There’s a reason why, when I decided to start writing again semi-regularly, I landed on the blog title ‘The Edible Complex’: everything about food in the modern era seems in some way complex or problematic. Food, for the thoughtful, is a challenging puzzle served up three times a day. All the pressing issues of availability, convenience, sustainability, economics, and ethics are distilled into every meal, whether or not we care to acknowledge them, or merely slather them in Heinz and chomp blithely away. Most Americans eat with little awareness of just what an impact their meals make, while others still have little choice in the matter at all. Yet even an educated and compassionate diner can be hard pressed to navigate the tangled politics of the plate, for the modern meal is essentially a microcosm of all the ills facing America and indeed the planet. Food safety, food sovereignty, equitable pay and treatment, the legal status of workers, the humane treatment of livestock, the health consequences of diet, pollution, environmental degradation, climate change…the list of challenges goes on and on. Trying to eat a tasty, healthy, conscientious meal can be exhausting; doing so several times a day is near maddening.
And yet I’m someone who loves food and thinks about it near constantly, in all its maddening complexity. I went so far as to start my own farm, largely in response to the ethical and environmental faults I saw in industrial agriculture. If I was going to eat bacon, it needed to be bacon I believed in. And yet, even though my primary concerns starting out were centered around animal welfare and sustainability, numerous issues both good and bad were inextricably woven into the fabric of the farm from the very beginning. I was supporting the local economy by using local businesses, but my product was comparatively expensive and my own income was unpredictable. The health of the land here on the farm was improving, but I was still buying feed that was grown conventionally in the Midwest. Our animals lived contented and worry-free lives, but they still died so that wealthy soccer moms could have guilt-free porkchops. Nothing turned out to be as clear cut as I had envisioned.
Even eating thoughtfully in my own day to day life proved daunting. Our food system is designed with convenience in mind, and all too often convenience tends to trump everything else. Preparing a meal at home was manageable – some grass-fed beef we raised, greens from market, sweet corn from a local farm – but that was when things were in season. Winter cooking, once a bastion of smoked meat, root vegetables, and preserves, can get tiresome for a modern palate. The fourth beef stew of February tends not to taste as good as the first. And, as people who just generally enjoy food, we also crave the novelty and luxury of dining out. While the homecooked meal offers up plenty of ethical choices on its own, attempting to eat out thoughtfully really brings the dilemma of choice to the fore. Maybe I can demonstrate with an example of a typical meal.
It’s a Friday evening in late January, and after a long week of work in the Connecticut winter, the wife and I are pondering our dinner options. It’s the end of the week, and our farmer’s market isn’t ’til the following morning. Few things are in season anyway, and none of our frozen stocks are defrosted. Hungry for a change of taste and scenery, we decide to treat ourselves by going out; the problems start there. Where should we go? Is the restaurant locally owned, and if so do they treat their staff well and pay a living wage? Is the kitchen staffed by undocumented workers, like many kitchens in the industry, and if so are we all right with that? Let’s assume we go to a local tavern we know well and love, a place that’s staffed by decently paid and well treated long time workers. Whoever is in the kitchen, regardless of status, is at the least being fairly compensated, and that’s what matters most to us. We’re already navigating the consumer’s maze of options, and we’ve yet to see a menu.
We sit and order drinks – local beer, Italian wine, or a cocktail garnished with citrus shipped from Florida? Assume we stay local for the moment. On to the menu. Steaks, burgers, chicken wings…if none are sourced from an actual farm then they’re all off the table as a matter of course. Raising meat humanely is the first and most basic hurdle than needs to be cleared for me. The modern industrial model of raising livestock is guilty of a host of transgressions and is one of the most destructive and unsustainable sectors of agriculture. In addition to the basic misery inflicted on industrially raised livestock as a matter of course, cattle feed lot emissions contribute to global warming, manure runoff fouls waterways, and the growing of monoculture animal fodder is linked to everything from mass honeybee die-offs to the growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The overuse of sub-therapeutic antibiotics is causing a rise in resistant bacterial strains. Chicken growers are classified as sub-contractors and taken advantage of by large poultry corporations. Slaughterhouses underpay and abuse the service of central American immigrant labor. The list could go on.
So, ruling out most red meat and poultry, we turn to fish. Salmon? Well, if it’s wild caught then sure, but farm raised salmon is an enormous polluter, endangers wild fish stocks, and is a bigger user of antibiotics than most terrestrial livestock farming. Swordfish? Loaded with mercury. Tuna? Being fished to extinction. Ultimately, the pollack used for the fish and chips would be alright, certainly it’s fished more sustainably, but it’s still being shipped in from Alaskan waters. Shellfish or lobster might be a better choice; shellfish aquaculture is some of the most environmentally sound agriculture possible, and lobster from the north Atlantic has few miles between the ocean and my plate. Just don’t ask if the kitchen boils their lobsters alive, or dispatches them first…
The meat and seafood entrees aren’t the only ones under suspicion though. Any dish with eggs or dairy falls into the same ethical parameters as flesh, fish, and fowl. Of course vegans don’t get off so easily either. The increased popularity of quinoa in recent years has been linked to a dearth of the grain among the Andean people who long relied on it as a staple. Winter tomatoes grown in Florida for dinner salads are sometimes picked by migrant laborers living in conditions of near slavery. The recent demand for avocados has led to increased deforestation of critical Mexican Monarch butterfly habitats. Romaine lettuce will literally kill you.
As I said, it can be maddening. The extreme choice, perhaps the purest choice, is to live as close to the land as able, growing, foraging, hunting, and sourcing one’s diet as locally as possible. But that’s difficult individually and wildly impractical on a broad basis. And, to be honest, it’s hard to be a saint: I long for my Costa Rican coffee and my Iberian ham and my Kentucky bourbon. I’m not ready to aim for perfection, but I am trying to strike the right balance between tickled taste buds and a clean conscious. I try to pay attention to what I consume, and I try to minimize the cost as much as possible. The seasoning of knowledge has left a lot of dishes unpalatably bitter, but I haven’t starved yet.
I have another beer, and I study the menu a little longer.
The Edible Complex 