but I just ignore them in favor of the fresh homegrown broccoli! Yum!

[frog-lady.livejournal.com]

Well, it's also the eggplant and potatoes...but, yeah, broccoli!

[knitthenight.livejournal.com]

Potatoes are nightshades? Really? ::ponders:: I guess I don't unequivocally hate nightshades after all... just nightshade fruit ;)

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

tomatoes might be debateable, but i'm pretty sure peppers are solidly in the vegetable category.

[knitthenight.livejournal.com]

No, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are all fruit (though tomatoes are legally vegetables, for importation purposes I believe). They are seeds with yummy stuff around them.

botony or horticulture? from the university of illinois

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

Botanically speaking, the tomato you eat is a fruit. So is a watermelon, green pepper, eggplant, cucumber, and squash. A "fruit" is any fleshy material covering a seed or seeds.

Horticulturally speaking, the tomato is a vegetable plant. The plant is an annual and nonwoody. Most fruits, from a horticulture perspective, are grown on a woody plant (apples, cherries, raspberries, oranges) with the exception of strawberries.

Re: botony or horticulture? from the university of illinois

[knitthenight.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm talking about the part people eat, so yeah... fruit. If you only used the horticultural definition, then no one would regularly get their daily 2-3 servings of fruit :-P