Hunter Gatherer

Last year at this time I blogged about gathering wild blackberries along the delta, and today we did the same, in roughly the same section of delta, near Wimpy's Marina.

Until I re-read that post from last year, I had forgotten my food axiom -- any food you eat should require a modicum of your own preparation. Well, not really forgotten it as I still follow it, but I had forgotten it in words.

If you hadn't noticed, of late my posts have focused on the food choices we collectively make, and I think this fits in well with other blog posts because industrialized food generates a large share of the waste we U.S. consumers generate. Remember -- in the eyes of the food industry, you aren't a citizen -- you're a consumer. And seeing how the news, the food industry, 3M, KB Toys, and China only ever think of you as a consumer, that's all you really are. That you vote or offer anything else to the public realm is only ancillary to your primary role: to consume consumables.

I have been fascinated with several books of late regarding the increasing industrialization of our food, the increasing rates of diabetes and obesity, and the changes to our culture of eating. I am fascinated with it as 1) I'm diabetic, 2) was substantially overweight, and 3) was mostly unaware of how my food got to my plate.

I can't change #1. As a type I diabetic I either take insulin or die, and the day I started using insulin in November 1995 #2 started -- I gained 30# within three months and have been mostly overweight since then. I like to blame it on the insulin, but that's only one piece of it -- #3 had a much, much more substantive impact on my weight -- a failure to understand what I was eating, and how that food got to me.

There's a lot of ideas floating around out there trying to answer the question why Americans are so fucking fat...and while there doesn't appear to be a single cause, I am inclined to think that it's because my food axiom is not being followed. Interestingly, I thought of this axiom independently of M. Pollan's food rules which I recently read. My axiom isn't listed among his 64 rules, but it easily could, and indeed would dovetail in beautifully between, say, number forty seven and forty eight.

Admittedly, I can't say that preparing my own food is something I would want to do. I've spent the better part of 40 years letting other people do that, so I'm somewhat accustomed to spending my time engaging in other leisure activities...like blogging. But I was looking more and more like the guy in my last post. Something was askew. For as much as I was becoming educated about how our food moves, I was still getting heavier and heavier. I was stuck in the same traps along with 60% of the rest of our consumers.

I elected to change the way I eat:

First, I enrolled into a Community Supported Agriculture program. At least I know exactly where and how a small portion of my food comes from...and, yes, it's unprepared. I have to cook the kale, slice open the melon, shred the lettuce and (ug) the arugula, and grill the eggplant.

Second, I set a goal to eat 20 heads of raw cabbage per year, which requires my own preparation. I understand that Polish women who eat raw cabbage have very low rates of breast cancer, while Polish women who immigrate to America who eat much less to none at all have the highest rates in the world. This, I say, will prevent the development of my own breast cancer.

Third -- eat less than 60# of meat per year. The average American consumer consumes over 200# of meat per year; the world average is 90#. I elected to eat less than the world average, and in doing so, I'll join the rest of the world with their lowered risk of osteoporosis, arthritis, colon cancer, and myriad other meat diseases.

There are a number of other changes, too many to post, but among them is to get stabbed, welted and sliced by the brambles while trying to gather berries. Blackberries are among the only foods that the food processing industry can never lay their hands on, because they can only ever be gathered by hand. Tomorrow morning I will start celebrating the Fourth of July at sunrise instead of sunset when I make my own whole wheat blackberry muffins.

Yum.