Reflecting on an Empty Stomach

Quickly, I'll get this week's classes out of the way before going into what I really want to reflect on: food.

Friday's class discussion was...interesting. It definitely reminded me of debate discussions we would have on the back of the bus on the way home from debate tournaments, although perhaps a bit more focused and a little less tangential. Still, it was stimulating. And while I didn't contribute as much as the next person, it was interesting to hear everyone's prospective on what world politics is (because that's really what it all got down to, I guess. What world politics is or isn't). And after over an hour's worth of discussion, we still don't have a solidified answer. Which is fine, because there isn't an answer, at least in my opinion.

In regards to Wednesday's visit to the museum, I actually enjoyed it. Especially the parts dealing with the riots, which I knew a lot about beforehand, but seeing pictures of the riots and the Poor People's Campaign always makes it that much more poignant and real.

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Alright, now that I've gotten the class-oriented items out the way, what I really want to discuss: Food.

It is times like these when I almost regret not going San Francisco State. This weekend the Slow Food Nation conference is taking place throughout San Francisco. Slow Food is (directly from its website): "a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world." Basically, it is a foundation that’s all about a speech I wrote for the NFL Nationals competition this year in Vegas (that’s speech and debate, not football.) At this conference, Michael Pollan and Eric Schloesser will be speaking, who, respectively, wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food and Fast Food Nation, some of my favorite journalistic works. The reason why I care so much about food is because I really believe that a lot of problems can be solved by changing how we view food. Look at it this way: The French have a diet that is above average in saturated fats (which does all sorts of nasty things to our health), but have significantly lower levels of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes than Americans….who happen to live in a culture revolving around diets obsessed with lowering these exact diseases. It’s really insane once you begin to look, on a world-wide basis, how different diets result in different states of health. Surprise, surprise, Americans, always health-conscious, have some of the worst diets in the world. Thanks to our large consumption of processed foods, refined grains, and the love of our lives, high fructose corn syrup, we are more likely to get cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and any number of other long-term illnesses than third-world countries. It’s crazy.

Eating smart, which doesn’t just mean eating healthy, but eating with a conscience (as in where it’s from, how it’s made, what it’s made with and who is benefited by its sale), can be taken as an individual stand against a number of problems, including global warming (eating from local farmers means less CO₂ emissions), fast-food markets (eating less-processed foods means less HFCS), farmers and subsidies (eating locally supports local trade), fair trade (eating ethically means from farmers to forks with no middleman), unhealthy eating (read: HFCS = BAD), natural resource erosion (use of pesticides, along with intense planting of crops like corn, erodes soil and harms plants/animals, making it unusable, meaning more land must be used for agriculture), use of fossil fuels (eating locally and eating organic means less fossil fuels used in transport and production) and a dozen others.

…Now I’m hungry. Take that as you will.