Freeing yourself from the factory
Twig blogging.
Three separate but recent events have me thinking about industrialized farming and the lengths to which you have to go to even BEGIN to free yourself from eating the products of that system.
I won’t do a full book review, but I’ve been reading Death by Supermarket by Nancy Deville. Essentially, the book compiles and summarizes a list of critiques of factory farming and processed food and its effects on our environment and health.
I won’t rehash the arguments of the book, but what’s been occurring to me lately is how pervasive our food system is and how conscious you have to be to eat outside of it. Even when we’re making a large effort, we still very much buy into it much of the time.
So, anyhow, the three recent events:
About two weeks ago, we took a long weekend, drove to Wisconsin and visited a small family farm that – amongst other things – produces pasture-raised eggs and beef and raw milk dairy. We did a tour of the farm along with a medium-sized crowd of other members of a nutrition group to which we belong.
The girls get down and dirty and cluck at the chickens at the small Wisconsin farm that we visited.
Selling raw milk is illegal in Wisconsin. In a nutshell, most milk from industrialized farms is pasteurized (heated) to kill germs. This is necessary because most industrialized milk comes from sick cows. One of the problems with pasteurizing milk is that you kill a great deal of the nutrition from it. Anyhow, enough small dairy farms who are trying to sell raw milk are getting raided by the authorities (see this link for an example) that I don’t even want to mention the farm that we visited.
In Illinois, the laws are as follows:
Raw milk sales are legal on Illinois farms with these conditions:
1. The farmer cannot advertise the sale of the raw milk.
2. I need to bring my own individual containers. If the farmer bottled the milk, he’d be operating a “milk plant” and the milk would have to be pasteurized. The farmer cannot process the raw milk. Sales of raw cream and raw butter are illegal.
I can walk into a convenience store and buy gallons of industrialized milk. It’s EASY to buy into the system. For that matter, at that same corner store, I can buy cigarettes to rot my lungs, alcohol to rot my liver, candy to rot my teeth, and processed junk food to rot my heart.
If I want to buy raw milk, I have to a) locate a farm selling raw milk even though they can’t advertise, b) travel there, wherever it may be (certainly a longer distance than the corner store) and c) bring my own containers.
Why is it made EASY for me to buy garbage and DIFFICULT for me to buy what might actually be good for my body?
Second event – yesterday, we picked up our monthly order of meat from Wallace Farms. Wallace Farms distributes local, humanely raised, organic, grass-fed beef (and other sustainable products). We order from them every month or so. When possible, they are our sole source for meat, chicken, and butter.
This pork roast from Wallace Farms turned into delicious North Carolina BBQ with slaw.
The benefit here is – amongst other things – that the meat is grass-fed. When I grill a steak, I know that that cow did not spend its life penned in a factory feedlot, eating species inappropriate food, probably harboring e. coli in its gut, being pumped full of antibiotics and artificial growth hormones, and standing in its own feces.
However, it is EASIER to walk into Jewel-Osco and pick up factory farmed beef. I don’t have to spend the extra dollars, I don’t have to remember to order the meat, I don’t have to own a separate chest freezer to house the meat, I don’t have to drive half an hour to the meat pick up.
Third event – we started putting plants in the ground of our raised bed gardens today. This morning, before working on the gardens, we went to Trader Joe’s to do the grocery shopping for the week. Each item of produce, I had to look to see: where did it come from? is it organic? Even when we stopped at the Naperville farmer’s market yesterday, more than half the items were still sprayed with pesticides and – in some cases – they weren’t even local items (tomatoes from Arkansas?).
Goose and Twig grid out one of the garden beds to break it up into square foot plots for easy organization.
Lil Pea helps Twig measure out where to hammer in the next nail on the raised beds.
If I want to be free of the industrialized food system – I have to be able to raise my own vegetables. And, if something isn’t in season and I didn’t preserve or can or freeze it, maybe I shouldn’t be eating it. My life is not going to end if I don’t get mangoes and kiwis.
