The Food Crisis In Your Home

Bring the beauty of whole foods back to your plate.

Whether or not you are hungry, you may be dealing with a food crisis in your home. Go to your pantry and take inventory. How much of it is processed in some form? Are there boxed meals exclaiming “Just add water!”  or pre-made soups in cans? How much flour do you have? Now move to your fridge. Are there more  take-out boxes than left-over filled tupperware containers? Turn and face your kitchen. Find every ounce of food you have that came straight from the soil right to your home.

For even the most die-hard whole foodies, the findings can be frightening. There are plenty of reasons pre-prepared food, even if it is organic, resides so lovingly in our cupboards. We are busy people. We have jobs and careers and when we’re not concentrating on that, we have friends and families. Food is considered the means to an end, a way to keep your body moving and your stomach from growling. When fighting the daily grind, we tend to throw food by the wayside.

My friends, there is a paradox in our midst. We Americans are in a constant need of more energy. We crave caffeinated beverages and 5 hour energy drinks for the intense shot of concentration and focus it provides us in order to get through our day. A cup of joe is a more important part of the average American’s breakfast than a wheat bagel with a cup of fruit. But food – good, clean, wholesome food– is our most valuable resource when it comes to providing our bodies with the energy it takes to live our busied lives.

Yes, I can hear it all now. I don’t have time for breakfast. I don’t have time to prepare a lunch before work every day. I eat out with my friends so I can enjoy them while I enjoy my meal.

Let’s take a moment to talk about Suze Orman. Suze is the one of the finest financial gurus of our time. Perhaps you’re familiar with the segment “Can I Afford It?” on her show. One of Suze’s pet peeves, the thing she hates to hear the most is “I can’t put money into savings because I can’t afford it.” There is always money that can be put away in savings. It simply takes a tightening of the belt.

Well friends, my pet peeve is to hear people say they don’t have time to cook at home. Worse, “I don’t know how to cook.” Learn! There are so many cooking shows both on the television and online that are just waiting to be watched and learned from. We are living in the Information Age. The worst thing you can possibly admit is that you don’t know how to do something easy like cook when there are so many free educational resources available to you.

The logic behind this is, you will spend less money and eat more healthy meals when you cook them at home for yourself than when you go to a restaurant and dine out. Most importantly, you will know where your food has come from. That is if you use whole foods in your cooking. Cooking is not opening a box of pre-made meals and adding water. Cooking is taking whole ingredients, whole vegetables, putting them to heat and making them taste good. A home-cooked meal with fresh ingredients far outdoes the taste of any packaged meal… Sometimes it even outdoes your favorite restaurant’s signature dish.

Now about time. Time may be difficult to come by but so is a healthy meal. Why not combine the time you spend with your friends with the time you spend learning to cook? It’s an educational opportunity for everyone involved. The Slow Food Movement was formed with just this intention. Slow Food’s goals are to bring the cultural importance of food back to the table, to get families to enjoy home-cooked meals together again. They reject eating food as a means to an end. Instead, it is seen as a communal act between friends and families.

Some claim Slow Food’s ideals are admirable but completely unfeasible given our current global food crisis. And there is substance to this claim. Agribusiness argues that in order to provide food for the U.S. farmed under totally organic conditions, we would need 40 million more farmers which is 39 million more than we have today. Food processing and quick-growing measures are the only way to provide for all of our hungry families.

But what if we already have 39 million farmers or more? Each one of us could be growing our own food right in the presence of our backyards. Don’t have a backyard? Community gardening not only solves that problem but allows you to connect with your neighbors and others around you. Growing your own food is easy. Cooking it is too. And if everyone of us practices organic gardening, which is far cheaper and just as effective as gardening with pesticides, consider the benefits both to our environment and our health. Like Suze Orman says, there are no excuses. Your food is your most valuable resource and there is no reason to deem it less important. Solve the food crisis in your home. Throw out those processed meals and get out to that garden. Join the Slow Food Movement and experience the taste of a home-cooked meal enjoyed in the presence of your loved ones.

Photo by: Muffet (Flickr.com)

– Lisa Kilian