Meals From The Marketplace

“You are what you eat.”

-Victor Lindlahr

             If you think about the ultimate message of “Food, Inc.,” the Oscar nominated documentary from last year, you are likely to get extremely depressed.  Apart from condemning the current diet of most Americans, the film presents a vivid picture of how our lives are increasingly controlled by the giant corporations that produce the means by which we live our lives. 

             And, since eating is undeniably one of those means, and by most accounts we aren’t eating well these days, those corporations are responsible for some decidedly bad karma.  That view, espoused implicitly in the film by Michael Pollan (author of the best-selling books, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “The Botany of Desire” and his current release, “Food Rules”), flows from an examination of the history of American agriculture and cattle ranching in the years since World War II.

             Pollan presented his basic thesis on the positive and negative aspects of food production and consumption in a one-hour address to a sizeable gathering of law students, professors and administrators at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento last week.  It was an absolutely riveting lecture.

             Pollan begins his historical review by emphasizing the power of the sun and the process of photosynthesis that allows plants to grow while animals thrive.  Photosynthesis occurs when carbon dioxide is converted through exposure to sunlight into organic compounds, to wit: food.  It is nature’s/God’s great gift to all living things, and it requires nothing more than normal amounts of sunlight and breathing (something all living entities are wont to do on a fairly regular basis).  Properly understood, this system is a no-waste, closed-nutrient cycle, naturally produced and naturally cleansed, if you will.

             Until World War II, Pollan tells us, the United States used photosynthesis effectively to produce the foods its populace ate.  The country had a sun-powered food system, as Pollan refers to it, whereby farmers grew plants and livestock ate the grass on which they roamed.  It was, in essence, a self-sustaining system, with the sun providing the fuel to grow the flora that the fauna ate and with the excretions of the fauna providing the fertilizer to enhance the regeneration of more flora for more fauna to eat.

             Indeed, apart from unfortunate periods of severe drought conditions in the heartland of America’s agriculture, this system had been working very well for centuries before the outbreak of the Second World War. 

             But with the end of that war, Pollan notes, three problems created an impetus for increased food production beyond what the normal sun-powered cycle would allow.  Those problems were the severe hunger in many parts of the world resulting from the years of deprivation during the war, the need for utilization of the war-machinery factories that were now left without a purpose, and the sudden explosion of babies that swept the nation (resulting in the baby-boomer generation).

             The confluence of those three problems led to the sudden shift in the creation of food that has led us to where we are today.  Simply stated, we substituted oil for the sun and created processed foods in place of natural foods.  Processed foods are those that are made in factories, which is where most of the food we eat now comes from, including most of the meats we eat (all of which are fed processed grain, instead of naturally-grown grass).

             The long and the short of it is that most of our food is corn based or soybean based, and corn and soybeans, while fine in moderate quantities, are high in starch and sugar.  Thus, the diet of the average American is high in the same items, as is the diet of the animals (beef especially) that most Americans consume in large quantities. 

             The result is a three-fold problem, Pollan says.  First, we have a major health problem due to the increased incidents of type-II diabetes along with cardio-vascular disease and cancer (all resulting from bad diets).  Second, we have an increased dependence on oil, since most of our food supply is now generated in one way or another by oil, the sun and its photosynthetic power having been reduced to a much smaller (almost non-existent) role.  And third, we have created a dramatic increase in greenhouse gases which is, at least in part, responsible for the threat of planet climate change.

             So, where do the giant corporations come into the picture?  They are the drivers of the whole system.  Small farms, the lifeblood of the pre-war food chain, no longer exist as a viable force.  They have all been consumed (pun intended) by the mega-corps who own the factories that produce the food.  And those mega-corps are in business to sell the food they are producing.

             Just think about the cost of a few basic food items.  A gallon of milk now costs upwards of $5.00, while a gallon of soda might be one quarter that amount.  A head of broccoli might cost upwards of two bucks, while a big bag of corn chips might cost considerably less.  Consider the current trend in fast-food dining – the dollar meal.  What kind of nutrition is provided in the one dollar burger?  Who is producing it?  Why are they offering it for so low a price?  What else do most consumers buy when they get those burgers?

             Thinking about these questions may get you angry, especially if you realize how little control you have over what you actually have the freedom to choose to eat.  Check the labels on the stuff you buy from your local market.  Who’s really producing that food?  Where is it coming from?  (I’ll leave for another day the limited protection and oversight that the governmental agencies – the FDA and the USDA – actually exert over the making of our foodstuffs, the political clout of the mega-corps being far more powerful than any consumer groups.)

             But if you aren’t angry, at least get curious.  Start investigating the Pollan viewpoint.  See “Food, Inc.” (now available on DVD).  Read Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation.”  Open your eyes.  Find out who’s feeding you and what you’re eating.

