Change this something normal into something beautiful

Earlier this week, I promised I'd write about the mailer I received from Lutheran World Relief. Seeing as it's Sunday, and that apparently I can no longer sleep for more than six hours at a time, now seems an appropriate time.

This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. (Isaiah 6-7, The Message)

LWR is working on a campaign entitled "Fill the Bowl." The goal: $500,000 raised to support current, successful food growing programs. These programs support food security (moving away from monocultures), sustainable agriculture (caring for the land as a way of improving crop yields), and emergency food aid (currently to assist communities in drought-stricken Niger).

There is a disconnect in our nation. We are obsessed with food. We frantically hunt for the best diet. We seek out new options to excite our dulled taste buds. We self-medicate by binging on sugar, and counteract by refusing to eat for days. We seek food that is easy, that is simple, that fuels us, that is cheap but that does not factor its true cost to society.

I do realize we're in an economic crisis. However, we've brought it upon ourselves. Our fuel costs are soaring--and we have an agricultural system based upon cheap oil. While it is tempting, as food costs escalate, to choose what has the cheapest price ticket at the grocery store, it is not sustainable. It is time to consider the true costs, and to see how those costs are affecting the rest of the world, a world fixated on food not because there are too many options, but because there are too few.

If Isaiah were writing today, I think his words might be something like this:
The fast I choose is this: Each day, as much as possible, to consciously avoid foods which perpetuate the endless cycle of injustice. With this fasting I will choose foods which support the local economy, which promote fair trade, which elevate small-scale farmers rather than large corporations. Join me. Your food choices, do, in fact, help you to feed the hungry. Consider others beyond yourself.

I chose to include the devotional from Isaiah that the LWR flier uses because, once again, I feel that many Christians are neglecting to view food and food policy as an essential element of social ministry. Do justice. It is easy to send away a donation (and I do encourage it; please visit LWR). But the broader view--seeing that food choices impact local farmers, undercut societal traditions, devastate the environment--this is a view that is gathering momentum, but it is not moving quickly enough.

It's not meant to be easy. But true justice rarely is.


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Now playing: Jimmy Eat World - Chase This Light

I guess its better then silence and better then shame

I haven't done a food blog in quite some time. It's summer. My mind escapes during summer. Summer is about moving slowly and napping in the afternoon and baseball on the radio and testing my non-AC endurance. Yet a few things have combined to encourage me to delve back into food.

I received a flier in the mail from Lutheran World Relief. Normally I toss these things straight in the recycle bin, but LWR is one of the few places that receives my hard earned pennies (only A+ charity rating besides ARC) and the stark image of an empty white bowl caught my attention. More about what I found in this mailer in the next couple days.

Next, I returned to market work on Saturday. I volunteered rather than sold this week, so I became intimately acquainted with Leidenheimer bread, fig and blueberry jam, pesto, and French cheese. I realized that those who shop the market regularly know the vendors, know their stories and their locations and their family history.

Finally, I had conversations with people that made me realize, hey, others really do know that food is one of my passions and that they can turn to me for advice or discussion. They want to know market hours, the concepts behind the market, even ideas on gardening (watering would help...oops).

Sometimes I think that I can do nothing. Other times I think people have no interest in what I have to say. It's part of what fuels my desire to have those three letters behind my name, the idea that maybe if I have a PhD, perhaps people might listen to me. But now I'm realizing that I might have a voice, and maybe that voice can grow to truly be a shout through an empty sanctuary.

So Emily's brother Andrew has created a new blog in which he apparently steals my thoughts and makes them more eloquent. No...they are not my exact thoughts, but through email we have discovered we have many of the same perspectives on food. And so I took a look at his blog this morning and found this excellent sentiment:

Maybe that's it. We can only take one breath at a time. We can only take one step at a time. How are we breathing? Which way are we walking? Are we defeated before we even step out the door?

It's not about conquering the world. It's about taking the small steps. It's about walking in the right direction--even if we take a step backward, taking two steps forward to make up for it. What does this look like in the food policy sphere? It's talking to my friends about the difference between grocery store produce and the peach you pick up on Saturday morning from the market vendor. It's about being conscious with what I choose to eat and cook--choosing recipes in season, recipes that do not require fruit from Australia or veggies from Chile. It's about remembering the connections between the land, the economy, the people and the plate.

Being passionate about food can make people preachy...I don't want to be preachy. I want to share. Eating together is one of the surest ways to create community. I can barely eat alone anymore--where's the fun in that? Eating with others creates opportunities to discuss, to savor, to laugh and to breathe. It's yet another step in the right direction.

My thoughts on food, my choices on food, even the sharing of my food might not be enough to save the world. But at least I'm remembering the direction I'm walking.
Plus it saves the half bag of sour bright crawlers for those who have the stomach for that sort of thing...



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Now playing: Jack's Mannequin - MFEO

Don't ask twice if you don't wanna know

To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do it knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, destructively, it is a desecration.
...Wendell Berry

Sometimes I get frustrated.
Me, frustrated? NO. Never.
Anyway, my frustration stems from the fact that many around me do not seem to understand why sound environmental policy, and particularly food policy, is an essential element of Christian ministry. Christians are starting to realize that their voting should look beyond abortion and homosexuality and embrace a platform that is truly pro-life. Many are concerned about urban poverty, about education, about foreign policy.

But why, oh why are we forgetting food policy?

