Throughout the past couple of months, I have been working hard to critically examine the food that I am putting into my body and the corporations, systems, and people I support when I am consuming it. Let me tell you, it’s been quite a challenge. In Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollen states that, “the lack of a steadying culture of food leaves us especially vulnerable to the blandishments of the food scientist and the marketer, for whom the omnivore’s dilemma is not so much a dilemma as an opportunity.” This truth is all around us.
Walk into most restaurants, supermarkets, and cafés in the Fort Myers area and you’ll probably see what I’m talking about. The food smells like food, looks like food, and often times even tastes like food, but I’m not sure you can exactly call it that. I mean, is the frozen, microwave meal honestly a meal at all? How about the nicely plated restaurant meals that are shipped in from all over the world in plastic bags then heated and re-heated in many different ways so the consumer will get the fulfilling feeling of eating a freshly made meal? How do those great-smelling and often times tasting meals make their way from the earth to our plates? IT DOESN’T. This oxymoronic truth is exactly what Pollen is referring to. The ingredients in these “meals” are not actually food at all, instead the food being marketed to us is the result of a series of scientific reactions by which corporations, food scientists, and marketers are making millions of dollars and our health and knowledge of what exactly it is we’re eating are being sacrificed. Even vegetarians and vegans, people who presumably are aware of these systems or at least eating healthily, fall victim to the engineered food industry.
Prior to a couple of months ago, I was one of those “victims.” I felt I was doing my part by eliminating meat from my diet, when I decided I was going to eat whole foods, I realized just how wrong I was. Search "whole foods on google" and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. It’s not until the second page, 15 links in, that you can make your way to Wikipedia, or any other site for that matter, that can tell you what the term even means. Instead of finding foods that are natural, unprocessed, and unrefined, we are consistently surrounded with fake man-made ingredients posing as good , often times healthy, solutions to the industrial food system. Trying to eliminate food engineering from your diet is no easy feat. Morningstar, Amy’s, and most other vegan and vegetarian options still use highly processed materials to create meals and going from veggie burger, to “chikin” patty, right back to veggie burger can hardly represent a well balanced healthy diet. We are being duped.
Instead of real fruits and veggies, what we are actually consuming are “natural” and artificial flavors. In Fast Food nation, Eric Schlosser reveals that a great deal of what we eat is packed full of these ingredients and in fact, “About 90% of the money that Americans spend on food is used to buy processed food.” That’s pretty frightening. I can’t speak for everyone else but I want actual vegetables, fruits, vitamins, and other nutrients entering my body, not something a scientist can conjure up in a test tube.
The reality that these highly processed foods make up the majority of what we eat is frightening enough, but when you live in an area where access to whole foods is highly limited, it can taint any optimism one could cling too. That’s normally where I find myself. Clinging to hope that I can challenge the industrial food system, but surrounded by corporations that tell me I can’t.
Luckily this weekend, when I was beginning to feel defeated, I rediscovered hope. I was out of town, in St. Petersburg when I stumbled across Central Café and Organics. I got to see the food I was eating, watch my veggies being cut, witness the fair-trade and organic stamps marked on everything packaged, and be filled with real delicious food. I wanted to bring that hope back home with me and share my optimism with my friends so I searched and found Chef Brooke’s Natural Café only ten minutes from my home. I’m excited to see what they have to offer and ready to begin to reestablish some semblance of faith in food. I’m searching for healthy solutions now and despite the fact that the industrialized food system is all around us, I’m excited to see what change local farmers and business owners can make and ready to commit myself to take part in that challenge.
*References
Pollen, Michael. (2006). The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. London, UK: Penguin Books.
Schlosser, Eric. (2002). Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Perennial Books.
