The burden of knowledge is heavy weight to carry. I am entirely grateful that I have been given the opportunity to explore the limitless depths of knowledge. Because knowledge that I have gained becomes a critical part in influencing my daily routine, more and greater knowledge significantly affects the way I will behave in a situation. For example, my Thanksgiving dinner with my family felt tremendously more different than it ever had before. Everything that I learned in The Food Revolution altered my natural way of thinking and changed my perception of the traditional, American holiday.

            In the past, Thanksgiving was a way for all members of my modestly, small sized family to reunite together over a delicious home cooked meal. This hadn’t really changed, and I was still very thankful that we all had an opportunity to see one another. But as we sat down and dove deep into turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and vegetables, I consumed all of it without a shred of skepticism for what I was eating. Although I never pronounced my concern, I internally questioned the nature of just exactly what I was eating. For example, I wondered what was the quality of life for the turkey that lay in several pieces on my grandma’s china. Was it grown naturally? Was it filled with preservatives and/or steroids? Was it slaughtered in a humane way?

            I sat silently at the dinner table while my family discussed current events and politics. Sometime in between, my grandma had mentioned that she had bought this years turkey at the local Walmart for a shockingly low price. I once again internalized my feelings, but I understood exactly what this meant. I cannot at all imagine that the turkey I was eating was ever grown naturally or treated humanely. I had seen first hand from Food Inc how large-scale supermarkets are able to abundantly stock their shelves. I knew exactly what kind of life my family’s Thanksgiving turkey had lived, and I couldn’t shake the thought from my mind.

But I kept every thought that I had internal. I wanted to inform my family of all the implications, but our gathering this year was not the place for it. Because in the end, the food that I was eating was a lot less important than the opportunity I was given to spend time with my family.  

The differences between a typical supermarket and local farmers market are substantially noticeable. Excluding their objective and corporate means of obtaining that objective, basic human, sensory details are what really stand out to the average consumer. Drawing my experiences in visiting both environments, the differences between the two were made instantly and evidently clear within the first few minutes I had spent there.

  The first difference I that stood out become apparent before I had even entered either store. The construction and layout of a farmer’s market compared to that of a large supermarket chain are noticeable. A supermarket is designed for the purpose of filling as many products as they physically can within their confines. It follows that these types of businesses are typically much larger than any other place of retail, specifically a farmer’s market. The market I had visited was significantly smaller, a bit cramped, but still manageable. And instead of being architecturally strong and bulky like a supermarket made of concrete or what have you, this particular market was built with the intention of letting airflow in and out of the store. One had to enter through a semi-transparent tent to view some of the vegetables and fruits, but the design of this tent permitted easy access to the outside where other products, such as local eggs and other vegetables, were stored.

The sights and contact with nature stood out, but the aroma that filled both environments is another noteworthy aspect. The supermarket I visited made it difficult to be able to smell any sort of product, even in the “fresh food” area. But upon entering the farmer’s market, I was overwhelmed with a strong combination of all different types of fresh vegetables and fruits. The scent of apples mingled with the adjacent lettuce that mixed with the carrots to conjure up a wonderful scent that filled the entire store.

            During the summer of my freshman year, before the fall semester of 2011, I started to crack down on my eating habits. I never considered my diet to be terribly unhealthy, but I knew that there was a lot of room for improvement. In my search to find what “healthy” was, I discovered that there was a lot of information that didn’t make sense. There were dozens of testimonies and websites all claiming they held the truth towards a successful diet, but every other site I looked towards said the opposite. Perhaps I was overlooking something, or that a healthy diet is just too sophisticated for me.

            With the knowledge I’ve gained from Professor Basile’s class, I now know that I wasn’t completely wrong. While I may have given up on trying to understand nutrition too quick, I see now that I reacted exactly the way I was supposed to. Micheal Pollen’s article “Unhappy Meals” references the ambiguity in understanding nutrition. To my surprise, I discovered that our government is responsible for purposely releasing false information to the public. I guess when no one understands the truth, it’s a lot harder to believe something else.