I think it's because it's so easy to overlook. But it is such an essential part of ministry. Feasting plays a large role in both the OT and the NT. Jesus knew the role of food in ministry. He was always sitting down with people. And I'm betting his first priority was not "cheap."

And so that's why I've introduced the quote at the top of this blog as my email signature. It is a reminder that God gave us the gifts of creation. He blessed us with the ability to be discerning in what we choose to eat. When we take the time to consider what we eat--how it was grown, how it will be cooked, whether we choose to sit down with friends or grab it on the run--we acknowledge the wonder that is all around us, and we give thanks for it, and we remember that it is our job to honor and glorify creation. But when we consider food to be just a simple refueling exercise, meant to satisfy us temporarily at the lowest possible price, we damage both our bodies and the world around us.


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Now playing: Keith Urban - Where the Blacktop Ends
via FoxyTunes

C'mon Sweet Catastrophe

It's what everyone's reading. Well, it seems that way when I read blogs such as the Gristmill and Sustainable Table, am a member of the New Orleans Food Cooperative, and get emails from Amazon announcing that Michael Pollan is their guest blogger. I admit, I love MP. He's my newest hero. He says everything that is in my head when it comes to food and how it relates to culture, environment and sustainability--and he says it so much more eloquently than I. I venture to guess that he can spell the word eloquently. I plan on posting quite a bit from this book, but I encourage you to go pick up your own copy.

MP's manifesto is "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He follows this with a few guidelines of how to do just that. But what I wanted to write about today may seem like a contradiction to this rule...high-fructose corn syrup.

HFCS is created by processing corn syrup in order to increase the amount of fructose in the syrup. The result is a liquid sweetener that is used as a substitute for sugar, which comes from sugar cane or sugar beets. So, if HFCS is a byproduct of plants, why, exactly, should it be avoided? Well, without getting into a lot of chemistry (I quake in fear of the "Fundamentals of Environmental Chemistry" on my class schedule), the basics are that HFCS is a man-made sweetener comprised of fructose and glucose. Common table sugar is neither of these, but rather sucrose.

So why so bad? The body isn't used to so much fructose, and many studies suggest that this is a contributor to insulin resistance and therefore diabetes. In addition, HFCS is found in nearly EVERYTHING. Why? It's a preservative, and it extends the shelf life of many processed products. In addition, the US has created an agricultural market that favors artificially cheap corn while creating tariffs on sugar--it's much cheaper to use HFCS than it is to use actual sugar.
I've been trying to avoid HFCS, absentmindedly for about a year, with greater intent for the past month. I don't like the idea of chemically created sweeteners, especially ones that likely lead to weight issues and diabetes. I also want to give the agrobusiness producers and promoters of corn one less consumer (two less, actually, as my voice usually goes further in the buying of groceries and B doesn't like HFCS either). I don't want corn to be in every one of my meals, and if I keep an eye out for HFCS, I'm usually avoiding processed products, and so avoiding supporting those agrobusinesses.



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Now playing: Sherwood - A Different Light
via FoxyTunes

The Truth is So Undeniable

Today is World Food Day. Did you know? If not, I am not surprised.
According to Sustainable Table Blog, US coverage of the United Nations-sponsored event has been virtually nil. However, this is an event that is being celebrated today in over 150 countries. The theme: Right to Food.
Something most Americans don't have to think about, I suppose. We're lucky here...most of us have access to cheap food. But what we might want to think about is--why?
Our nation glorifies free market policies and exports this value around the world. Yet we are guilty of meddling in the market. Why is our food so cheap? Farm subsidies. Why is nearly all this cheap food infused with corn? Corn subsidies. We deliberately interfere with the free market, insuring that farmers (mostly big agribusiness, actually) receive inflated prices for their commodities.
But when other nations attempt to protect their farmers and/or citizens, the US and the WTO (where the US exerts enormous influence) rally around the cry for Free Markets and insist that nations dismantle trade barriers and cease subsidies. For instance, Mexico, under NAFTA regulations, cannot protect its farmers from the flood of cheap corn from US growers, who are paid subsidies. Mexican farmers cannot compete and so must find other ways of making a living (and we wonder why we have such a flood of immigration). Some might argue that these policies enable poor Mexicans to have their "right to food," but I argue that we are taking away the right of Mexican farmers to provide food to their families and their people.
An interesting instance of a nation asserting its right to food despite the efforts of developed nations is the case of Malawi, which I found on my new favorite site, Grist. Malawi in the 1990s had a program in which it gave the poorest farmers packets of seeds and fertilizer. In 1999, the government gave all farmers these packets, and the end result was a large national surplus. In 2000, amid the wisdom of the developed nations upon which Malawi depends for much of its national budget, the government was forced to dismantle this program. The donor nations insisted that this policy distorted the freedom of the market and refused aid if the program continued.
What happened? Smaller harvests, and two years of famine. What about the people's right to food? Last year, the government of Malawi acknowledged the right of its people to food. They distributed coupons to the poorest farmers, allowing them to purchase fertilizer at a large discount. The results? Food production is up 150%, and the cost of the program is half of what Malawi spent importing food from other nations. Oh, and the famine has ended.

Sometimes we forget, as we sit in the land of plenty, that there are 854 million people who are hungry throughout the world...and that, more often than not, it is our foreign policy that allows for such widespread hunger.

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Now playing: Mae - All Deliberate Speed
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