One final post (although I wish I could do many more!) on the book we’ve been talking about, In Praise of Slowness. This book is so rich in wisdom, in inspiration, and is just so darn well-written (and currently still $6 on Amazon) I seriously can’t recommend it enough. It has done for me what Seth Godin’s work did for me five or six years ago – it adds a “lens” through which I view how I live part of my life out.
In a chapter on food, we learn that the true meaning of the word “companion” is “sharing bread with someone”…and if you go back and look through the responses of our survey on food, you’ll notice a few people wish to slow down and simply share a meal with family or friends.
That makes total sense. How often do you hear, “Gosh, I wish that dinner was so much shorter. I hated every minute of the food, the company, the conversation…” Instead, when you have these slower-paced dinners, or even a meal out with friends, the time flies, and you’ve suddenly found yourself at that table for three hours.
And you want more of that.
Another large theme was simply eating healthier. Going more local/natural, etc. A common excuse for this is money, and at first glance, sometimes it seems like you pay a lot more going to Whole Foods for a lot less food, than if you went to Wal-Mart (who yes, may carry organic food — but I avoid for other reasons) or Kroger.
We all know, for the most part, the quality of the Whole Foods-ish products is better, is fair-trade, not made by an eight year old in a sugar field, and more than likely is organic. If you’ve been to a Farmer’s Market, you know some things (meats, pastas, sauces, cheeses) can be a bit pricey.
So why pay $16/lb for some steak at your Farmer’s Market when you can get it for half that at Wal-Mart?
The obvious answer is quality. I could literally drive to the farm I get my meat from at the Farmer’s Market and see how it’s made from start to finish. I actually plan on doing this later this summer. If you’ve ever seen Fast Food Nation or Supersize Me (free on Hulu) or The Future of Food (free on Hulu) or any of the other food-advocate type movies, you see the terrible way most food in most supermarkets or chain stores is grown, what pesticides and preservatives are on them, what hidden salts, sugars, syrups, and chemicals they’re laced with, how the animals are given steroids and treated, where your fast food really comes from and what it does, and the way that all of this is disguised to the public.
I am NOT a conspiracy theorist. But since I have been paying a little more for quality food, it’s amazing how I feel. And I also realize with the amount of eating out I was doing: a $6 bag of Farmer’s Market pasta that will make eight servings is still less than one value meal at Chick-fil-A.
We don’t mind paying for convenience. That’s the way our culture of busyness has been tricked into thinking healthy things are expensive while we are actually paying so much more for so much less every time we eat out.
Totally perspective.
Organic produce, or any produce you can trace back to its origins (and not have to worry if the same chemical they use to make Agent Orange is the pesticide they sprayed on your lettuce) is fairly inexpensive. Buy a few tomatoes, add some herbs, simmer them up, and all of the sudden you have fresh, organic tomato sauce for $2-3 instead of paying $6-12 for the organic kind in a jar. That’s just one example of something you can make that’s less expensive, and better for you, than getting something in a bright colored jar.
I have decided to stick to the following rules when it comes to food. Exceptions are always made. Nobody can pull this off perfectly, but the exceptions to the rules are few and far between.
- Know where the food came from
- Read the ingredients
- Craving XYZ restaurant? How can we make this at home for less?
- PLAN AHEAD and shop according to that plan
- Just stay away from the processed stuff.
- Buy local when possible (especially produce and meat!)
- If at all possible, use the oven or stove and not the microwave, even though it takes longer.
Cooking takes time. And energy. And some days you don’t have that energy. But what can be adjusted in your schedule so you have an hour set aside to cook? Or can you spend a couple hours one night, or on a weekend cooking ahead of time so you have something healthy already to go on the days when life is crazy.
The affordability issue — for most people — ourselves included — is a priority thing. A family will typically spend more money on entertainment or things like cell phone bills than they do on food. Buying cheap food now may seem like the answer, but with all those strange chemicals racing around in our bodies, it won’t be the answer in the long run when someone has to get treated for obesity related diseases, or because of all the chemicals we’ve slowly been ingesting.
It’s important to think about the long-term effects this will have on us, our children (who have a shorter life-expectancy than we do…!) instead of the short-term fix of a quick meal in front of the TV before we rush off to doing something that in reality, may not be as important that sharing healthy food, and celebrating that element of creation and nature, with the people we’ve been given in life.
