Taking care of each other

work in progress

Until we find each other, we are alone. - Adrienne Rich, Hunger

Ecoli, Cyclospora, Salmonella. These are becoming common terms in our everyday conversation.

 Why? Perhaps, as the origin of our food becomes more industrialized and less  farm stand to our hands, the level of accountability diminishes. Those working in the food factories have no vision of that food ending up on our kitchen table. To them, it’s just another commodity being shipped and sold.

 They don’t see us. They don’t know us. We are just part of a chain,  therefore, they feel no responsibility to rinse the greens properly, inspect the meat carefully, treat the food with honor.

Food, a product we must have to survive, has gone from simple pick and eat to a monolithic monster of processing. Removing all the nutrition, then supplementing what was taken out with chemicals we can’t even pronounce, let alone recognize. And the worst part, it’s making us sick and fat.

Fast food, bad food. We can’t get away from eating and drinking, and the few who are making mega billions on keeping us addicted to this pabulum should be ashamed. But money becomes their cloak of justification. It may not be criminal but it is definitely unethical.

Thanks to authors like Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food, and T. Colin Campbell, The China Study, we are waking up and creating a demand for simple, clean food and the market is responding. 

Grocery stores carrying organic vegetables and meat from animals that have been humanely raised, allowed to graze and eat the way nature intended. 

Not spending their entire lives in a hell constructed by big farma,  where they never see the light of day and are mutilated and force fed foods and antibiotics and hormones so they can grow faster and fatter to accommodate our voracious appetite for meat. 

Another bright movement is the resurgence of farmer’s markets where we can meet the people who are working so hard to feed us nourishing fruits and vegetables grown without harmful pesticides, raising their chickens, pigs and cows with love and pride. Looking us in the eye when they hand us our bag of food, saying hello and wishing us well.

And us, thanking them for growing  this beautiful, clean food that will nourish, sustain and enrich us with health. 

So there is hope. We are finding each other in our quest to act like the human spirits we were born to be. Let’s hope it’s catching.

The unfinished painting above is  titled; Until We Find Each Other, We Are Alone,which  is written into the canvas.