It Starts With Good Food

Growing up, good food -- food that hadn’t been sprayed, injected, engineered, or otherwise altered -- was readily available. For my family it was as close as our backyard garden. And if we didn’t grow it, can it, or make it from scratch, we purchased it from small local purveyors: the fruit guy, the meat guy, the fish guy--in other words, the butcher, the baker and anything else we needed was close by and affordable. How different is the food climate today? Sure we can buy local and organic, but the average family can’t afford it! Yet my father, a working class man, was easily able to buy the best and freshest food even though he had six kids. I don’t know about you, but when the average family is cut off from good food, I think something is rotten. And like most things gone wrong, they happen over time. Maybe the idea is that if negative changes motivated by greed creep up on us slowly and we’re distracted long enough, we won’t notice until it’s too late and we’re trapped in a system that supports the interests of the very few over the needs of most. Nothing will ever make me believe that anything that comes with an ingredient list the size of a newspaper column is good for me, regardless of how pretty the package or how clever the commercials. Sorry but I’m not that brain dead despite the poisons positioned everywhere.

Until we realize that everyone, not just the rich, deserves access to good food: until we, the majority, stop buying the cr.. loaded on supermarket shelves across America; until we take responsibility for our buying power (depleted as it may be) and use it wisely, things will not improve. Changes are happening-- good changes--and as usual they happen because of individual efforts that grow, just like a garden, and spread their seeds everywhere. And once they find fertile ground, eventually we’ll harvest this pristine power and propel it towards what’s real, what’s worthwhile, equitable and authentic--and we’ll see the effects in supermarkets, farmlands, and boardrooms.

Maybe when each and every one of us has access to good food, our children and grandchildren will know, once again what real food tastes like. And when the butchers the bakers and the gardens return, our spirits, along with our bodies will be nourished, and from this replenished place anything is possible.

Enjoy the harvest from gardens everywhere. Share the bounty of what grows there and let it nourish the growth within you.