Editor’s Note: July/August 2009: Food Issue


I love food. I know that sounds silly, but it’s profoundly true. I’m that person who will wake up early and make homemade English Muffins, eggs from the chickens in our backyard, sweeten my coffee with honey from our hives. And my very favorite way to spend time is preparing and eating food with friends and family.

I come from the farm. My father grew up, dirt poor during the depression, on a small farm in Northeast Missouri. My best childhood memories are all on that farm, digging potatoes with my grandpa, and watching my grandmother cook, freeze, can and otherwise use every morsel of food that they grew. The home I now live in is thoroughly modern, but the food we eat in it is decidedly old fashioned. We joke that “if you wouldn’t find it on Little House In the Prairie, you won’t find it on our Little Farm In the City.” And we mean it.

It fascinates me that there was a time in history when the “wealth” of a person was judged at a glance by whether or not they were fat. The fatter, a person was, the more food they were able to buy, ergo, the wealthier. Today it seems largely the opposite. The poorest amongst us are left eating the most nutrient depleted food – highly processed, fast-food, filled with more chemicals and preservatives than nutrients. Malnutrition in our country has more to do with WHAT people eat than how much.

Food is capable of nourishing or poisoning us in countless ways. Where does our food come from? Where did it come from in the past and where will it come from in the future? What is in our food? What will be in it in the future?

I won’t pretend to know the answers, but I will insist that we talk about it. Because our food impacts our health more than any single factor. And how we grow it, raise it, make it, process it and ship it impacts our planet more than just about anything else. So not only is it true that “we are what we eat,” but what we eat truly shapes the world in which we live.

I also won’t pretend that I’m perfect. I love Oreos more than is rational. And I do love Big Macs, and there are times when only a Pepsi will do. That said, junk food is like tequila for me – terrible as a lifestyle, but every now and then it just hits the spot. And that’s ok. We’re only human, and we do live in the real world, not on an idealized farm in the past (most of us, anyway.)

So how do we find balance? How do we have healthful and affordable meals that provide natural nutrients in our crazy world?

Here are some of our thoughts on the matter, you can always share your thoughts with us at www.JustCauseIt.com, or drop us a byte at letters – at – justcauseit – dot – com

Cheers – Alyssa