While Mike, Kerri, and I hiked the forest, we wandered down a different trail and got lost. It took us a few minutes to find our way back, and since Kerri’s dad forgot his GPS watch, we had to do things the old-fashioned way and trace our footprints. Being in the woods and not knowing exactly how to find our way out was a little frightening at first, but once we calmed down, we realized it only took common sense to track our way back to our original path.
I wondered if we could do something similar with the way we feed ourselves. Somewhere along the line, possibly during the agricultural revolution, ten thousand years ago, our culture strayed from how it used to eat, and some important wisdom was lost along the way. We all need to explore the roots of how we eat, in order to find our way back to good health.
Our choice to eat whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables, instead of foodlike products such as frozen burritos and prepack-aged snacks, comes from understanding that we are the sole protectors of our bodies, and from the recognition that food companies do not have our best interests at heart. It has been hard letting go of cookies and crackers, but our choice to eat less, and to eat only what we need, is our way of resisting the push to overeat, and to avoid obesity. Kerri has learned that we are not professional wrestlers, and the amount on our plates doesn’t need to match theirs. I’ve learned to live without eating sweets every single day. Joining our local CSA is one way that we can support farmers, workers, and our local economy. We decided that buying a bell pepper from Holland makes about as much sense as flying there to poop it out.
The food justice movement is growing. There are all kinds of people involved in an infinite number of ways: from city planners to organizers of school-led food drives; from mom bloggers to grassroots activists; from groups like Food Not Bombs to federal food program officials. The diversity of this movement is one of its greatest strengths. If you’re reading this book, you’re probably interested in such issues. We are just asking you to become consciously involved.
If you’re a gardener, consider planting a row purely for donation to your local food bank (Kerri is working on this right now). If you’re a teacher, help your students understand where their food comes from. If you’re a doctor, help your patients understand that what and how much they eat will greatly impact their health. If you work in law enforcement, track down those who are exploiting immigrant laborers. If you are an elected official, do not be afraid to risk your reputation; if you do what is right, your constituents will eventually come around.
For everyone else: Do something. If we are each doing all that we can, solutions will start to appear. They may work only for your community, like the work of our Community Resource Center, or for thousands of people in Bangladesh, like the work of Muhammad Yunus. You won’t know until you start, so break out of your routine. Life is too short to worry about how much stuff you can own, or how powerful you can become. The most memorable figures in history are those who were just regular people who decided to try something different, to turn their own lives into experiments for good. Anyone can do that; it doesn’t have to cost a thing. Gandhi once said, “Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, but it is important that you do it.” This applies now more than ever. Only you know what you can do—and by all means, make sure it is something you enjoy, that it is rewarding, and that it is making this world a better place.
Finding our way back down the hill from our hike, I looked at the smile on Kerri’s face. We had made it out alive, before nightfall when the bears come out to, well, eat. When we got lost, we could have yelled at one another about whose fault it was, or argued about the best way to move forward, but we didn’t. We looked around and searched for a solution. This is what we all must do right now. In order to meet the world’s most pressing challenges, we will need to harness the best of human qualities. So please, use your own joy, your laughter, your honesty, your determination, your compassion, your ingenuity, your curiosity, and every fiber of your being. It will take nothing less.
A Dozen Ways to Save
Plan a menu. If you plan your menu for one to two weeks at a time, you will make fewer trips to the store and spend less money each time. In addition, planning meals that use similar ingredients may cut down on waste. For example, if you are making stir-fry one night, plan to toss any leftover veggies into a salad as a side dish with another meal, or use them to liven up a plain pasta dish.
Make a list and stick to it. Don’t wander around the store. The longer you’re there, the more money you will spend. Grocery stores are designed to make you have to walk through aisles of products to get to common household items such as milk. Stick to your mission. This will help you cut down on impulse buys and lower your grocery bill. There is a reason why high-ticket items are on display near the register.
Start a pantry. By this, we mean stock up on staple foods that are frequently used in your household and can be a base for a variety of meals. This way you can buy extra when you find a good price.
Buy in bulk. Always check the cost per ounce if your supermarket provides that information on the tags, or take a calculator with you so that you can figure out the best deal. Usually (but not always), larger sizes have better prices per ounce or unit. However, don’t get tricked into buying large items just because they are inexpensive: If it isn’t something you will use all of, don’t buy it.
Share. If it is not affordable to buy large sizes, or you don’t have the storage space for twenty-five-pound bags, go in with a friend or two and split the cost and the product.