Comments
21 responses to “The True Meaning of Companion (and what it has to do with a Big Mac)”
Walmart vs Whole Foods taste-off by a bunch of foodies:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/the-great-grocery-smackdown/7904/
Hint: Walmart is the biggest provider of certified organic foods in the country.
Otherwise, great post.
They also have one of the highest and most infamous rate of products produced in sweatshops – http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storewars/sweatshops.html
Not enough information to make a judgment one way or the other. What are standard wages in the area? What’s a standard number of hours worked? Are conditions in the factory better or worse than the conditions in the surrounding area?
So I’ll see your link and raise you a link.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2010/03/chinese_factory_workers_cash_i.html
The news this week has been all about suicides at the iPhone factory, but somehow overlook the fact that suicide rates are far lower than the rates in the surrounding area.
It’s just like reading the Bible. Context matters. Proof-texting sucks.
I’ve seen conditions. I’ve seen the areas (although not in China, admittedly, but Haiti, DR, Moldova, Kolkata, etc)…the cost of rice alone is too much for someone making these wages to afford. When 8 year olds are dying because of injuries sustained in sugar cane factories in the DR…something isn’t right. IJM has several stories about rescues done in factories and how pregnant mothers are beaten for talking because they’ve seen it…one mother gave birth in a factory and was forced to go back to work immediately. Not a myth, or heresay. Truth from a personal friend.
I’m not saying that there aren’t terrible work environments out there. I’m just saying that Whole Foods’ quality isn’t necessarily higher than Walmart’s (see the link). If you want to concede the point and say the only reason you don’t shop there is because twelve years ago they also sold products made in sweatshops, that’s fine.
I’m not convinced it makes sense to refuse to buy quality locally grown produce from Walmart just for that reason, but it’s your money and you’re free to spent it as you see fit. Just be upfront about it.
Food quality isn’t the issue. This month I’ve bought groceries at Kroger, Walmart, Sam’s, Trader Joes, and Whole Foods. You learn to buy certain things at certain places, but none of those stores are intrinsically better than the others.
That (their recent issues with sweatshops, not ones 12 years ago) is one main reason why I don’t shop there (and it seems our produce always went bad quickly when we did). Here is a 2007 report on some corporations from the Ethical Trading Action Group…http://en.maquilasolidarity.org/issues/csr/transparency/TRC/2006
And for us, at least in Nashville, we find more locally grown produce at our Whole Foods (and another smaller indy store) where we can’t find those at the larger chains. Local is important for us, not a dedication to a store. Access to these products is difficult to find in the bigger chains where we are.
So with ya. I’ve been having a hard time eating certain things just because I know too much.
It’s just a matter of getting my parents on board while I’m home for the summer. I don’t want to make their lives more difficult…but I’d like for their lives (and mine) to be a little longer.
.-= Lauren´s last blog ..Tempting Time =-.
I’m all abouth this too. We will get Whole Foods here soon. Can’t wait :) I will still buy personal items at Wal-Mart but my food is going to come from Whole Foods. Right now I buy all ogranic (stonyfield farms) from Wal-Mart. I also shop at farmer’s markets. In fact, I’m going to one today!! Yay for healthy food :)
.-= Carrie´s last blog ..Random Question for Friday =-.
These are all great tips. It seems most of my budget-conscious friends (and who isn’t budget-conscious these days?) tend to buy whatever is cheapest or on sale at the nearest supermarket or mega-store.
I encourage everyone to patronize local vendors whenever possible. While Whole Foods may engage is more people-friendly business practices, they are still a part of the whole centralized-distribution paradigm. Many local vendors are at a disadvantage because they can’t compete with Wal-Mart or Whole Foods, who enjoy all sorts of regulatory advantages and have the lobbying power to make sure the playing field is always tilted in their favor.
Local vendors are our neighbors, though. Here in Middle Tennessee, Hatcher Family Dairy invites people to visit and tour their farm. If you visit the Franklin Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning, you will likely see one of the Hatcher family members at their booth. You can shake their hand. The same is true of the Delvin family. If you join the Delvin Farms CSA (and I recommend everyone join a CSA if at all possible), chances are good you will pick up your weekly box from one of the family members. Those are just a couple of examples – there are many others.
You really can’t put a price on building relationships with your neighbors. And there is something to be said for taking a a couple of hours to visit a farmer’s market or to drive a little farther to patronize places like The Turnip Truck or the Nolensville Feed Mill, and then spending time with your family preparing and eating food together. Plus, as you said, you then KNOW where you food is coming from and you know the care that is taken in its development.
