I think a lot about food. More than most people, I think. The context, the ethics, the flavor.

I guess that a lot of this has come up in the past few days. Since moving out, my food choices have gone pretty well unquestioned by those around me. But as I’ve been at my parents house the past few days, it’s changed things a bit.

I came back to the parents house feeling extremely ill… wanting little more than a bowl of miso, shot of lemon juice, and a few cloves of garlic to give my immune system a kick.

My mom had different ideas, and had bought me various packaged foods and sugary drinks for me to come home to. She was well meaning, and I appreciated the gesture, but knew that those things would do a sick girl no good.

It is funny. I look at the way those around me eat; my family, my old roommates, and so many others, and see that despite how normal my diet feels to me I am strikingly different than so many people.

This isn’t about my usual veganism or freeganism. This is about culture and attitudes towards food.

I see that food is so integral as a part of our culture, yet, paradoxically, the United States has little in terms of food culture, lest you consider McDonalds and Monsanto to be our “culture” (granted, they do represent the dominance of unhealthy capitalism that is omnipresent but that aside… ) We have little connection to our food… not only is it nearly all produced on large-scale corporate farms and in massive factories, but so few actually know how these foods are created. It is a part of our cultural heritage, our heritage as humans, yet one that not many in the United States seem to heartily embrace. It leaves a gap, which contributes to an unhealthy attitude towards food.

My family is, tragically, a perfect example of this. They loathe cooking as a “chore” rather than delight in it as an act of creation and nourishment for body and soul. My mother is always insisting when I stay at her house that I do not have time to cook, and ought to eat some frozen meal or other, yet simultaneously calls me to watch an hour of some manner of ridiculousness on the television. We live in a culture of convenience, where we are told that we have an hour to watch television, yet do not have a half hour with which to prepare a decent meal. Instead of eating nourishing foods that sustain our bodies and treat the senses, we opt for unwholesome and bland foods dished out by ConAgra.

Coming from this, I feel like I have no food heritage aside from instant foods and the carcasses my family occasionally, and grudgingly, cook up. When I began questioning my food choices in my mid-teens, I still was able to cling to the security blanket of familiar commercial foods, even after I stopped eating animals. Today I have wholly changed. I still have no taproot to draw from, yet I slowly began developing a food culture all my own. It is amazing, and feels to profound. Amid a culture of boxed foods, I feel like I can on some level resist. While I still cannot fully tear myself away from the corporate food system, I do feel that I hold some power. I have learned so many arts that have been lost to my peers. Things that our grandparents or great-grandparents may have been familiar with, but that have been lost over the generations. I’m slowly learning to identify wild edibles. I grew some food over the summer. I can bake bread, brew beer, sprout legumes, make jam, and am learning to make krauts. Hell, I’m even (ever-so-slowly) beginning to learn modern paths of gastronomical resistance, such as the fine art of dumpster diving behind a few notorious markets and bakeries. I make the vast majority of my meals from relative scratch, and my body is all the better for it. It is giving me some sort of roots and grounding as I blaze a new food heritage in my urban kitchen. Sure I may have a bit of a sniffle right now, but this is the first time I have been ill in years.

I look at my family, and I see that they are sick all the time. They have unhealthy relationships with food, binging on devil dogs because the prepackaged foods they eat offer little fulfillment and satisfaction, leaving them to rely on those cakes of goddess-only-knows-what to fill that void. They never feel the satisfaction of slowly cutting strips of linguini from homemade dough, and cooking them with fresh vegetables form the yard and woods. They never know the satisfying feeling of refreshment that comes with sipping a cool homebrew of wild botanicals and tart citrus. Hell, they are too afraid to even experience the foods of unfamiliar cultures like spicy kimchi from Korea or sweet cactus flesh from Mexico.

It saddens me to see that so many people are like this. Yet it delights me to know that there are some seeds of resistance out there. It seems that more urban gardens are popping up, more farmer’s markets, and even in chain supermarkets more “exotic” options can be had than in years past. Even comparing our food repertoire to that of the previous generation—where falafel and sushi have become as commonplace as pizza and burgers were to our parents—it is inspiring, and shows that there is some change arising. However, whether this change will gain a strong and lasting foothold, or whether it will fizzle out once “green” falls out of vogue is yet to be decided. However, one thing I do know is that for those of us who know we’re going to be part fo this making of a new American food culture for the long haul, this is the period where our new food culture my be beginning to emerge.

Food is such a huge part of life, why do we treat it so trivially?

I for one pride myself on my attitude towards food. Food is meant to nourish all parts of us. To comfort us and awaken the senses. This is what food ought to be about. Dinner after a hectic day should be a time t relax, leisurely stirring a pot of stew on the stove, not another hectic event where we rush to unthaw a frozen dinner in the microwave. For me, cooking, and eating, are times of relaxation, meditation, and depending on who's in the kitchen ith me, a bit of laughter and fun. This is the way all food ought to be.


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Semi-related… many of the seeds I’ve included in The Letterbomb Project are edibles, including lettuce, wild lettuce, wild carrot, wintergreen, tansy, and rose. Join the resistance. Go read my previous post on The Letterbomb Project and sign up to receive some sweet seed bombs… for free!!! Everyone likes freebies, yesyes?

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