Another September Practice

Another great thing to do regarding food is to buy locally. The other day, I was in the produce section and noticed that there were muscadines for sale. These are type of grape that grows wild in Tennessee and much of the South. If you live near woods, you can likely find them on the ground and hanging from vines this time of year. I looked at the packaging for them and noticed that they were produced somewhere in Georgia. From the store I was then shopping at, I could go to a local farmer’s market and buy muscadines harvested in Benton County, just a few miles from my house. Why should I care about that? There are several things to consider.

Much more had to happen to the Georgia muscadines to get them in my grocery than the Benton County versions. There was the road trip from Georgia, of course, which used gas. On top of that, their transport had to be cooled in these hot summer days when the temperature might make them spoil faster. The Georgia muscadines have to be packaged in a specific type of plastic that will keep them fresh but not contaminate them. And, to make the trip to Tennessee (and probably farther on to other supermarkets as well), these muscadines probably have some sort of preservative to help them last long enough to get to the store, wait for you to buy them, and not spoil immediately after you get home. The Benton County muscadines just have to be picked and driven down the road.

So, you cut out the pollution, use of resources, and probably eat healthier muscadines, but you also invest in your community. In this great era when we can have Costa Rican bananas and Chilean Plums shipped right to the store down the road, you can help out the people who live within walking distance who are trying to grow food themselves. You will likely get to know these people, thereby becoming more a part of your community. This is at the essence of what God teaches us throughout the Bible—to live in community with those around you.

What to Eat: Practices

One way to eat in a more healthy and holy way is to cut back on your meat intake. This is a difficult one for me, because I have always loved meat. There were years in my childhood when I ate very little besides the meat offering at each meal. I still, to this day, crave meat more than other types of food. And, if I wanted to, I could eat meat at every meal, because these days, I have easy access to affordable meat. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father kills the fatted calf to celebrate his son’s return. That is a big statement of the father’s excitement. Killing a cow was a bigger deal in years passed, because it was just harder to get your hands on meat like that. Today, we are at no shortage for however much meat of any kind we want.

The dilemma is that too much meat is not just bad for our bodies. It takes far more grain to feed a meat producing animal than it does to make bread. That grain that goes into producing a hamburger or pork chop or chicken breast could be used to feed far more people than its meat counterpart. Also, lots of land has to be cleared for pasture for these animals. That is land that could be oxygen enriching forests. We are disconnected from this, because most of us have no involvement in the process of getting the meat we eat until we buy it. Like in the prodigal son story, meat eating has been much more of a luxury in the past. Meat is much more difficult to produce whether you grow the animal or hunt it.

So, think about that the next time you order a hamburger or have that cold cut combo. Appreciate the difficulty that is involved in getting meat to your plate. Thank the God who created life and set this cycle of life into place. Celebrate like the father that you get to eat in such a way.

September Focus: What We Eat

What did you eat today? No, really, WHAT did you eat today? Do you know where it came from? Any clue how it got to your plate? For most of us, if we really start to think about these questions, we probably lose our appetite. Many of us are quite disconnected from our food. We likely have little actual knowledge of what goes in our bodies on a daily basis. This is somewhat shocking considering that just a few generations ago everyone knew exactly where their food came from. In most cases it came from their backyard. Yes, this meant sacrifice. In most cases, meat was extremely rare - sometimes only eaten once or twice a year (so that Thanksgiving and Christmas meals were truly feasts).

It's beyond naive to think that we can return to this way of life on a grand scale, and many of us will never fathom such a shift. However, we can all know more about our food. We can all make choices to eat locally, and most of us can plant gardens and grow at least some of our own food. We will examine a few practices we think will help what we eat not eat at us and creation quite so much.