I’m interested in food because I think it’s at the core of so many issues I care about—human health, environmental degradation, animal rights, habitat preservation, climate change, environmental justice, toxicology, community resiliency, poverty and our increasing lack of self-sufficiency, to name a few. Through chance and circumstance, much of my life has been spent indirectly around these issues. I volunteered at a food bank weekly starting when I was five and kept it up through middle school. Now, I work at Safeway, which I credit with partially igniting my interest in these issues. Reading Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma was one thing, but seeing how most people actually eat was something else entirely.
My own eating habits shifted during high school too. I was lucky enough to be raised by a stay-at-home mom, which meant I could count on a freshly prepared dinner at least five nights a week at home. Mom got a job towards the end of high school, though, and my extracurricular routine frequently meant that I got home from school between 8 and 10pm. Suddenly, I found myself eating frozen pizza or grabbing a burrito on the go a bit more than I felt comfortable with. I’d never learned how to cook beyond the basics, and even those came late (pasta—sophomore year of high school). I wanted to do things differently, but I didn’t have the time or energy to make it happen.
Since the end of high school, I’ve been slowly working to teach myself useful skills. I can make a few basic meals now, and I shop for groceries I know I’ll actually use, so I don’t panic and fall back on frozen food. I’m hoping to petition to be off of a meal plan this spring so I can cook for myself and learn more. For now, I mostly want to do a better job of eating well. “Well” is something I take seriously, and it includes my health, as well as supporting local producers and good treatment of animals and land. Here’s my current thinking on how that breaks down:
| Good Food | Stuff to Avoid | Never, Ever Eat |
| local, organic produce | out-of-season produce | tropical fruits and vegetables |
| local, ethically raised beef | chicken, pork and turkey, even if from a small, local producer | any meat killed at a conventional slaughterhouse |
| game animals | fish (sadly including sushi) | factory-farmed meat |
| eggs raised humanely by someone I know | conventional eggs, including “cage-free” and “free range” ones | |
| raw milk | conventional milk | milk from rGBH treated cows |
| yogurt and cheese (ideally locally made or homemade) | tofu | soy-based fake meat and dairy products (soy burgers, soymilk, etc.) |
| beans, lentils and quinoa | carbohydrate-intensive meals (pasta, etc.) | white bread and prepackaged bagels |
| homemade baked goods | processed snack foods | soda and other sugary drinks |
| homecooked, fresh meals or raw food | dining hall prepared foods | frozen dinners |
Beyond just eating, I want to learn how to garden, compost, preserve food, make twelve different dishes with kale and have a goat or chickens in the city. And obviously, changing how I eat will do absolutely nothing to fix the food system. So in the next week or so, I’ll be writing a longer post about what’s wrong with the way we eat now, and hopefully some ideas for fixing it. In the meantime, check out my final project from Semester in the West—a podcast about grass-fed meat and what that label really means.
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