Compare prices of name brands to store and third-party (generic) brands. Name brands are often many times more expensive, and the taste and quality of the generic brands are, in most cases, nearly identical to their more costly counterparts. In addition, check out the day-old or markdown shelves.
Only buy the produce that you can use in a week or two. If you buy produce for the whole month, it may spoil before you get to it. It doesn’t matter if it was inexpensive if it was thrown out.
Waste nothing. Consider using odds and ends that might be thrown out to replace premade items like broth for soups. For instance, the broth we used to buy was almost three dollars for one quart. We started using bouillon cubes, which were much less expensive, but high in sodium. By saving veggie peels, ends, and stalks, you can create your own broth. We toss all of ours into a Ziploc bag and freeze it until we are ready to cook. There are recipes online, or you can skim the recipes and then just experiment with what you have saved.
Eat in season. In-season produce can be less expensive. If you are adventurous and willing to experiment with in-season veggies that you may not have tried before, find out if there is a CSA (community-supported agriculture) farm in your area that you can join.
Don’t get stuck shopping at only one store. Compare prices at different stores to find the one that consistently has the lower prices on the items you buy most often. If a store is having a great sale on an item you use frequently, check it out, but only purchase what you go in for. Sales are designed to lure you into the store so that you will buy more than just that product. If you buy impulse items, it may defeat the purpose of your trip.
Eat at home most of the time. Eating out is far more expensive and far less healthy than preparing food at home.
Choose one day a week to do the bulk of your cooking. If you take the time to cook several meals in one day, you can freeze or refrigerate items to be eaten over the course of a week or two. Having prepared meals at home may help to cut down on the temptation to eat out after a long day at work.
Sowing the Seeds of Progress
There are many ways that you can get involved to help others. Whether you’re looking to donate money or become a full-fledged activist, there are plenty of opportunities for you to consider. We recommend that you ask yourself what you’re most passionate about, and what you enjoy doing, and then find a way to merge those interests with your activism. While making your plans, here are some suggestions.
; Stay informed. Make reading about these issues part of your routine. If you use a homepage that aggregates blogs and news information, add feeds that are specifically geared toward these issues. Subscribing to e-mail lists and publications from the organizations that work on these concerns will make staying on top of developments effortless.
Know your community. Take some time to understand what issues are facing your area. Then search for organizations that are involved in these issues and see what they are up to. Ask your family, friends, and colleagues if they are familiar with any groups already working on projects that you are interested in. If no groups exist in your town or city, search for statewide groups, and then national organizations.
Be the message. There is a much-quoted anecdote about Gandhi, in which a reporter was following him as he was being taken off to prison. The reporter asked, “Gandhi, what is your message?” His alleged reply was, “My life is my message.” As you do this work, be aware that how you live is more important than what you say.
Take action. No matter what you can do, do something. It may feel small and insignificant, but it is important that you do it. Consider your actions as moving the rudder on a ship. Over time, even a small turn to the right will have dramatic consequences. You could end up somewhere that you never expected.
Have fun. Regardless of what you decide to do, if you’re not enjoying it, then it is very likely that you will burn out, turn off others, and resent the issue you are working on. There are plenty of people in the world who are no fun to be around; don’t be one of them. While things may get tough, be reflective and keep a positive attitude.
IN THE SHORT TERM
If you’re looking for things you can do right away, consider transforming your kitchen by stocking it with healthy foods (if there are health claims on the packaging, they might not be that healthy); writing your elected representatives and asking them to get involved with hunger and food justice issues; donating your time to a local organization; donating 1 to 5 percent of your income to a group fighting extreme poverty; planting a garden (and establishing a row just to share with your local food bank); shopping with your principles guiding you (go vegan, buy fair trade, buy local, buy organic, etc.); using sites like Facebook to post stats and stories related to these issues; or thinking of your own experiment that you can conduct and share with others.
Here are just a few of the organizations we think deserve your attention:
Community Food Security Coalition
3830 SE Division Street
Portland, OR 97202
(503) 954-2970
www.foodsecurity.org
The Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) is a North American coalition of diverse people and organizations working from the local to international levels to build community food security. Their membership includes almost three hundred organizations from social and economic justice, anti-hunger, environmental, community development, sustainable agriculture, community gardening, and other fields. They are dedicated to building strong, sustainable local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food to all people at all times. They seek to develop self-reliance among all communities in obtaining their food and to create a system of growing, manufacturing, processing, making available, and selling food that is regionally based and grounded in the principles of justice, democracy, and sustainability.
