702 words

“you are what you eat”. We have all heard the saying but we have never really thought about it. The truth is what we eat says a lot about who we are. You meet someone and you have a first impression; how does the impression change when you find out they are a vegeterian or even a vegan. If you don’t eat pork your religouse, if you eat six meals a day you are a seriouse athlete. A lot can be said about a person by what they eat. So what does is say about a culture who buys questionable meet in plastic packages with no idea of where it came from. Food is one of the mose important things in our lives, yet we are clueless about it. We don’t know what to consider healthy, we don’t know where it came from, and were rarely even cook it ourselves. The luxury of having options has caused us to lose understanding of the importance of food.
Cultures before us had a deeper understanding of their food. Native American tribes of north America had what was called the tree sisters. The tree sisters were corn, squash and beans. These were the most important part of the native Americans food group. The Native Americans needed to farm to survive. If there was a bad season they did not eat. What they realize what by growing these three plants together they were able to grow a lot more. The beans were a climbing plant, they needed the corn to climb. Squash was a plant that grew on the ground. This prevented weeds from being grown around the corn. Since the native Americans needed these plants to survive they needed to find the best ways to plant them. Today most people probably don’t even know what squash looks like. Why should they? They can just go to the store and get it cooked and canned. We no longer know the importance of beans and corn. To use they are just different cans on a shelf, not a means of survival. We no longer know how to support our selves; we must look for expert’s opinion.
When we have so many options we sometimes don’t know what to do. We get lost in all the big words. Because of this we think we need the experts advise. We have a set group of people set on a pedestal. These people know about food, while we are clueless and unhealthy, these smilling faces on the side of the magazine can correct us. All of the options we have confused us. It use to be you ate what was available so not much thought was needed. These day you have so much available you don’t know what to eat. Even sugar has gotten complicated. We no longer no what to eat, so we must now turn to strangers. By letting someone else control the most important thing in our life we have become abit more lost.
In Our Dailey Bread. The film crew takes footage of the European food instrusty. What you see is food being mass produced. Multiple cows are being milked at once. Animals are kept in as small space as possible, and farming is done mostly by machines. All of this is done to maximize profits. Farming is no longer done to keep your family alive, it is done to make as much money as possible. In some cases humans hands don’t touch the food until the packaging. We no longer have a connection to our food. By having an excese of food we lose the meaningfulness of that steak dinner. When you grow pick and cook your own food your connections is strong. You feel good knowing that your survival was continued by your work. By going to the store and picking out your favorite name brand there is no conncetion. There is no feeling of accomplishment as your home grown food is cooked, just the feeling of plastic. Our lives are in the hands of the major corporations. If they stopped making food or the trucks never delievered or the store never opened, we would starve. We are in the hands of our creations.