Food today - what is it and where can we find it? The market economy of our civilization is set up in such a way to ensure that every product is produced, packaged, and shipped with the least cost and greatest financial gain possible for the company. What use to be a market geared toward the actual needs and desires of the consumer has inevitably shifted to one that manipulates the consumer into thinking they need or want the product being produced.
What has happened, then, is that we've been suckered. Suckered into thinking like the industries that manipulate us - bigger and faster, with the least amount of energy exerted, is better. When these thought and behavior patterns infiltrated our civilization, they began to spread to every known thing that could be made an object, or commodity. When something becomes a commodity, it begins to be treated by its dollar value, instead of its inherent, life-giving value. So too with food, where the consequences, often adverse, have a direct impact on our health and lives.
Take, for example, chain grocery stores. Let's even begin with a chain store that many look to for providing healthy, sometimes organic, food at low cost - Trader Joes. At first glance we may tout Trader Joes' ability to provide food stuffs to those unable to afford all the organic offerings. But is what Trader Joes has to offer any better than the highly processed white breads or sugar loaded snacks found at any chain supermarket? At what cost do we purchase these foods?
When I walk into a Trader Joes, the first thing I notice is all the packaging, even the packaging of vegetables, most of which are pre-cut. We may applaud TJ for making the life of a single, working parent all the more easy at dinner time, but perhaps the problem of overworked single parents in society is something we need to probe more deeply, instead of looking for a quick fix so we can go on doing the same old thing that obviously isn't working.
To cut our costs, financially and health-wise, we need to move beyond the quick fix, beyond the "quicker-is-better" scheme, and into a movement that respects the inner signals our bodies give us about what is and is not okay for our own particular well-being. While we may balk at the price of organic foods and whole foods without additives, the price we pay for eating the aforementioned processed and sugar loaded foods is incredibly high. Those who maintain a healthy lifestyle - including diet, exercise, and rest among other, less documented elements that go into our overall health - have less need of doctors, prescription medications, and other health-care professionals. Americans spend an astronomical percentage of their income on these services, and much, much less on food.
If we can make the shift towards financing healthy, whole foods, we will naturally shift away from financing doctors on whom we once depended for our general well-being. We will simply have little need for them, except of course in emergency situations.
Now's the time for the movement of Food, and the Slow Food movement has already begun. I think it's inevitable that we would move back in the direction of whole, unadulterated foods. To do otherwise would mean to give over the source of our very lives, the source of all our vital energy and power, to corporations and industries whose main motive is to turn a profit, not to keep us healthy and happy, despite what the commercials or power bar wrapping may say.
This movement in food touches a very deep part in each of us - because food is vital to our very existence and because food has played a crucial role in the forming of culture and civilization. These ancient structures have been systematically broken down by our market economy, to the detriment of our health. By moving toward a more holistic approach to the way we conceive of food, our bodies, and our health, our perceptions of the world at large, and of culture and community, will necessarily change with it.
A revolution in food is a revolution in the dark corners of our societies and lives, whether we want to go there or think we're prepared to or not.
