Food

Here we just want to sort briefly through some of the complex—and sometimes overwhelming—issues behind our food choices and then direct you to other sources of more in-depth information.

We are mainly concerned about:

• Personal health: We place a high priority on food that is free of possibly unhealthy additives, like pesticides, herbicides, and hormones. So we tend to choose food grown organically or ecologically (with as few additives as possible). We also want our food to be as fresh as possible, so we grow much of our own vegetables and supplement that with food from local growers. We also use local sweeteners sparingly, such as honey and maple syrup.
• Planetary health: Many of the pesticides and herbicides are derived from fossil fuels, which makes our food supply dependent on a finite resources. Synthetics are also alien to the chemical makeup of the natural world and tend to disrupt natural processes. Large farms (also call agribusiness) use lots of fossil fuels to run their farm equipment. Then there is the average of 1,500 to 2,000 miles that most food travels from source to the North American dinner table. It takes an enormous amount of water to irrigate mono-crops (one crop instead of a family of crops). Feedlots that raise animals for meat use a lot of water as well. In many parts of the world, groundwater is being mined faster than it can be renewed, and scientists are predicting that world food production will be curtailed by water shortages.
• Spiritual health: The ethical issues raised above as well as the concern for the treatment of animals, raises issues for us as Friends. What is our spiritual relationship to the land? Are we living in right-relationship with all of life on the planet? John Woolman raised these questions in his Journal, and many Friends have written and talked about this since Woolman’s era. What happens to our spiritual life if we are abusing the bonds that connect us to the rest of the Life Community? Spirit is also nourished when we are mindful of the manner and settings for preparing and eating of food. An international "Slow Food" movement has been taking root because so many people are literally fed up with an industrialized food system that has robbed them of such basic rights and pleasures as good taste and relaxed family conversation.
  
  As members of a complex, modern society, we are not immune, of course, to the many temptations to treat food as mere entertainment, to forget the abuses to people and the earth represented by so many food products on the store shelves, and to relax our resistance to junk food that dominates the limited choices we are offered by the marketplace. And we don't want alienate friends, family, and coworkers by always coming across as cranky purists on food and other subjects. But food is so basic and vital to a healthy, sane planet that we must resolve to make this a cornerstone of our witness. We are grateful that there are other people and resources to help.

You may find our food article from the January 2007 Friends Journal helpful.

Some other food resources that come highly recommended:

• Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket. Brian Halweil
• Organic, Inc. Samuel Fromartz
• Real Food for a Change. Wayne Rogers, et al.
• The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. Peter Singer.
• Real Food Revival: Aisle by aisle, morsel by morsel. Sherri Vinton.
• Slow Food Revolution: A new culture for dining and living. Carlo Petrini.
• Slow Food: The Case for Taste. Carlo Petrini.
• Coming Home to Eat: The pleasures and politics of local food. Gary Nabhan.