View Katy's Food Journey 5/24/12 in a larger map
This
was a week that I was dreading tracking my food. I was in class all day
followed by heading to Chicago to see Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes
with some friends. Road trip food is typically not "good" food
and I was a little nervous that this map would simply be called
"Bermuda." However, I'm happy to report that while there is
obviously a lot of room for improvement, I didn't completely bomb this week and
only a few things "came from" Bermuda. So, to kick off this
blog, here are some thoughts I have been having lately.
I,
like most of the folks in the LPF, continue to be frustrated by seemingly
hitting dead ends everywhere I turn. I know logically why a lot of these
larger corporations won't share information about where the food comes from or
the journey from growing/creating/whatever to my table, but I have experienced a
lot of really negative feelings as a result of this. When I started
making calls for my first week, I was optimistic that with a little elbow
grease, patience, and luck of reaching the right person on the other end of the
phone that I would be able to track everything back to a starting point.
When I started to make calls this week and last week I was much more
pessimistic. I mentally prepared for the dead ends and often prefaced the
call by saying out loud to my phone something along the lines of, "Well,
this is about to be a big waste of time." I am a big believer in the
concept of voting with my dollar and trying to support causes I believe in
through my purchases and I hate that we have all bought into this culture,
literally and figuratively, of it being acceptable for suppliers to not have to
tell us exactly what we are getting for our money. These negative
feelings are fueling my desire to want to purchase more local food and support
my local community. That being said, I still find myself falling into the
trap of Trader Joe's or Whole Foods being a totally acceptable alternative if I
can't make the farmer's market. It's an exciting but uphill battle to
change such a big "habit" as eating...
So,
on to Jimmy Johns. I didn't make it very far on figuring out where the
pieces of my delicious sandwich came from as their corporate offices are
closed. For the time being, Jimmy Johns is located in Bermuda with
hopefully an amendment after making some more phone calls. One
interesting thing I wanted to bring up, though, is the fact that since February
2012, Jimmy Johns no longer offers sprouts as a sandwich topping. A quick
Goodsearch (cents for Break Away!) led me to this article that talked about five
"sproutbreaks" in the last four years. Despite switching from
alfalfa sprouts to avoid salmonella outbreaks, the clover sprouts simply
switched the game to E.Coli outbreaks. I'm not going to argue if one
illness is worse than the other, but rather the fact that clearly something is
wrong with this system. I tried to do a little research on growing
methods for sprouts in order to gain a better understanding and found this company that
is practically the epicenter of all things "sprout" in the world.
I was surprised to learn that, "Sprouts are one of the most complete
and nutritionally beneficial of all foods... a sprouted Mung Bean has the
carbohydrate content of a melon, vitamin A of a lemon, thiamin of an avocado,
riboflavin of a dry apple, niacin of a banana, and ascorbic acid of a
loganberry." Impressive, right? Perhaps I will do a little
more research on growing my own sprouts in our garden instead of relying on
E.Coli infested sprouts from the corporate market.
A
big piece of this project has been awareness raising, both for myself and for
others. I've had a lot of really great questions from and conversations
with people in my life about what I have learned, how this is impacting my
eating habits, etc. It has also led to a lot of great conversations
around my choice to be vegetarian, which is always a fun chat particularly
because I started it out of convenience. I was living in the Break Away
house as an intern and 3/5 of the group was vegetarian so I tried it for the
summer. Two years later, there is a lot more weight behind my decision and a
much deeper level of understanding as to my personal reasons for remaining
vegetarian. Another thing that I have noticed in my life is that I have
started to read the label on nearly everything I am purchasing at the grocery
store. Sometimes there is still that moment of frustration if the product
can only be purchased from far away or Bermuda, but I've become much more
aware, which I believe is the first step to making a change. I have loved
every minute of these conversations and I am excited about what actions we are
going to choose for the LPF in the coming months to continue moving ourselves
forward with this issue of local food. But, before I get too far ahead of
myself, one more week of tracking. Thanks for tuning in today, readers,
and happy (local) eating to you this week.
In
Food Exploration Solidarity,
Katy
No comments:
Post a Comment