Fighting for a Sane Food System

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Growing vegetables — even by container gardening on a rooftop — is one way to make organic, heirloom vegetables an affordable food option.
Growing vegetables — even by container gardening on a rooftop — is one way to make organic, heirloom vegetables an affordable food option.
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A non-organic Whopper Meal from Burger King costs nearly twice as much as a home-cooked, organic hamburger dinner.
A non-organic Whopper Meal from Burger King costs nearly twice as much as a home-cooked, organic hamburger dinner.
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Organic, heirloom potatoes provide more food, at lower cost, with better nutrition and flavor than heavily processed potato products.
Organic, heirloom potatoes provide more food, at lower cost, with better nutrition and flavor than heavily processed potato products.

We live in a world of sound bites. The in-depth discourse that dominated pre-television days is in short supply in our impatient, hurried-up world. If you disagree with someone, that person frequently pays attention for about one minute before dismissing your argument. If you can’t score your point in that time, the conversation moves on.

Those of us who care about the food system have plenty of wrong-headed thinking to counter these days — and we need to be able to present our arguments quickly. One common and extremely frustrating misconception I encounter is that my approach to sustenance makes me a food snob. I’m viewed as some sort of elitist if I spend my food dollars on local, compost-fertilized produce and pasture-based meats. But spending $20 or $30 on a meal of low quality and lousy nutrition is somehow seen as normal.

An egregious example of this way of thinking appears in the blockbuster documentary Food, Inc. when a family of four — husband, wife and two teenagers — stops at Burger King for super-sized dinners and then laments their inability to afford fresh produce at the supermarket. Although I haven’t been to Burger King in 35 years, a quick online search reveals roughly how much that meal would have cost. With the super-duper soft drinks, fries and deluxe burgers, each of those meals would have cost at least $8, or a minimum of $32 for the family.

For that amount of money, that family could have purchased a pound of our farm’s grass-fed beef — a premium, world-class ground meat — plus buns, the fixin’s and potatoes for some french fries, and everyone could still have enjoyed a great-tasting quarter-pounder and fries. I guarantee you that a pound of our ground beef contains more good nutrition than that family’s Burger King meal. This is not to pick on Burger King nor its customers. I don’t begrudge people eating there; what I begrudge is people eating there because they think it’s cheap and convenient, and then telling me they can’t afford my product because it’s expensive and inconvenient.

  • Published on Sep 9, 2014
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