Food

There's a garden in my backyard.  I know exactly where salad comes from. Which makes me think about what food I consume that I have no idea where the contents originate.

I've been reading Raj Patel's Stuffed and Starved and the more I read the more frustrated and saddened I become.  The politics of food is ingrained in nearly every aspect of our lives: food and poverty, food and international relations, food and gender.  And it's been this way for centuries, which means it's going to take a few more centuries to uproot this archaic and corrupt system.

One of the most amazing things I find concerns food and its pricing.  How and why is it that I price, for example, a 16 oz box of Cheerios. I can go to three different stores and find three different prices.  Why?  Is the most expensive box providing me with more nutrients?  More fulfillment?  More quantity?  I wish the gov't would regulate food prices to a greater extent than they do now.  And quit subsidising corn and sugar.  Those are two of the last things we need to be cheap.  

The one thing the gov't should be subsidising: fresh produce.  Lettuce, tomatoes, oranges, etc.  I actually know of young children who cannot identify a fresh pineapple or coconut.  The only exposure they've had to these fruits is after they have been processed.  How is it that people can't take their kids to a grocery store and give them a quick tour of the produce section?  Or that this (what I could consider) basic knowledge is taken for granted and not passed on?  

We as a society are failing when we make processed foods the norm so much so that our children have no idea that food is actually grown in fields, on trees and under the ground.