Food is a basic need - it sustains life - it can heal, nourish, energize and bring us together. It can also cause disease, dysfunction and death. The production of food can be beautiful, healthy and craft - but it can also be heartless, disgusting and short-sighted. There are many issues at stake, when we speak about food, but overall I think it's important for us to demand the best. In regard to taste, nutrition, ecological practices, ethical practices and common sense we must demand more.
To dial in my point, let's look at tomatoes. Buy a beautiful spherical almost-pink tomato from your local grocery. After slicing it, take a bite - what does it taste like? Well, honestly, they don't taste like anything. Sort of bland and fruity, but no real flavor profile to speak of. It looks like a tomato and acts like a tomato... but why doesn't it have any flavor? Most grocery store tomatoes are picked before they've ripened - some producers pick them while they're green and spray them with ethylene gas to speed up their 'ripening' in transit to your grocer. So, the tomato you're buying doesn't taste like a tomato, simply because it wasn't ready to be a tomato. Have you ever eaten a warm, sun-ripened tomato straight from the vine, in August? It's one of the most delicious things I can imagine. So, as far as taste is concerned there is simply no contest between a backyard tomato and an average store-bought tomato.
Now, remember your grocery tomato? It was so pretty and spherical! But this sun-ripened tomato has lost it's perfect shape and looks a bit oblong and some varieties are a bit lumpy - and that's how they grow, naturally. So, why is that one perfect? Because it was picked before it could fully grow! We've grown dozens of varieties of tomatoes over the years and when they first start to grow, they are all round and perfect. Do you think that grocery tomato, which has been artificially ripened has the same nutrient value as my homegrown imperfectly shaped tomato? Studies have been done for decades about this very thing - and especially in regard to Vitamin C vine-ripening produces a superior result. If we're still taking score, the homegrown tomato may be ugly, but it's extra time ripening has given it a boost in nutrients - I, obviously, don't care about aesthetic symmetry in regard to food, so on my score card, the homegrown tomato is still winning.
With a fruit, grown in your yard, you know what care has been taken and you know where that tomato has been. With a grocery tomato, it gets a bit tricky. A LOT of fruit is grown in South America, which is so far from here. So, at the very least you know it's traveled by plane, boat, train or truck to arrive at your grocer. Transportation costs money and uses fuels - the farther that produce travels the more cost financially and ecologically. But do you know what was sprayed on that tomato? Pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers? If I walked into your backyard and sprayed your tomatoes with those chemicals or waste, would you eat them? With fertilizer alone, would it bother you to know the largest source of nitrates in water supplies is agricultural fertilizers? Or that the levels of nitrates in water supplies contaminates the ecosystems associated with those waterways? From microbes to humans, we're all affected.
*agricultural pollution info Some grocery tomatoes are grown organically, but not usually locally, so you have to think these tomatoes are still ripening off the vine, in transit to you. There are also 'hothouse' tomatoes, which are usually beautiful, and some are still attached to their vine, but that doesn't mean they're grown organically nor are greenhouses energy efficient. Here, I think of ecological and ethical practices in the same category. I can eat a tomato grown in my backyard with a clear conscience, but not a agro-factory-grown grocery tomato. As you can see there is a bit of a spectrum, homegrown, locally organically grown, locally grown, hothouses, grown in our country, grown in another country or grown in another continent. Ecologically, my backyard tomato wins big points.
Unfortunately, I can only grow tomatoes in my yard, once a year. My solution : can as many of my own tomatoes as possible and use them through winter. Even with all the canning I did last year, with 6 tomato varieties, I will still run out of tomatoes before summer. And that's ok - tomatoes grow in a season. Does that mean I'll buy tomatoes for the next few months? Not unless I can find a trusted source close to home. And why would I bother purchasing an average grocery tomato, which doesn't even taste like a tomato?
There are many foods, other than tomatoes - and each one has the same concerns. It's worth becoming informed about. There are plenty of excellent films about our food supply, which are enlightening and strengthen my resolve to choose BETTER, whenever I can.
Food, Inc.,
Broken Limbs,
King Corn,
Dirt!,
Fresh, and
The Future of Food. Our health and the health of our planet is worth a second thought at the grocery store.