            The McGeorge School of Law (where I am employed) held its third annual “Diversity Week” last week.  The week featured a variety of on-campus events sponsored by the various minority groups and organizations the school recognizes.  Among these are the Latino/a Law Students Association, the Black Law Students Association, the Asian-Pacific Law Students Association, the Middle-Eastern and South Asian Law Students Association, the Women’s Caucus, and the Lambda Law Students Association.

             Members of all of these organizations were present at the big Diversity Dinner that ended the week’s festivities on Saturday night.  The dinner was co-sponsored by the McGeorge Student Bar Association’s Diversity Committee, and was attended by a mix of races, ethnicities, sexual orientations and, of course, genders.  My observation was that no particular group (white Anglo-Saxon males most definitely included) appeared to be either in the majority or the minority of those in attendance.

             That fact alone seemed to mark progress of a sort, at least in my mind.  In earlier years, McGeorge might have been hard pressed even to accumulate a group of similarly diverse students and faculty, let alone have enough of each identity to make majority status impossible to define.

             But my observation was soon eclipsed by the remarks of one of the speakers at the event. 

             “Diversity,” he said, “refers to all of us.  We’re all diverse, in one way or another.”  He went on to describe the kinds of differences that mark us as individuals.  He included in his list religious and cultural differences, political identities, age, sex, and national origin, just to name the more obvious (more obvious in one sense, in another, perhaps less so).

             In the current politically-correct lexicon, “diversity” is the way minority status in America is identified, and in the nation’s recent history, minority status has not been a designation to celebrate, having been reserved for groups whose members have suffered or are suffering discrimination in some de facto, if not de jure, sense.

             Therefore, most male Caucasians, even those of Armenian heritage like me, would not normally be considered to be members of a minority group.  We aren’t sufficiently “diverse” in the commonly accepted definition of the word.  We may be too small an ethnic group to qualify for inclusion as a distinctly diverse ethnicity.  Or maybe the discrimination that many of our forebearers suffered – not just in Turkey, where over a million were massacred in the first genocide of the twentieth century, but in the early years of American migration, when parts of communities were literally designated as “Armenians only” (nearby Fresno was one such community) – was too long ago to justify continued recognition.

             And maybe it’s that latter point that suggests real progress.  For if we are all diverse, as the speaker at the dinner stated, then maybe diversity is no longer a meaningful means of discussing the inherent differences that exist amongst and between us.

             Maybe we have reached (or at least are reaching) a point in the development of our society where prejudices are a thing of the past and the need to recognize minority status no longer exists, because no one group, no individual who is identified as being a member of any group, has reason to feel less accepted than anyone else.

             Maybe that is the point the speaker was making.  We’re all diverse, because we are all uniquely different, and our differences are cause for celebration, not discrimination.

             Ah, if it could only be so.  But, of course, it’s not, because racism, sexism and homophobia are still very much a plague on our land. 

            True, we elected a black man as our president, but no sooner was he inaugurated than the attacks against him began.  To be sure, some of those attacks are purely political; many Republicans refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of any Democrat who ascends to the presidency.  But much of it has a racial undertone that is hard to ignore.

             Racial prejudice is still a fact, albeit it is less obvious and less invidious than at any time in our history.  It is now consigned to our inner cities, the remnants of the “Deep South,” and parts of rural America (where African-Americans are rarely seen, much less reside).

             Sexism is also far less prevalent (at least in most business and professional settings) than at any other time in our history.  We have had three female secretaries of State in the last 15 years and now have a female Speaker of the House.  Two (and perhaps soon to be three?) members of our Supreme Court are women.  More women are breaking through the glass ceilings in business and industry.  Many more women are attending medical and law schools, with many more female doctors and lawyers serving their communities as a result.  But we are still a largely male-dominant society, and true feminists are still regarded as radicals by many members of both genders in America today.

             But perhaps the biggest area of continuing prejudice is with respect to sexual orientation.  Gay and lesbian couples still engender scorn and are rejected by large segments of American society.  Most of this prejudice comes from those over 30.  Gen-Xers and Millennials are far less concerned about whether a person likes to sleep with people of their own gender or of the opposite gender.

             Homophobia seems to have its roots in religious doctrines and teachings, which always seem to be hung up on sex in one way or another.  It’s an odd effect of the deep faith that consumes the most religious in our society.  They may say they hate the sin but love the sinner, but most of the faith-driven homophobia is rooted in the sense that sex is “supposed to be” between a man and a woman, and that it’s just “unnatural” for two men or two women to engage in sexual intimacy.

             It’s a strange hang-up, especially when it is carried so far as to deny state-sanctioned marriage to those who want to express their love in the most traditional of ways.

             And so, we may all be diverse, but some, sadly, are still more diverse than others.