Laziness at it's prime

I'll admit it...I've been lazy.

Ok, I'll go even further, I've been downright lethargic when it comes to doing my food maps for this compact.  After thinking about it a bit, though, I have pinpointed the problem (also know as an excuse).  The food industry doesn't make it easy for us to find out where our food comes from.  In my last food blog post, I told of one day's worth of food that I tracked.  For the 3 meals that I during that day, I spent nearly 9 hours of work to only wind up saying, "It's from Bermuda."

Our food system shouldn't be this convoluted that we can't honestly say that we know 100% where anything that I buy at the grocery store is from.  What frustrates me about this is that the food companies do know this information.  They have to.  If there is a recall because a certain farm has an E.Coli outbreak, you'd better believe that they know exactly where that spinach went.  So why not pass this information to the consumer?  I'm not going to go to the farm and start picketing.  I'm going to be more aware about how far my food has traveled.

I know being part of this compact shouldn't be easy, that's why we do it.  But finding our sources for food shouldn't be hard.  That's why eating local is so nice.  That's why knowing your farmer is great.  Having a garden is even better.  I get so excited when I pick something from the garden and it is in my meal that week.  I get even more excited when the whole meal is based on my garden growing items.  That's pretty incredible.  In today's age, it's hard to completely move to that lifestyle (growing, harvesting, canning, cooking), but the thought of not knowing where my food is (and not having the time, energy, social capital, or resources to find it) makes me want to do this all the time.

I'm going home tonight and eating a freshly picked tomato.  Maybe tomorrow I'll have Taco Bell, but for tonight, I am doing my part to bettering the food system.  And that, my LPF Compact Blog reader friends, is worth it's weight in gold.