I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. Mostly triggered by my own struggles with weight over the years, and also triggered by my lovely sister from another mother, Nina. I guess Jamie Oliver and the documentary Food, Inc. also had some to do with it too. I was appalled when I watched the documentary to see the truth about the journey our food goes through. It looks so unassuming when it is sitting on your plate, when really, most of it is like having a ticking time bomb at the dinner table. It made me thankful that for the most part, I know directly from whence my food came. We get our pork and eggs from my father in law. Our beef is always from someone local. Grass fed, pastured, and happy cows. We try to raise our own meat chickens, though as of late I have had to purchase elsewhere. I try then to get my hands on some Amish grown chicken. We grow most of our own veges in the summer, and freeze and can what we can.
Now, I am by no means a tree hugging, animal rightsy person. I do however, believe, that we were put here to be good stewards of the land, and rulers over beast. There is some amount of respect you need to give an animal that is raised to be your food. I grew up on a dairy farm. We rotationally grazed, milked about 25-30 cows, they were our family. Our living, our life. We had to treat these animals well for them to treat us well. They were happy, and productive. You really do reap what you sow. There is a symbiotic relationship that goes back thousands of years between human and earth, human and beast. American Indians prayed to their Gods for buffalo, prayed for the buffalo, hunted them respectfully and wasted little. So yes, they are here for us to eat them. Respect what gives up it's life for nourishment of your body. That is not to be abused, fed growth hormones, squeezed into a shoot, butchered in the shortest time possible, and thrown onto the American dinner table.
These are animals and plants we use to nourish our bodies, our children's bodies. You wouldn't feed your kids out of your garbage, would you? Yet we are essentially doing just that. But we give this crap cutesy names like chicken nuggets to make us feel better about doing it. We need to start DEMANDING, not asking, for our government to do better. We need to start questioning where that food on our plate came from, and what was it's journey? We need to start supporting our local farmers, these people that are doing it right. But barely able or unable to make a living because they are being pushed out of the market by greedy corporate giants like Monsanto and their hormone filled crops and animals. Only we can demand the change that needs to be made. I know in the scale of things we often feel small, or useless, or unable to change. This is what these people WANT us to believe, to keep us under control and quiet. To keep us uneducated, and at their mercy. It is time to start a revolution in this country. It is time to take back what it ours. It's time to go back to basics, in our government, in our kitchens, in our lives.
I highly recommend the documentary Food, Inc. and also watch Jamie Oliver's Food revolution to see and ask yourself WHY it takes a man from ENGLAND to come to this country and try to wake us up?
http://www.foodincmovie.com/
http://abc.go.com/shows/jamie-olivers-food-revolution
