When I was nine, I auditioned and earned a spot with the Roanoke College Children's Choir. The early days were sweet, we did a Christmas concert all in German, an original Fairy Tale musical entitled, The Queen Bee, in which I was a duck, resplendent in purple gingham bonnet and apron with very yellow tights...maybe that's where my color yellow love started...but the first song I learned during my earliest professional Choir experience was from Oliver Twist. I only recall two lines.
"Food Glorious Food! Hot Sausage and Mustard!"
Does sound glorious, doesn't it? Can't you hear poor, starving young Oliver's longing for nourishing food? I can.
Warning, bold statement coming...
Here in America, as the most overfed and indulged nation on Earth, we are starving too.
Seems a contradictory notion, yes?
I've been doing research the past several months...
Sure, we have Food, Glorious Food and lots of it...packaged, processed, modified, enriched, and stuffed full of chemicals. Sugar-fied. But not really. It has a taste like sugar but it's not quite that.
Because
Somewhere out in the endless corn fields of Illinois there's an ear of corn saying,
"Look, I can do a great impression of sugar cane!"
And high fructose corn syrup was born. I dare you to find a loaf of bread in your supermarket which doesn't contain the stuff unless you proactively seek it out.
Most of the food we consume here in the US can be categorized as non-food. Our crackers, chips, poptarts, cold cereals, soft drinks...all those "low-fat" and sugar-free alternatives...are mostly just chemicals, white flour and sugar. So much sugar in fact, most Americans consume around seventeen four-pound bags of sugar per person every year.*
During the French Revolution, the infamous "cake" Marie Antoinette wanted the starving masses to consume wasn't gonna keep them alive...and it isn't going to nourish us either.
Adding to our fake food problem is the issue of meat and potatoes. Three fourths of all the antibiotics consumed in America are stuffed into our feed-lot cows, in a pitiful attempt to keep the beasts healthy enough to pass the very low FDA inspections. Why must antibiotics be used? Because the cows' lovely and nourishing grasses...and fields...were taken away and replaced with modified corn feed and overcrowded, dirt feed lots, so we could get as much meat for the money as possible, regardless of the condition of the "meat". This new way of cow life exposes our cows to malnourishment and unlivable, disease-ridden conditions.
Did you catch that? Three fourths of all antibiotics consumed in this country go into our cows...BEFORE WE EAT THEM.
Do we believe we are what we eat...eats? We do in the case of breast-feeding mothers. They must watch their diets very carefully, yes? All the nasty things going into our food before it becomes our food doesn't just magically Poof away when we pluck it from the grocery shelf. Into our carts. Down in our stomachs.
But we delude ourselves into thinking so, don't we? I know I do.
Small, family-owned farms in this country are closing...farmers walking away from their land...at an average of 300 per week. It's a sad statistic, yes, but why does it matter?
Because we are giving our fields over to government control, called industrial farming. Regardless of how one feels about big government, we can agree the government doesn't grow very good crops...the largest cash crop these days is modified, non-edible corn which becomes gasoline and high fructose corn syrup. I will post a great and informative website at the end of this post, which explains this controversial subject much better than I can.
This is weighty stuff...infuriating, confusing, saddening. For me it all boils down to a simple question:
What's a mother to do?
Specifically, what am I going to do with this information when it comes to feeding my family?
A simple question with complex parts. But an easy answer.
We need a Food Revolution.
Yes?
Yes.
I will share the plan...my war strategy...tomorrow. Stay tuned. I'm pretty stoked about this one.
Peace dear readers.
-Great website discussing the Farm Condition:
www.sustainabletable.org
*Statistic cited from:http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505269_162-57407952/americans-consumption-of-sugar-unprecedented/
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