My thought for today.... Ive been thinking about how we have become a society so caught in the deluded fever of dividing food into either poison or healthy. Every year or so we get a New craze.... today its gluten free.... before it was Atkins... Eat Right for Your Blood Type ...or the Paleo diet.... each claiming new wisdom into how we humans are not eating right or how what we growing is killing us... Then there is the GMO debate and organics... each of these fads/beliefs/trends is polarizing us and creating a paranoid relationship to food. It has all the working and ideology of a cult with all the disdain and behavioral superiority of moral religious fundamentalism. Each camp unmoving or willing to see past their ideas... proselytizing the Earth saving qualities of Organics or the Satanic evils of GMOs... Gluten.... Processed foods... etc... and the only people who win are the corporations that supply us with the idea and the cure and all sides are guilty of the bottom line. I know people who literally make themselves sick by fretting and freaking out over every little thing they put in their body. Obsessively, reading labels and reducing their food intake to kale and not much else. They see food as poison... and the delusion creates a further push into food conspiracies and seeking (pseudo)science to back up their beliefs. It also promotes eating disorders and other health problems. This is such a fundamental form of self hatred... combining unrealistic goals for body image, youthfulness, healthy, immortality.... This trend is supported by the media and big business pushing us into the next billion dollar fad and further solidifying the delusion on all fronts from fashion to lifestyles. The internet is full of websites promoting all manner of healthy and it pretends to give you the illusion of alternative information or that you are getting the inside truth. When in fact, it is a just as planned and designed for you to fall in line with the corporations that are wanting to make money off your fears about food and health. In the West we waste so much food because we are brainwashed into this idea that food needs to look and be a certain way. This is one of the factors that has pushed up the price of food in general over the past 20 years as well as creating further increases with labels such as Organic...Gluten Free... No Trans Fats...etc... and the willingness of the public to pay more for this labeling is a behavior the industry banks on literally. Then there is this other delusion that there is only a small percentage of real or healthy food... this creates a further complexity sending the message that only a few will have access to the good food and you must be willing to pay as much as possible for it... as if it that translates to a sustainable availability... or will grow the market availability for it... which is not the point... its to get you to pay more and drive the delusion. (Now, I will add that this has created local farmers markets and CSA and other alternatives to the grocery store... as well as a push to know where ones food comes from yet the market value price is still dictated by the overall industry.... we are often willing to pay even more for this access to fresh locally grown food. Im on the fence as to whether it will create a long term sustainable model... I do think it is the better model in many ways with its own issues to be resolved ) There are documentaries showing mountains of oranges, bananas and other fruits and vegetables grown that will never make it to market or to those who are hungry because they are not perfect or sell able in our narrow idea of what we will eat. It is also politically support by some farm subsidies... farmers are often paid to grow certain foods and then paid to not harvest or sell it... ( Yet, this waste is acceptable and food stamps are not... go figure... a topic for another time...) This food waste consumes resources and is the shadow of the crazy healthy food roller coaster most people have bought into and support. I think recognizing what we have been forced into with the food industry is a step in the right direction. I also know people are stuck in their ideological trenches and food beliefs... It will be interesting to see how this works out. I also dont expect everyone to agree with what I wrote here today. This is more a lets-see-what-the-bigger-picture-looks-like if we step back a bit... and connect the dots observations...
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 16:30:10 +0000