An important choice that we make every day is deciding what to eat. Kingsolver points out that Americans’ desire to move away from manual labor and dirt has created a serious knowledge gap between consumers and producers of food. Ignorance of where our food comes from runs rampant, all the more contributing to problems such as overdependence on fossil fuel, an alarming epidemic of food borne illness, as well as diet-related diseases.
Pollan also directs his attention to the predicament of food choices, he points out that most people will choose price and convenience over nutrition and taste . These days 19% of American meals are eaten in the car. But he warns that “cheaper and ignorance are mutually reinforcing” and the hidden costs it seems that apparently now outweigh the benefits.
The Green Revolution of the 1970s promised food that would be cheaper and available to more people. It is true that food got cheaper, but it was not without costs, “We're a nation with an eating disorder and we know it. The multiple maladies caused by bad eating are taking a toll on our health -- most tragically for our kids, who are predicted to be this country's first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents." (Kingsolver)
Reflecting on the task of preparing a meal Kingsolver comment, it is hard not to marvel at today’s food selection, food is inexpensive, it’s available year-round. Insulated by the apparent abundance of supermarket food Americans ignore a fundamental question, where it the food coming from? Kingsolver rejects the idea that gaining affordability and convenience was a good trade off. She points out that many other aspects must be considered not simply the price-point at the register.
We also need to consider that we have lost food variety that we may possibly never recover; statistics show that modern U.S. consumer now get to eat less than 1 percent of the variety of vegetable grown in the U.S. a century ago. And worldwide, crop ecologist Vandana Shiva points out that humans have eaten up to 80,000 plant species in our history, but recent changes in food production and distribution have drastically reduced our food variety.” Three-quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species, with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy and canola”.
Pollan also talks about the hidden costs of our food system, and that we must include the obesity-hunger paradox as one of those costs. He points out, that in order to understand the hunger-obesity paradox, one must understand that a significant amount of the corn produced in this country goes into value added products, for example the endless supply of soda and other cheap foods. But, the hunger side of the paradox shows that many of the calories that come from today’s food are empty calories.
Pollan also reports that, our farmers produce so many calories, in fact, that corn is now used not only to feed us, but also to feed our cars in the form of ethanol and bio-diesel. This transformation has been in the makings since the Nixon administration; and while hunger is still a serious issue in many parts of the planet, farmers in the United States have managed to produce 500 additional calories per person every day, already substantially more than we need.
Persistent Food Insecurity
The world produces more food per person today than ever in human history. Yet amid this abundance, in 88 countries, a significant portion of the population continue to suffer from deficient diets, more than 730 million people worldwide did not eat enough to lead fully productive lives. In many nations, agricultural production has increased, food purchasing power has risen, and diets have improved. Conversely, this advancement has been far from even. There are still broad areas on Earth, industrialized and developing countries where increases in food production is undermining the base for future production this against a backdrop of expanding world population, intensifying demands on agricultural resources, and a growing recognition that the industrial food system is not sustainable (U.N. Report, 1985).
Running out of Planet
According to McKibben, the diminishing availability of fossil fuel is not the only limit we face. In fact, it is not even the most important one. Even before we run out of oil, we are running out of planet . “The link between environmental destruction and wealth is deep and long.” He suggests that we ought to consider fossil fuel as playing the same role that “slaves played in early American agriculture – a natural resource that came cheap”. Between 1910 and 1983 energy consumption for agriculture increased 810 percent. The legacy of the Green Revolution of the 1960s is that one hundred percent reliance on cheap energy. Processing, packaging, and distributing food around the nation and world consumes four times the amount of energy, and that forty percent of all truck traffic comes from shuttling of food over long distances (McKibben).
In the spring of 2005 a panel of 1,300 scientists assembled by the United Nations issued a “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment” report in which they found that “human actions are depleting the Earth’s natural capital, putting such a strain on the environment that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted” (U.N. Report Our Common Future, ch. 2, 1987).
The World Health Organization researchers in 2006 warned that climate change could kill 184 million people in Africa alone before the century is over (McKibben). Even the most conservative predictions of world climatologists anticipate dire conditions. There is consensus among the scientific communities that we will likely see: more severe storms, longer droughts, rise of sea level, melting of permafrost, warmer temperatures. It is now imperative that we re-think our attitudes, beliefs and approaches toward climate change and change the current practices.
