[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img]
The most critical issues facing the new Obama administration are our food supply, our ailing health care system and our unhealthy dependence on foreign oil. While they may seem unrelated, the issues are inextricably intertwined.
In my family, food and energy politics have always existed side by side. My first childhood memories are filled with lessons – from the Cesar Chavez grape boycott to watching farmers dump food to inflate prices. I will never forget the stark contrast of listening to my friends’ parents admonish them to clean their plates, and the images of starving children covered by flies with distended stomachs on late night television, against the backdrop news images of a pile of oranges dumped by farmers.
I still remember my mother’s tutelage on the Dept. of Agriculture’s heavy hand in food promotion (not health promotion) and the agency’s backing of the food stamp and school lunch programs – where ketchup could qualify as a vegetable. It is against this backdrop that I have done what I can to regionalize my food purchases and make my carbon footprint smaller – long before former Vice-President Al Gore became a Nobel laureate by making global warming all the rage. (You have to wonder about the Sasquatch-sized carbon footprint a frequent flyer like Gore leaves on earth).
I Give up. Which Is It?
So it was a great surprise to find out that despite America’s recent talk about environmentalism and the need to minimize one’s carbon footprint, there are still people out there who either do not know any better or do not care.
For the first time since my first year of college, I have a roommate. I will not bore you with the story that led to me hosting the adult child of a family friend in my house for what started out as two weeks, but now looks to be interminable. Let us just say it has been a window into American consumption.
When President George W. Bush, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, urged Americans to shop, I didn’t think people would take his advice literally. But they did. And still do. So what does an unemployed and indebted 27 year old do? Shop. Shop. Shop.
Buying things in and of itself is not bad. We all have to buy clothes, and we desire entertainment and other creature comforts. But I am mindful of what I purchase. After all, my grandparents lived through the Great Depression. So frugality and thrift were hand-me-downs. My guest is not so scrupulous.
Talk About a Bad Trip
I recently took our guest to the weekly farmer’s market where I buy all of my produce, and various sundry items. My weekly Sunday morning ritual fascinated her. I was surprised to have to explain why I shop at the farmer’s market. That some might think it was weird that I would want to talk to the farmer about how my food was grown, odd that I believe in supporting food species diversity and abhor the monoculture of supermarket produce, strange that I like to buy locally grown food, and feel that food should not have to travel great distances to reach my table. My guest even asked why I would bring my own canvas bags to the market, and subsequently to Whole Foods. For the briefest of moments, she thought that California merchants didn’t give out bags.
Perhaps I live in a bubble, but I thought a good number of people now brought their own bags to the market, or at least tried mightily to do so. I see it at the farmer’s market. I see it at Whole Foods. I even see it at Trader Joe’s. Ireland taxed bags almost out of existence. South Australia will ban bags. Our state even enacted legislation without teeth – Assembly Bill 2449 – to encourage plastic bag recycling. Celebrities carry bags, which proclaim themselves “not a plastic bag.” Yet the message hasn’t filtered down.
After my Sunday morning shopping rituals, my guest pronounced the market’s food too ripe, and instead purchased groceries at Target. She brought dozens of plastic bags to my house, one it seemed for each item, including fruit. Obviously, we need real regulation to sever our dependence on these bags otherwise some people will never give them up.
Even Cleveland Is Superior
Now, I’m thrilled that the Dept. of Water and Power finally got on the bandwagon and allows us to recycle bags and plastic with resin identification codes 1 through 7. (I was appalled that my tiny city of Shaker Heights, Ohio, where I had lived for three years, had a more comprehensive recycling program than the vast city of Los Angeles.) But that’s only a small solution to a big problem. Plastic must be tackled at the supply side of the equation. I don’t take them, give them back when offered, and expect others to do the same.
Not to be confused with real food, my mother (in a nod to Michael Pollan) calls anything in the middle aisles of a grocery store “edible products.” Years ago I severed my relationships with traditional grocery stores. When I gave up high fructose corn syrup, among other highly processed ingredients, the break was inevitable. Now, I don’t expect most Americans to eat like I do. My all-organic, whole food diet, takes time, effort and money. But, my well organized pantry, stocked with nuts, grains and dried fruit, has been inundated by these middle-aisle edible products. When my guest threw away my fresh goat cheese and fig salad, and tossed my buckwheat and spelt pancakes, I told her she was on her own.
Her own diet includes frozen waffles with corn syrup for breakfast, nitrate-filled deli meat, processed cheese food, white bread for lunch, a snack of formed potato crisps, canned pasta dinners, and crème filled cookie desserts. The ingredient lists on these “foods” read like an eye chart. My pancreas goes into insulin shock just thinking about all that junk.
Just Half of the Answer
President-elect Obama and various Democrats have proposed a universal health care system. With what passes for food gracing most American’s plates, that’s only half a solution. I agree that everyone needs health care, and our country cannot thrive on just sick care for a few. But the underlying issue of our diets, our obesity and our skyrocketing Type 2 diabetes rates makes that a faulty solution to what is a multi-faceted problem.
I wholeheartedly believe the solution to our health care crisis and our fossil fuel dependency lies in large part on improving the food we eat and eschewing discount store consumption of every plastic product ever created. My guest has covered almost every inch of the guest room and guest bath with every plastic-bottled product known to mankind. I think the Oprah Winfrey show and almost every magazine have debunked the myth that any particular shampoo or moisturizer or chemical soup will make any difference in our lives. In the last few weeks, I’ve started wondering how I have made do with only soap and toothpaste.
Having spent years reading about food, farming and agribusiness has led me to the conclusion that eating real food (grown by photosynthesis, not synthetics), and minimizing our demand for these petroleum-based products, is the only way to save our country from future resource riots.
Now if I can get my guest on board with my conservationist ideals, or just out of my house, I will be happy.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, "Law School Supports Drug Use"—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. She's a reformed lawyer, and full time novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course.This will mark the debut of our newest, and perhaps most charismatic, weekly essayist. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
