why food matters

something a lot of people don't know about me is that i have a secret passion for food. i love to cook. i love to go to the grocery store. i love to indulge in the beauty and depth of flavor that is a well cooked and fashioned meal. mostly i love the chemical and visual transformation that comes with cooking your own food.

last week i posted about jamie oliver's crusade to change the way public schools, specifically, and the general population eat. i would still encourage you to take the 20 mins. to watch the TED talk he gave. he has seen proven results through his initiatives. he brings an unmistakable passion and excitement to the issue.

indulge me in an aside for a moment. when my wife and i spent the week of easter in wales and england two years ago we stayed with some of her relatives who were living in wales at the time. while we were there, we decided to have a meal that featured a recipe by jamie oliver. the centerpiece of deliciousness was a leg of lamb. being in wales, we went down to the local butcher shop in the town, pictured below, and asked said butcher for a leg of spring lamb. this is an important distinction because you can get meat from different kinds of lambs by asking for a specific type of lamb.

in any event the conversation turned to our obviously non-welsh/english accents and the third generation butcher had some, well let's say strong opinions. he first told us how much he loved the united states. in fact, he told us, he would move there given the opportunity and financial assurance that he would be o.k. once he hopped the pond. in course of conversation he asked what we were doing with said leg of lamb and he was told that jamie oliver had a great recipe for leg of lamb...MISTAKE. so started the 5 min. rant on the cooking misery that is jamie oliver to this fine welsh butcher. the zenith of his argument was the statement, "jamie oliver's a bloody englishman. all you are going to do is ruin this leg of lamb." this was then followed with the explanation of how the welsh disdain the english like americans do canadians. imagine a bloodied and gruff welsh butcher showing his highest level of exasperation and you have the complete picture. we cheerfully accepted his two cents and set off to cook. for the record, the lamb was magnificent. and i don't think jamie oliver is all that bad.

back to the main point: our food culture in the united states is killing us. literally. we have traded in true beauty and the wonder of watching the hidden chemical reactions of cooking for fast food convenience and poor health effects. study after study has shown that our current food and eating habits have resulted in off-the-charts levels of diseases that are killing us at alarming and early rates. add to this that children are suffering astounding levels of diseases directly related to food consumption and epidemic is probably not too strong of a word to describe the situation.

so why care? i eat healthy most of the time. i exercise and i care for myself. i get 7+ hours of sleep a night.

i believe this is more than a compartmentalized issue. i believe this is in part a religious issue. we are mandated to care for our bodies as though they were temples. this is more than filling it with trash and allowing it to devolve into disrepair. caring for our neighbors and loving others is not shown is putting the small farmer out of business in the interest of big agriculture and genetically modified foods. ethically, the issues are deeper than most of us will ever grasp. but more than anything i have found that the more i care about where my food comes from, the more i find myself in relationship with the people and places my food comes from.

in the process of losing the magic of cooking we are sacrificing relationships that can prove transformative and significant, all the while killing ourselves. this seems more costly than even the smallest sacrifice of convenience, processed food, and wasteful stewardship. here's to reclaiming the magic of the culinary arts.