Chico, Sustainable

A few weeks ago I made a pitch for folks to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which inspires the reader to give more thought to food we eat.

A compliment to this work is The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which I just finished. This is a book for people, such as myself, who wish to understand the details of how food gets from the farm to our dinner plate.

Considering we are talking about items that we place into our body, I think this is a reasonable bit of information to know.

What I learned is not for the weak-of-stomach. For those that don't know what it takes to produce a Chicken McNugget, let me tell you, ignorance is bliss.

This same ignorance, however, is at the root of most of our country's health problems (which the general public ends up paying for in higher insurance premiums)

Pollan takes the reader on a guided journey to determine the origins of meals procured from four sources: McDonald's, Whole Foods, a "beyond organic" farm, and wild-harvested. He doesn't pull punches, however, and his chapters describing the history of Cascadia Farms and the "sustainably-farmed 'Rocky, the Range Chicken'" (available for purchase at S & S) and are just as eye-opening as what he reveals about genetically-modified corn and CAFO's (concentrated animal feeding operations), if not more so.

While Kingsolver's book inspires the reader to be more aware of the food we eat, Pollan has convinced me that the closer I can get to the source of my food, and the more distance that I can put between my stomach and America's supermarket culture, the better off I will be.

After reading these two books, not only do I feel justified in not allowing myself to be wooed by the discount prices of FoodMax and Winco, but I now feel convinced that supporting local, sustainable food producers such as those at the Farmers' Market is one of the best things that I can do for myself and my community.