The Pleasures of Eating.... oh the pleasures. This article by Wendell Berry totally grabbed my attention especially since I knew it would be about food - and I do love food. I was thinking about food before I even read the article. What am I going to eat for lunch? What do I have in my fridge? Do I even have anything? Do I have to go food shopping? All these questions ponder in my head while thinking of food. This article poses some important questions that maybe some of us have thought about ourselves. 1. How fresh is it? 2. How pure or clean is it, how free of dangerous chemicals? 3. How far was it transported, and what did transportation add to the cost? 4. How much did manufacturing or packaging or advertising add to the cost? 5. When the food product has been manufactured or "processed" or "precooked," how has that affected its quality or price or nutritional value? ...or maybe we haven't thought about them at all. These are questions that we probably should consider when buying fo I am sure none of us ACTUALLY thought about these when buying our food from the supermarket or even from a fast food restaurant. | Food Safety for Your Family is a very informative article that goes over the ways you can help keep your family safe from food. "Safety precautions include knowing how to select foods in the grocery store, then storing them properly and cooking them safely, plus cleaning up well afterward." This is an article that could be considered to be added to The Pleasures of Eating. There are different ways to help keep your family safe when it comes to buying food, refrigerating and freezing, preparing and cooking fruits and vegetables, preparing and cooking raw meat, poultry, fish and egg products, and cleaning up afterwards. |
The food industry is now more concerned with volume and price. "But as scale increases, diversity declines; as diversity declines, so does health; as health declines, the dependence on drugs and chemicals necessarily increases." This is something that should be thought about. We don't want people to depend on drugs because of the way our food system is going. | I will leave this blog off with an important quote from Berry: "A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. The pleasure of eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health. And this pleasure, I think, is pretty fully available to the urban consumer who will make the necessary effort." |