“When food, in the minds of eaters, is no longer associated with farming and with the land, then the eaters are suffering a kind of cultural amnesia that is misleading and dangerous.” – Wendell Berry
As more people realize the “food industrialists” care nothing about their health, Wendell Berry’s 1989 essay becomes more relevant than ever. There’s no excuse for eating in ignorance, and yet most people do:
“[Consumers] buy what they want—or what they have been persuaded to want—within the limits of what they can get. They pay, mostly without protest, what they are charged. And they mostly ignore certain critical questions about the quality and the cost of what they are sold: How fresh is it? How pure or clean is it, how free of dangerous chemicals? How far was it transported, and what did transportation add to the cost? How much did manufacturing or packaging or advertising add to the cost? When the food product has been manufactured or ‘processed’ or ‘precooked,’ how has that affected its quality or price or nutritional value?”
Understanding what you eat, where it comes from, and how it is made – and making choices accordingly – is one of the most impactful actions you can take for your health and society. Part of that is the realization our eating habits have been pushed on us by corporations with no concern for your health, only your money. It’s like being caught up in a cult:
“The food industrialists have by now persuaded millions of consumers to prefer food that is already prepared. They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into your mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so. We may rest assured that they would be glad to find such a way. The ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her stomach.”
Berry’s essay explains ways to get out of the cult. After your escape, the benefits will soon appear: When you return to eating the food you were designed to eat, you will rediscover the pleasure of eating and living in optimal health: “The pleasure of eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health.”