.-= David Reynolds´s last blog .."In a world where everyone is running from reality, someone who is running toward it is going to seem…" =-.
So true, and as a fellow Franklin Farmers’ Market goer, I love that!!! Whole Foods is our back up in case we show up late and the vendors are out of something we need — it’s so much more pricey there!
Some food for thought.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/26/attention_whole_foods_shoppers
I would HIGHLY recommend watching “The Future of Food” link above. It is an intensive look on the science that this article references…changing DNA structures in our food? The methods in industrializing and playing gene-Gods with food is what is epidemic in our nation becoming antibiotic resistant amongst other things because of the way they re-structure an re-insert the DNA into the cells nucleus. It’s a fascinating watch.
So…DNA Modified food? Ummm, no thanks for me!
I’m sure we could recommend resources to each other all day. My point in posting is that the issue is not as simple as some would make it seem. Cross-breeding and other forms of genetic modification of food have been around for a long time, and they have made our food supply more abundant and safer. The most recent studies I’ve seen have not shown a significant difference between the healthfulness of organic foods and non-organic (or grass-fed and grain-fed beef, for that matter). A report by the National Research Council was just released in April that said overuse of GE/GMO crops could lead to resistance problems, but there are economic and environmental benefits from using them. There are trade-offs and many factors that need to be considered in our food production system, and no one knows that more than farmers–traditional “industrial” ones as well as organic. They know a heck of a lot more about those considerations than all the people who believe they’re suddenly ag experts because they watched this or that documentary. Of course I’m not against farmers markets or organic food, and I support CSA–but I do dispute the claim that this model of agriculture is truly “sustainable” on a global scale. We have the luxury in America of being food snobs.
no need for calling names. We try and keep our disagreements peaceful here. :-)
Stella, that article IS indeed food for thought. There is no arguing that the industrialized food system is REQUIRED to feed the world as long as there is such an incredible disparity between the “wealthy” (i.e. almost everyone in the western world) and the “poor” (i.e. almost everyone everywhere else). However, it is misleading to use struggling African farmers living in extremely difficult, and often corrupt, socio-economic conditions as an example of what happens when efforts are made to support local producers and markets.
.-= David Reynolds´s last blog .."In a world where everyone is running from reality, someone who is running toward it is going to seem…" =-.
Right now I cook almost every meal my husband and I eat, we may go out to eat two or three times a month and we have family dinner at his parents’ once a week which is home-cooked too, of course. I love cooking, so doing it every day doesn’t feel like a chore to me and I like sitting down as a family to eat together, I think that’s the way it should be. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to make the step to organic, we buy most of our groceries at Wal-Mart, Publix when Wal-Mart doesn’t have something, but Publix is too expensive for all of our groceries. Trust me, I am not a Wal-mart fan, I spent over a year without walking through their doors a couple years ago, but when I comes down to it, and I hate it, but the price wins.
Reese – I was right were you are about a year ago – I HATED walmart but didn’t know what else to do to save money. Then I found couponing. It takes a little work and effort, especially to get started. But I now shop only at Publix (love that store) and my grocery bill has be cut by at least 2/3 a week. Did you catch that? I spend only 1/3 of the money I used to spend at Walmart and I’m shopping at Publix.
If you try to go organic on everything, couponing won’t help much on the food. But will still save you a ton on toiletries and household items. Check out southernsavers.com. If you live in the south this website is a LIFE SAVER!!
.-= Chrystal´s last blog ..Back At It…Finally! =-.
Your thoughts here are a good reminder to me of the joy of slowing down and savoring healthful food with family. Not too long ago I took the opportunity to make French Onion Soup, and in savoring the process and hours of preparation, I found deep replenishment of soul.
YES! I am longing to do the same with some french onion soup…where the onions caramelize overnight…..yummm! :)
One awesome thing about those hearty home cooked meals is that you can make them in large quantities and freeze some for later. That’s the key to success for me while I’m working full time and going to school. I only need to “cook” a few times a week.
.-= Samantha´s last blog ..I think it’s safe to say… =-.
I’m right there with you. I read Michael Pollan’s Food Rules and they are so simple and so enriching you know. I think it’s like you said, it’s more than just eating healthy…it’s about the preparation, the people you eat with and the conversation.
.-= Jacklyn´s last blog ..Getting Through the In-Betweens =-.