Personal Reflection

After reading Adam Gopnik's article "The New York Local", I found myself incensed at the harsh generalizations teamed against middle class American diets and the oblivious nature by which he obviously wrote this article. Local eating is about more than convenience; it's eating with conscience. It's recognizing the unnecessary impact outsourcing food makes. I find it absolutely ridiculous how second-natured all of these foreign luxuries - chocolate, coffee, and year-round fruits and veggies - have become. How we EXPECT to see a fully stocked produce section in supermarkets year-round and Starbucks' establishments lining every other city block. With such expectations, I'm not sure we could ever fully change as a society, yet the effort from all social classes is felt; not just middle class. It's unfair to judge or criticize classes in general as everything is circumstantial. If you live near a local and organic supermarket, ofcourse that is where you shop. If there is a Safeway literally down the street and the nearest, oh, say, Whole Foods, is 40 miles away, you choose Safeway. It's convenience. Convenience is commonplace for all of America. However, I feel like there is a new wave of conscientious eating slowly ebbing into the main stream. An awareness of our environment and impact we have made with our flagrant disregard for the health of this planet.

Planetary health aside, personal health is also affected by local consumerism. Deciding between an imported kiwifruit in the winter which has traveled a considerable distance in a freezer truck, only to be unloaded and restacked at numerous docking locations throughout its life-journey to reach you - or - choosing a perfect winter squash, maybe even harvested from your own yard.

The chapter in Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, about supermarket pastoral labels (section 1 of chapter 9) bothered me tremendously.. mainly because I notice it is entirely true; quasi-romantic portrayals of average, inorganic farms operating under misleading contradictions to their very own claims. The fact that there is such a severe lack of clarity between what is or is not truly organic makes me feel that it's not necessarily better to shop for organic; therefore, my efforts to shop locally are only reinforced - organic or not (since I do not have near enough extra time to commit to decipher the accuracy of product labels).