Georgia Ray Van Schie January 17th 2016 17
Why it’s important to think about what we eat.
When you reach into your bag to eat that sandwich you made this morning, do you really think about the origin, effort put into and nutritional benefit of each ingredient? For myself, these are common questions I ask before I eat, and I think that no matter what you eat, these questions should arise at least regularly.
I am the type of person who can never talk about food and nutrition enough. I remember a specific time while I was out for dinner with a friend at an Italian restaurant, and I commented on the menu which lead me to talk about carbohydrates. She nicely told me that apparently “I obsessively think of food too much and I should just be more careless of the matter”. We shared a laugh about it all and had a great meal. Although, afterwards I thought about what she had said. I wondered if she was right about me caring too much.
I think that people who are self-sustainable with food, buy local, eat well and care about nutrition often are treated as extremists in our society.
I’ve felt that, today, in the northern Ontario culture I've grown up in, there is a lack in cultural connection when it comes to food. In Canada, before and part way through the industrial revolution more than 70% of people worked in agriculture. This clearly shows that food was a community effort and it was definitely locally bought.
Today In a capitalist society where individuals have very little first hand knowledge and experience with where their food comes from and who farms it, we experience a huge disconnect from consumer and the source or the companies that provide the food. Since we don’t see the effort put into our food and only the transaction of money, it can be easy to ignore the background of our food a just how important it is to value it.
For myself, I am lucky that I discovered gardening at a young age. It always fascinated me that you could plant a seed and it would grow into something larger and can nourish you in a fulfilling way.
There is so much to learn about plants and how to find nutrition from nature, but even basic plant identification is unrequired in our society. Why should people bother trying to dry their own herbal teas that our native to the land, when we can just get green tea shipped over from India in bulk and bought at any grocery store? Here is one reason: products like green tea is harvested in mass clearings of land which disturbs ecosystems. The consumption and use of Coconut oil causes deforestation of huge areas of the Amazon jungle, which wouldn't happen if countries used the majority of their own resources instead of importing from everywhere else.
51% of greenhouse gases are caused from agriculture! Looking at the mathematical side of things, perhaps caring about food really does matter.
Since I am vegan, it makes things a lot easier for me to avoid plastic wrapping and to not support the animal products side of the food industry. This is the kind of diet that I am most comfortable following, and I in no way ask others to have the same life style as I do. When I tell people I'm vegan, I usually get a variety of different reactions, some people suddenly become concerned with my health since, in their minds I don’t follow the drilled in government issued diet recommendations and others are respectful and are curious about the lifestyle.
I have also heard people say that they find that vegans are too aggressive with their message of cruelty free eating, and that it shouldn't matter what other people eat. I personally don’t waste my time asking others to stop eating meat or dairy products, because I think that it depends entirely on the person to decide if it works for their life or not. What I do share with people is how important it is to be grateful for your food, no matter what kind of diet you eat. There is no excuse, nor do I find it humorous to be careless about the process that food goes through to get onto the plate. After all, food always tastes better when it’s made with love, and is appreciated. People seem to forget that holidays like thanks giving are meant for thanking the earth for the harvest and not just stuffing yourself like the turkey. Every day should be like thanks giving.
My goal when it comes to nourishing my body, is to be aware and to put in effort, because when you know the hard work, love and gratefulness that goes into every meal, you are living and experiencing real food culture.
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