Anthropologists remind us that the manifestations of a community’s culture are its food, language, arts, and faith. These are the ways that have interwoven through time so that a community knows how to survive in its place.
Because cultural ways are historic and vital, they are very hard to change. Consider how difficult it is to change the food that people eat. This is why the efforts to deal with obesity are so challenging.
A recent article in the New York Times points out the consequence of the way many people eat. The article says that a 20% increase in the price of sugary drinks nationally could result in about a 20% decrease in consumption. This decrease could prevent about 1,500,000 Americans from becoming obese and forestall 4,000,000 cases of diabetes. This would save about 30 trillion dollars – much of which would have to be paid through some form of public insurance.
What are we to do about this 30 trillion dollar dilemma?
So what are we, the public, to do about this 30 trillion dollar dilemma? Obviously, this is a matter of public concern and we hear many ideas about new laws to change what we eat. The New York Times article is headlined “Bad Food? Tax It…” An opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association quotes Dr. David Ludwig of the Children’s Hospital inBoston as saying that, “Putting children with severe obesity in foster care would act in the best interest of the child.” He goes on to say, “In instances of severe childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable from a legal standpoint because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems.”
Historic communities learned how to use the food they grew to nourish and sustain their lives without eating themselves to death. We know about the “Mediterranean Diet”—a manifestation of a culture that allowed a people to survive. The Inuit people of the north had a culture that guided them to live and prosper on a diet largely comprised of fish and meat.
The “obesity problem” isn’t really about overeating. It is about people who abandoned their historic culture and entered a culture of market-directed consumption. Their lives are surrounded with counterfeit nourishment. They have no cultural direction that tells them how to survive with the food that could grow all around them.
Is it possible that we could turn away from the market and turn towards our neighbors?
So what will happen with this 30 trillion dollar food problem? Will we try to tax away the bad food, and remove obese children from bad parents because our community cultures are ineffective? Or, is it possible that we could turn away from the market and turn towards our neighbors? We could discover, together, how we can eat, cook, and celebrate what we grow locally in this place where we live. Otherwise we will have an ever-growing demand for new laws to change behavior that is created by the counterfeit culture of marketers. It is quite predictable that this effort will fail. Conservatives will defend the market counterfeiters and the liberals will support laws that can neither change nor create a culture.
We are up against a wonderful truth: Communities are the source of life-supporting cultures. And, within communities are the abundant capacities of productive citizens to grow a new future. We can see it sprouting all around us in the local food and slow food movements. Eat local, eat what your neighbors grow, eat slowly, eat what your grandmother prepared, and walk where you once drove.
If you want to be part of the growing new community food culture, here are some sites to get you started:
Local Food Online Resources
The Community Food Security Coalition Website has compiled a long list of local food system resources and websites. http://www.foodsecurity.org/links.html
Civil Eats also has a long list of links of different networks and organizations in the local food movement nationwide (“We Support” on the right-hand side). www.civileats.com
Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food: USDA-sponsored initiative on supporting local and regional food systems: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/knowyourfarmer?navid=KNOWYOURFARMER
Ways to Connect
- COMFOOD list-serv (available through Community Food Security Coalition Website): http://www.foodsecurity.org/list.html (*Note: this is an incredible list-serv, filled with a lot of great discussion topics, but I usually send COMFOOD emails to a separate email account as the daily volume of emails is quite high)
- Local Harvest: www.localharvest.org
- Slow Food USA (Local Chapters): http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/local_chapters/ and Terra Madre (Slow Food International): http://www.terramadre.info/pagine/welcome.lasso?n=en
- Transition Towns: http://www.transitionnetwork.org/
- Permaculture Global: http://www.permacultureglobal.com (Also, Australia Permaculture Institute hosts excellent forums: http://permaculture.org.au/)
- Hyperlocavore (A Yard Sharing Community): http://hyperlocavore.ning.com/
- EcoTrust’s Building Local Food Networks: http://localfoodnetworks.ning.com
- Meet Up Groups: http://www.meetup.com/
- Couchsurfing (Can easily set up a chapter on local food in your town or city if it doesn’t already exist yet): http://www.couchsurfing.org/
- WWOOF: http://www.wwoof.org/ or (WWOOF USA: http://www.wwoofusa.org/)
International → Local Level
- Intentional Communities: http://www.ic.org/
- Global Ecovillage Network: http://gen.ecovillage.org/
- Mother Nature Network (MNN): www.mnn.com (can search for state correspondents for local food news)
You’ll not only have fun and be healthy, you’ll greatly lower your taxes by not having to pay off a 30 trillion dollar debt! It’s win-win all the way.
~ John ~