Friday, June 1, 2007
Food & Life / Food media Local leanings
Posted by Adina Fleming on Fri, Jun 1, 2007 at 6:52 PM
Besha Rodell's recent article on the Slow Food movement addresses an important and increasingly urgent issue regarding our food choices. The purchases we make in the supermarket and in restaurants do not merely affect our personal gastronomy, but that of the the earth itself.
"Factory farms and pollution are huge factors in the threat to our food supply, and if everyone embraced the ideology of Slow Food, it's hard to imagine a scare like the spinach debacle of last year."
As Rodell points out, our decisions about where we buy our food and how it gets to us are inextricably linked to the environment. The food on our tables, from the South American bananas to the imported European cheese, results in diets that are increasingly more and more petroleum-saturated. Our food dollars go toward fueling the huge distances covered in stocking the shelves of the local grocery stores, and our taste buds suffer along with the environment.
I recently returned to my homeland of Sonoma County in Northern California, an area particularly sensitive to foodie concerns. My mom and I went to see Barbara Kingsolver speak about her new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, in which she and her family document the year they spent eating only food grown by themselves or purchased locally, preferably from farmers they knew. The auditorium was full, the parking lot packed with Subaru Foresters and an audience that was a sea of gray hair.
In a velvety voice, Kingsolver read from the book and described the experience. Slightly unsettling to the multitude of vegan audience members were her tales of turkeys, whose slaughtering Kingsolver's family members did themselves. They also, she pointed out, had to breed their own brood of heirloom turkeys who could mate, since turkeys in the United States have been bred so fat and stupid they no longer know how to procreate. Any sex drive has been completely bred out of turkeys, with mass artificial insemination being the mode of reproduction.
The book is delightfully written and accessible, seeking to find a way to make this urgent issue one that all families can address, and in doing so, hopefully incorporate change into their lives. Kingsolver's mission is to rectify the disconnect that exists between our bodies and our food. We no longer know anything about how food is grown or where it comes from, and she hopes to change this.
Comments (3)
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What a beautiful explanation you provide..thank you!! i think this is a very important topic and you do a superb job of relating it to your up-bringing!
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I epecially loved the reference to attending the Kingsolver event with your mother. Certainly, the evident close bonds between you and your mom harmonize perfectly with the family connectedness that Kingsolver evokes so achingly.
Brilliant! Adina captures so aptly the flavor of the Kingsolver evening. I also attended the event in Santa Rosa, and Ms. Fleming has nailed some of the most poignant details, such as the author's attempts to aid in the process of turkey procreation. I look forward to seeing more of this upcoming, bright talent! Thank you, Creative Loafing!
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