I have a food dream
I have a food dream that all people can go to a grocer, market, or restaurant and read and know truthful ingredients and labels.
Last week I was walking my dog and feeling really down about our nation’s food system. I thought about back when people smoked cigarettes without knowing the damages, when seatbelts weren’t required in cars, and other times when our collective nation just didn’t know any different. I started dreaming of a time in our (hopefully not-too-distant) future when we can look back at our broken food system and feel a similar sense of incredulous nostalgia that innocent people were victims.
As I was thinking about all of this, I remembered that Marth Luther King, Jr. Day was a around the corner. Being a poet, there are times when we write imitation poems. We’ll use another writer’s poem as a scaffold for our own. It’s a lovely writing exercise that moves you into a rhythm to say something else in an interesting way. I decided to write this essay in a similar style with homage to MLK.
I have a food dream that all people can go to a grocer, market, or restaurant and read and know truthful ingredients and labels. That food producers will transparently represent processed ingredients and their health risks. That “natural” and “natural flavors” become regulated and redefined. That poor production practices of some substances like avocado oil provide disclosure that they’re really soybean oil. That the commercially-produced honey importers honestly represents that it’s high fructose corn syrup.
That people won’t need to self-educate, randomly discover, or live in the dark about food production or labeling, and that this knowledge becomes required curricula in schools, and passed on in families.
That our country’s children won’t be innocent, unknowing victims of deceitful food labeling and addictive ingredients.
If our food systems continue to trend toward supporting illnesses, then we are a sick nation and not a great nation.
This is what I feel is necessary to say and repeat until we’re all sick of hearing it, and hopefully before more people get irrevocably sick.
Now is the time to tell friends and family, and ourselves, that what we eat and how it’s produced matters.
I feel deep disappointment with our nation’s food system and health. We cannot live a vitally rich life without access to real food and education to help people distinguish food from “edible, industrially-produced, food-like substances.”
Go back to grocers and restaurants and ask them.
Go back to your families and teach them.
Go back home and make one change. Then another.
I have a dream that this nation will enlighten and receive food choice and education to help them make informed decisions, to preserve cultural food traditions, and to be nourished instead of starved of nutrients and food education that we all have an equal right to.
I have a dream that from bustling urban centers, to quiet cul-de-sacs, to rolling country roads, we’ll all have the same opportunity to sit at a table with a meal made of real ingredients that we know, and have pride in their production.
That our food producers move toward building soil health, humane animal husbandry, and fair wages and work conditions that we can all revere and support.
I have a dream that America’s children won’t be served addictive ultra-processed foods that cause diabetes and potential mental health conditions. That they have an opportunity in this one critical time of growth for their bodies to receive nourishment free from high fructose corn syrup, industrial seed oils, and glyphosate.
I have a dream that one day our agricultural lands receive conservation, reverence, and that growing practices and livestock management work to feed the earth and people free from inhumane animal confinement.
This is my hope. This is what I bring to each day, each meal, and each friend. I have faith we can make these changes. We can go back to our ancestors’ food pride.
If our food systems continue to trend toward supporting illnesses, then we are a sick nation and not a great nation.
Let food freedom ring at grocery stores, airports, restaurants, schools. From every grill to packaged container, let food freedom ring.
When we move toward food freedom and choices start to reveal themselves, we can accelerate vital richness and well-being. One day we can join each other at a table with confidence, trust in our food, and the freedom to nourish ourselves without concern.