Real Food—To Know it is to Love it

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October 18, 2005

Daily Olive welcomes Sherri Brooks Vinton, author of Real Food Revival, as a periodic guest author writing about the practices of real food living.

I love food. It’s not just that I love to eat, which I do, but I am genuinely infatuated with food. I want to find the most delicious food available. I want to know how it got that way, where it comes from, how it was grown or raised, and who did the growing. It is this fascination that has led me directly to the real food movement. In a society that interests itself a great deal with the maker of our jeans, are yours Levi’s or Wranglers?, or the provenance of our cars, nothing like a sporty little import, we’ve become woefully unattached from the origins of our food. It wasn’t always this way.

What Happened?
As recently as sixty years ago, our food was grown regionally, on human-sized farms and was, by and large, organic.  But the advances in mechanization and chemical applications developed in World War II changed the face of American agriculture. Chemical companies such as Dow and Monsanto now dominate the food supply through vertically integrated corporations that control every facet of food production from seed to table.   

Small, family operated farms, once the backbone of our food chain, are being pushed out of business at a rate of 330 per week.  The result is an increasingly consolidated food system of anonymous producers churning out foods that have no sense of place or time.   

Quantity not Quality
Such a system operates on principles of quantity not quality.  If you find yourself grousing about the mealy items on offer in the produce department you aren’t just imagining a dip in flavor.  The distances that these items now travel, on average about 2000 miles from field to fork, deteriorate quality and limit selections to varieties that can withstand the rough ride.

Mad Cow? It’s not the natural progression of agriculture.  It’s the result of bloating cattle with the cheapest feed ingredients available including animal protein from their own kind, a variation of cannibalism which leads to the disease. GMOs?  They aren’t designed to feed the world.  The two most popular Genetically Modified Organisms are corn and soy crops, the surplus crops that fuel the snack and fast food industry.   

Real Food, a Delicious Choice
Alarming?  I think so.  But here’s the silver lining.  There’s a real food movement going on.  And it’s not just for foodies or gourmands.  It’s for eaters, eaters, producers, chefs and market owners everywhere who want delicious, clean, trustworthy food.

This real food movement follows the straightforward principles of sustainability. Natural resources such as water, air and land fertility are respected.  Animals are raised responsibly and humanely.  Seasonal and regional food production, and eating what is grown and raised around you when it becomes available, is center to the sustainability manifesto.  And flavor rules supreme.   

Follow these tips and you’ll not only enjoy tastier food, you’ll know how it got that way.

• Buy local and seasonal produce to enjoy food that is picked ripe and grown for flavor, not built for travel.  And if you can find local and organic, all the better.  A spin through the local farmers’ market guarantees that you will not only be getting the most delicious food available, you’ll also be supporting area growers who aren’t relying on distribution overhead to sell their products.  You can find a listing of markets in your area at http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/map.htm.  Or consider joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), a sort of subscription program at an area farm. Visit http://www.csacenter.org for more information to find a CSA near you.
• Use a pocket fish guide to select items that are plentiful, responsibly caught and untainted with toxic residues.  You can find them online at http://www.montereybayaquarium.com or http://www.seafoodchoices.com. 
• Seek out regional dairy products, farmstead and artisanal cheeses pack tremendous flavor, support local farmers, and keep farms in the landscape.  Increasingly, you can find regional cheese in the supermarket. You might also consider supporting your neighborhood cheese shop or the cheesemaker at your local farmers’ market. 
• Avoid feedlot beef.  Factory farming methods such as using feed that contains animal proteins are responsible for the spread of mad cow disease.  The systematic administration of sub-therapeutic antibiotics is believed to lead to antibiotic resistance.  Opt for meat from pastured animals, often labeled grass-finished or 100% grass fed, to promote humane ranching practices and avoid exposure to illnesses such as mad cow disease.  You can find sources for such meat at http://www.eatwild.com.  Or, if you are shopping at the supermarket look or meat labeled organic or 100% vegetarian feed to reduce your exposure to the disease.
• Look for fair trade products, particularly coffee, tea and chocolate, that allow growers in distant lands to earn a living.
• Avoid GMOs.  Though not thoroughly tested, Genetically Modified Organisms, which cross the DNA of two different species, are not required by law to be labeled but chances are you are eating them everyday.  Corn and soy are the two biggest GMO crops.  Although GMOs can be present in any corn or soy product, we encounter them most frequently in processed food in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) Vegetable Oil (frequently partially hydrogenated vegetable oil).  To avoid GMOs, opt for snacks, such as sodas, fruit juices, packaged cakes, cookies and crackers that do not contain these ingredients.

Not everyone is able or willing to adopt all of these real food strategies, but anyone can do something.  Start small.  Jump in.  Get to know where your food comes and your life will be all the more delicious for it.

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Sherri Brooks Vinton is an author of The Real Food Revival: Aisle by Aisle, Morsel by Morsel and a leader of the NYC Chapter of Slow Food.  You can subscribe to her monthly newsletter, “Sustainable Solutions” at sherribrooksvinton.com.