            I’ve never fully trusted my government, and part of me expects for the large institutions to deceive the public. But when I fully realized the implications of the situation, I was outraged. I was the perfect person to fall victim to what the food industry wanted. I was misinformed, ambitious, and naïve.  I am assertive and ambitious enough to go out of my way to search for truth, but too naïve to question the information I was given. For example, I was fully convinced that all types of deli meats were ideal for a healthy diet. It seems ludicrous in retrospect, but I had no reason to suspect that what I read was false.

            My anger was directed in two different directions, for my government and for myself. I was angry with my government for ignoring the interests of their people in favor of themselves, but I was equally as irritated at myself. At 19 years of age, I expected better of myself as a thinker. I had thought that I was able to detach myself well enough to be able to formulate a logical conclusion. My time in The Food Revolution did more than just inform me of the hidden issues, but it affected the way that I think. I have become more aware and more skeptical towards some of the more basic issues. This train of thought is something that I expect to stick with me for years and years.

“The protective emphasis is not a law of nature; it comes from the stories we tell about nature.”

–Pg. 25

            As a whole, Jonathan Safran Foer’s work Eating Animals inspired a lot of alternative thinking for me. I’ve always been conscious of what I eat, but mostly in terms of nutrition and diet. I had never questioned why it is I find it acceptable to eat certain foods over others, but Foer’s argument presents a lot of noteworthy points.

            Foer’s aforementioned quote summarizes his opinions on why people like myself will find it taboo to eat one particular animal over another. Our culture’s inclination to protect and defend certain types species is not a result of the activities of nature, but how we perceive nature to act. To our part of the world, we would defend the rights of a dog or cat because of its history for domestication. We’ve had a long history of owning these animals, and as a result, we identify with these creatures. But all cultures and people differ in their perceptions of nature. To some eastern cultures, a dog can be a perfectly acceptable meal.

            When I apply how different culture’s view eating animals, it really affects how I view my own beliefs. I will very often eat a large piece of meat for lunch or dinner without much hesitation. In my culture, having a hamburger for dinner is generally accepted. But for a different country, it could be heavily condemned. If all that changes between one culture and another is their tradition, I really do wonder if my eating habits are actually justified. Omitting my traditional, western perception on dogs, I can’t understand why I wouldn’t eat a dog if I had the opportunity. After listening to Foer, I’m starting to think that my eating habits should never be structured by tradition, but by my own personal beliefs.

“Sickness comes when people draw apart from nature. The severity of the disease is directly proportional to the degree of separation.”

            By the time I had reached middle school, at roughly ten years of age, I began to notice that I would frequently be subjected to very intense migraines. Even though I was aware that they were occurring at an unprecedented rate, I wasn’t quite sure what was causing them. It took me years of different medications and doctor’s appointments to finally arrive at a conclusion. My diet, either eating too much of one food or not enough of another, was the biggest constituent towards the frequency of my migraines.

            Masanobu Fukuoka’s quotation from his novel The One-Straw Revolution embodies exactly what it was I discovered. Fukuoka believes that the closer to nature someone is, the healthier they are. In terms of eating, this means a diet centered on organic, local food. In the years where my migraines had reached their peak in regularity and intensity, my diet was at its worst. Sugary, carbonated drinks and processed, frozen foods made up a large part of my youthful diet. Evidently, it never dawned on any of my doctors that my atrociously unhealthy diet could have been a reason for my illness. I suppose they found it easier to prescribe me dozens of different medications than actually work to diagnose the problem.

            Regardless, I can’t stress the importance of a healthy diet when striving towards a healthy lifestyle. I find it strange that this kind of knowledge isn’t commonplace, but I think our culture has a very narrow view towards the relationship between health and food. We recognize the larger issues that a poor diet could create, like obesity and heart disease. But we write off the more mundane issues like a headache as an act of nature or hereditary disease. I think we sometimes forget how significant of an impact food actually has on our bodies. Fukuoka understood the importance of a good diet and he lived into his mid 90’s. I’d like to believe that that is more than a mere coincidence.