You Are What You Eat: An Imperative Gerund

In the words of Osip Mandlestam, "I want to live in the imperative of the future passive participle, in the ‘what ought to be.’ This is the way I’d like to eat." Osip actually said, "this is the way I’d like to breathe," but I think his imperative lends itself well to the concept of eating as a type of political dialogue. In the gerundive sense, this imperative expresses the process of eating something (as a verb), in terms of the ideological and political contexts implicit in a system of Eating (as a noun). Food is inextricably related to consumerism and activism, and choice as a mechanism for declaring what ought to be. The modern North American food system, which prizes convenience, cost-efficiency, and mass production over quality, sustainability, and morality, has orchestrated a Fall of mass proportions. It is emblematic of humanity’s post-Edenic fallen state in the disconnect it promotes between us as social agents in the polarization of producer-consumer, as well as between us and the earth. It characterizes a forgotten sense of ourselves as social actors who recognize the power of choice to enact change.

Eating is one of the most political processes that we engage in on a daily basis. Everything from the selection of seeds, to the mode of cultivation, to the means of production and distribution determines the depth of the ecological footprint we leave. Buying locally sourced foods is one way that we can contest a system which views individuals as nothing more than cogs in a well-oiled, agro-giant run machine. Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon’s The 100 Mile Diet highlights the fact that the average meal travels over 1500 miles from farm to plate.

I know, I know. I can hear the pleas, the protests and the arguments that may arise in favour of the global food acquisition model as opposed to the local model.

Argument #1: In Canada, where in many provinces it is winter for six months of the year, the growing season is very short. We need to import crops that cannot grow in Canada’s mid-latitude climate from warmer regions. (The interesting thing about the 1500-mile meal, however, is that we do not simply acquire foodstuffs that are otherwise unavailable. For instance, half of all tomatoes that California exports travel to Canada, yet every year the U.S. imports 36 million dollars of Canadian tomatoes. Food is often transported hundreds of miles for processing and then sent back to where it originated.)

Argument # 2: Many of us, including myself, do not have the aptitude, the will, or the time to can, preserve, and store fruits and vegetables for the winter ahead. If we didn’t purchase produce imported from California, or Asia, we would eat nothing but squash for months on end.

Argument # 3: Sourcing food locally is inconvenient, time-consuming, expensive, subject to fluctuations in availability and quality, and is downright impractical as a lifestyle.

Yes, it’s all true. All of the arguments are logical, deductive, and empirically valid. The question nonetheless remains: what is sacrificed by this system, and do the aforementioned arguments outweigh the consequences?

Sacrifice # 1: Gaia. There are well-documented and obvious environmental consequences to the prevailing food production and distribution model. Growth hormones, genetic modification, pesticides, and anti-ripening agents are only a few of the side-effects of the commodity-crop paradigm. This, coupled with the massive fossil-fuel consumption and related greenhouse gas emissions required to process, transport and package commodity crops has accredited the modern food system as one of the key contributors to global warming.

Sacrifice # 2: Body. Ingesting chemically-laden fruits and vegetables, which are picked early and ripened in the aisles of supermarkets, deprives us of many of their nutrients, anti-oxidants, and flavours.

Sacrifice # 3: Connectivity. When we buy our food in supermarkets, we are four to five times removed from the source and means of sustenance. We become hailed as hegemonic subjects who are too busy, too apathetic, and too tired to recognize ourselves as inextricably and wonderfully connected to the natural world.

Sacrifice # 4: Community. In many communities around the globe, the market is a locus for exchange, discourse, and human contact. Although it primarily functions as a place for the buying and selling of goods, the resultant atmosphere is one which promotes the exchange of ideas and cordialities. Perhaps I can elucidate this sense of community with a personal anecdote. I go to the Parkdale farmer’s market every weekend. I prefer it to the Byward market because the food is sold from the farmer’s themselves (whereas at the Byward market, much of the produce is imported from south of the border). I was at the market in mid-October and the stalls were filled with the bounty of the autumn harvest - zucchinis, pumpkins, squash, and apples. There was a large gathering of people at a stall that appeared to sell nothing other than pumpkins. Hundreds of pumpkins. I peered inside to witness a contest orchestrated by the farmer: whichever child could lift the largest pumpkin could take it home free of charge. The stall was full of children devising various ways to attempt the impossible task; there was the ergonomic approach of bending at the knees, the collaborative approach with one child pulling another who was pulling another who was holding on to the pumpkin, and the approach that was consistent with the idea that sheer will was all it would take to move the 50-pound beast. This was an atmosphere entirely different from the neighborhood Loblaws where the pumpkins, housed in a large cardboard box, are nothing more than a commodity, and the cashiers are often surly embodiments of indifference.

Do the arguments in favour of the modern food acquisition model outweigh the sacrifices? Sometimes. Sometimes I will eat strawberries in January. Although I may wave my moral flag at Cargill, sometimes it really is just more convenient to pop into the nearest grocery store than to endeavour to the farmer’s market.

However, activism does not need to consist of the complete negation of one system by another. Become aware of the issues surrounding the modern food system. Grow a garden in the summer. Buy produce from the farmer’s market every second week, or every second month. Recognize consumer choice as a powerful tool that should be actively and consciously wielded to express "what ought to be."

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