Ten Points

Daily Strawberries
Originally uploaded by nodigio

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/17/INCU12BAV3.DTL

I took Katrina Heron’s 10 points and added my own commentary to them to explain why I think each point is worth considering.

1. Know what you’re eating. Find out what’s in it, how it was grown/made, where it came from, what’s in season. When you know what you’re eating, you have the advantage of deciding if you really do want to eat it and accept the consequences for your food choices. So, if you want to eat a Twinkie, you’ll at least know what’s really in it and what eating it does to your body. Ditto for that Penne Autumnalia.
2. Cook. It’s faster and easier than you think, and much tastier. Think of how long it takes you to decide where to eat, how long it takes to get there, how long it takes to order and receive your food, and then there’s the drive back. In that same amount of time, you could cook a meal, eat it, clean up afterward, and be well into doing something else. You can even multitask while you’re cooking and eating by doing laundry at the same time, or watering your lawn, or bonding with your family, or playing games. You’ll discover (or rediscover) lost skills and pleasures, plus save time and money. If you have an organized pantry and refrigerator/freezer, most meals can take less than 20 minutes to prepare.
3. Plant something edible. Anything, really, from an herb pot on a window sill to a vegetable garden at the back or front door, or as part of a communal plot with family or friends. You’ll be wowed by the freshness, flavor, and ease of feeding yourself and pleased by the savings. You don’t have to plant a diverse garden, pick something and specialize in it – do you love raspberries? Growing raspberry canes is easy – and the fruits you harvest far superior to what you’ll find in most stores. You can eat some, preserve some, and barter some away for fresh fruits and vegetables you don’t grow. By growing something edible, you prove to yourself on a visceral level that food is renewable, delicious, and within your control.
4. Pack a sack lunch. Bringing your own food gives you more free lunch time (imagine not having to wait in line and be confronted with limited, frequently unhealthy choices – or worse, having the restaurant of your choice take so long you end up not getting any lunch), a better meal, and saves you money. By bringing your own lunch, you’ll never have to skip lunch again.
5. Drink tap water – in many places it tastes just as good and is often what many bottled water places fill their expensive bottles with anyway, so cut out the middleman and draw your own water. You save containers, landfills, the environment and money – such a winning combination.
6. Learn about and celebrate food traditions. Celebrating food gives you roots and connections and happy thoughts. It makes food more than fuel and less is wasted as a result. Food traditions increase biodiversity because talking about food makes you want to sample it, and wanting to sample it means someone has to grow it – whether that someone is you or a farmer – and when it’s grown, it increases the biodiversity of the world – so you do great things just by celebrating food.
7. Share a meal – food is good, but it tastes even better when you share it with someone. When you cook and eat together, you build bonds that can last a lifetime. Food is more than fuel – it’s life itself. Sharing it means sharing life. How many memories do you have that revolve around food? How many friendships have grown around food? So – share a meal and build friendships and memories.
8. Learn about endangered foods and how to steward them so they become bountiful once more. If we eat it, we will want it to be around to be eaten, so we’re likely to take greater care about it – farmers will grow it, ranchers will breed them, and he food we love will be bounteous. By eating a diversified diet, we help create biodiversity and save the environment and planet.
9. Conserve, compost, recycle – don’t just through away uneaten food – if it’s still edible, save it as an ingredient in a new dish or to eat later. If it’s beyond edible, put it in a compost bin: yours or someone else’s. And the packaging can be recycled, given away to someone who will recycle it, or re-invented into a new use. Food need never be wasted in any form, it is the circle of life. We shouldn’t toss food into landfills where it can take decades or more before it returns the life cycle of the world.
10. Vote with your fork – use your enhanced knowledge of food to identify and support food practices that are healthy for people and the environment, provide and maintain primary sources of real food, protect the rights of all food growers – from the windowsill gardener to the small farmer, support edible education, restore and protect biodiversity, see that food is grown wherever people life so even the most barren environment (like inner cities and the vast expanses of suburban lawns) has real food for the people who live there, and ensure that we and our descendents will have good, healthy real food for generations to come.

Each of these points should be easy for us to follow because they are fun and delicious. We can change the world just by eating. We all have to eat if we want to live, so why not eat so our food makes a difference in the world, makes the world a place of bounty with thriving people and animals and plants, lush and delicious? Eat. Eat consciously, eat happy, eat real food, eat well – and the whole world will change. One savory, scrumptious bite at a time.