What's Eating Us?

I'm finally reading a book I've been meaning to read for a while. It's called The Omnivore's Dilemma. Essentially, the omnivore's dilemma is "What shall I eat?" For many animals this is not a problem. They eat generally the same thing all the time. My dog, for instance, gets dog food twice a day and after two and a half years, she has yet to complain or go on a hunger strike. She seems content to eat the same thing every day.

Well, not me. As an omnivore I desire variety. And the question of what to eat or what I want to eat plagues me. Even with unlimited options, sometimes it takes me what seems like an eternity to decide. But even when I decide what to eat there's an underlying problem of getting the food. The problem stems from the fact that I am not a farmer or a hunter. I am at best a gatherer, but my gathering takes the form of picking up things and putting them in a grocery basket. But where did the grocery get the food that I'm buying and eating?

This is the ultimate question of the book: "Where does our food come from?" I've never read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I like both Chicago and meat too much to read it, but from what I've heard the awakening it brought about in our consciousness seems to be the desired effect of The Omnivore's Dilemma. That I would know the difference between beef from a cow that was fed corn and one that was fed grass and why the difference matters. That I would understand what "organic" actually means - if it means anything.

I'm loving the book, but at the same time wondering if there's a way to go on eating the same way after I finish reading it. I feel like what we eat is a tremendously important thing, for our health but also the health of the planet. And yet I think most of us are completely ignorant about our food. I am hopeful that this book and other movements will bring about momentum to steer us back to a time when people knew exactly what they ate, primarily because it was in their backyard.

Weekly Green Thought

"Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?" Augustine (354-430), De Civitate Dei, Book 16