Food Research and Action Center
875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 540
Washington, DC 20009
(202) 986-2200
www.frac.org
The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) is the leading national nonprofit organization working to improve public policies and public-private partnerships to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the United States. FRAC works with hundreds of national, state, and local nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and corporations to address hunger and its root cause, poverty.
Institute for Food and Development Policy
398 60th Street
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 654-4400
www.foodfirst.org
The purpose of the Institute for Food and Development Policy is to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger. Called one of the country’s “most established food think tanks” by The New York Times, the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First, is a “people’s” think tank. They carry out research, analysis, advocacy, and education for informed citizen engagement with the institutions and policies that control production, distribution, and access to food. Their work both informs and amplifies the voices of social movements fighting for food sovereignty: people’s right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems—at home and abroad.
Oxfam America
226 Causeway Street, 5th Floor
Boston, MA 02114-2206
www.oxfamamerica.org
Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. Together with individuals and local groups in more than one hundred countries, Oxfam saves lives, helps people overcome poverty, and fights for social justice. They are an affiliate of Oxfam International. Their vision is a just world without poverty.
World Hunger Year (WHY)
505 Eighth Avenue, Suite 2100
New York, NY 10018
1-800-5-HUNGRY
www.whyhunger.org
Founded in 1975, WHY is a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world. WHY is convinced that solutions to hunger and poverty can be found at the grassroots level. WHY advances long-term solutions to hunger and poverty by supporting community-based organizations that empower individuals and build self-reliance, i.e., offering job training, education, and after-school programs; increasing access to housing and health care; providing microcredit and entrepreneurial opportunities; teaching people to grow their own food; and assisting small farmers. WHY connects these organizations to funders, media, and legislators.
Acknowledgments
This book would not be around if it weren’t for the hard work of several people and organizations. Before we thank those who played more specific roles in bringing this text to the world, we would especially like to thank the Community Resource Center in Encinitas, Food Not Bombs, the San Diego Farm Bureau, the San Diego Caring Council, the Supportive Parents Information Network (SPIN), and the International Rescue Committee (San Diego), for all they do to help people amidst a shameful excuse for a “safety net,” and who helped us understand the dynamics of poverty, hunger, food insecurity, and the SNAP program. We are especially grateful to Jennifer Tracy of the San Diego Hunger Coalition for taking the time to sit down with us until all of our questions were answered. We also want to thank the groups who supported the “Cultivating Food Justice” conference in San Diego during May 2009, and the individuals who organized it. The work of these groups in our community, and of those like them, is both humbling and inspiring.
We’d like to thank the readers of our blog who shared their stories with us, challenged our thinking, and were willing to help us raise money for the Community Resource Center in the fall of 2008; because of you, someone was able to get a little something to eat. Without the article written by Tara Parker-Pope at The New York Times, the rest of the world might not ever have heard of what we were doing, and to all the journalists whose work followed hers, we are thankful that you took the time to ask thoughtful, engaging questions, and usually wrote thoughtful, honest pieces about our project.
Without our literary agent, Lynn Johnston, we probably wouldn’t have written this book in the first place, and her work in helping us find a suitable home for its release has been essential to everything we have wanted to do. Without the help of our colleagues Suzi VanSteenbergen, Erika Wanczuck, and David Andrew Tow, our editor
would have had far more work to do. Thanks to them for reading various drafts and chapters of this book; their thoughtful comments helped us fix this thing as we went along. To our editor, Leslie Wells at Hyperion, thanks for guiding us through our first book, challenging us to do better, and making this text what it is today. We’d like to thank our publicist, Allison McGeehon, as well as all the folks at Hyperion who believed in our book and have worked like crazy to get it out so quickly.
We owe a great debt to all of the writers and scholars whose work helped us along the way: Joel Berg, John Bowe, Faith D’aluisio, Barbarah Ehrenreich, Barry Glassner, Sandor Ellix Katz, Bill and Ruth Kaysing, David A. Kessler, Harvey Levenstein, Peter Menzel, Marion Nestle, Raj Patel, Michael Pollan, Leon Rappoport, Paul Roberts, Eric Schlosser, Loretta Schwartz-Nobel, Bryant Terry, Mark Winne, and many more who took on the task of writing about food, economics, poverty, health, nutrition, psychology, and every other discipline that seeks to unravel the complexities of what is (or isn’t) for dinner.
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