We planted several varieties of tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, lettuce, herbs, squash, and cucumbers. If we could have started early enough from seed, I’d have wanted to add broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower, but I think we’re too late for that. Chickiepea has strawberry plants started – though I’m afraid they’re not doing well – and some grape plants that we have high hopes for.
I guess it just struck me that ALL of these efforts we’re going to are not just to eat better, but also to free ourselves from the factory food system.
I mean – for Heaven’s sake – read the following NPR article – apparently a California testing agency found high levels of lead in a wide variety of bottled juices.
The truth is – unless you have SEEN the farm or GROWN the vegetables and fruit, how do you know it’s safe? You cannot count on the government to provide safe food. It is very obvious that the government is interested in making it much easier to get UNSAFE food. Unsafe food is cheaper and more widely available. I am not some rabid anti-government fanatic.
However, systemically, we’re not interested in a safe food system in America. If we want our food to be safe, nutritious, and healthy, it is up to us. And it’s not just about reading labels, it’s about going the extra mile to take ownership of your food supply.
I used to laugh when Chickiepea said she wanted a goat and some chickens on our property. It was a running joke. Now, I read information that tells me that even chicken labeled free-range may never see the outdoors .
You cannot turn your brain off. Daniel Quinn, author of the novel Ishmael, talks about Mother Culture. You have this background voice telling you that it’s all okay, just go with the system, don’t be weird, don’t look behind the curtain, everyone else is okay…
Nowadays, if I don’t see it, I know I shouldn’t believe it.
I’m trying hard to live up to these standards and not be a hypocrite. We slip some days. I want Lou Malnati’s pizza some days (most days). I get thirsty on a hot day and have to (ha! have to – as if) have Jamba Juice and I tell myself it’s better than getting a Coke. Well, it IS better than getting a Coke, but the truth is that it’s STILL junk and I ought to be able to wait the ten minutes to get home and make myself a smoothie with ingredients I trust.
And that’s what this post was about – reminding yourself that the system makes it easy for you to eat garbage. It’s up to you to find ways to free yourself from the factory.
Here, here! It is very difficult…near impossible these days to get completely away from industrial Big Ag and Big Food. I am also amazed at how much knowledge in our collective network of brains that has been lost in just a few generations. I don’t know how to can my own food (but this year I am doing it for the first time). I don’t know how to identify nearly as many plants as my grandparents could. I don’t know how to grow and raise ALL of my own food, though I am attempting to get to that point. It seems as though we are on track to not even be ALLOWED to be completely self-sufficient. Where then would Big Food, Big Ag and Big Pharma get its income earmarked to arrive from me?
I ate junk food this weekend because we were on a drive into CA, and my daughter saw a sign she remembered from a few years ago when we used to allow it on occasion, and I gave in. I did it because it was the only fast food that, a couple of years ago, I still thought was even remotely safe, (though I no longer think so) and because I was nostalgic for the time when I did not know all that I now know and when I believed that those foods were okay. I did it because I miss eating without reading entire ingredient lists and the naivete I once possessed. I did it as a farewell forever to that particular food…a last fling with my old self.
I find it ironic that health food has become the backward thing to eat, and that even “health” food (labeled to be healthy and good for you!) is not healthy food. It is often not even food at all, but laboratory created foodstuff labeled as healthy for you.
I find it equally ironic that the raw, natural, homegrown, healthy food of our grandparent and great-grandparents and beyond has almost become contraband. It saddens me that we have lost this heritage that very few seem to even know is gone.
I’m a new reader and love your blog — just wanted you to know! This article re: inaccessibility of “real” foods, notably milk, makes me realize just how hard we would have to work to buck the trend and move beyond establishment food practices. Disappointing, but your detailed blog leaves room for hope ; ) Thank you!
Hi Colleen! Thanks for reading, and we are so happy you are enjoying following along on our journey as we figure out what to eat!