Energy, Climate, Environment

Unit Rationale and Background

We all know there are some basics about food, first we know we must either cook, shelve, refrigerate, or freeze the foods we eat; all of these choices are usually not difficult to make, because we make them dependent on the types of foods they are. Ice cream along with any meats not being cooked within a day of purchase are usually put into the freezer. Grains (rice, beans, cereal), and canned foods are usually stored in the cupboard. Fruits and vegetables, milk and foods that spoil, are usually put into the refrigerator until we plan to eat or cook them.

Some foods seem to be on our radar to purchase as soon as we think of food shopping or we are actually in the process of food shopping, why? When we food shop are we asking ourselves about the nutritional contents of each item we place in our shopping carts or are we making our decisions based on food gratification, based on our emotional connections to the food. We may put the food into the cart based on what someone told us it will taste like, what we remember tasting, or how we felt (emotionally and physically) while eating the food; remembering how the food felt after we digested it may help us to make different food decisions. For the most part food purchases are our responses to emotional stimulants and connections.

Food gratification is so powerful that many of our decisions about food would not be made beyond the produce, dairy, and meat sections, if food gratification were not powerful we could basically go into the grocery store and do all of our shopping along the periphery (produce and meat on the outer aisles, dairy along the back aisle). There would be almost no need to go to the aisles in the nucleus of the store…..well there are the spices.

Those aisles in the middle of the store have all the foods with the nutritional facts posted along the spines of their boxes and packages. These are the foods that sparkle on the tongue without needing to add spices, the tastes are sweet and salty all in one, and they smell divine when taken from the microwave or oven, they look really tasty in their packaging, they also do not usually require much effort beyond freezing, refrigerating, and putting onto the stove or into the oven. Interestingly, these are the same foods where a "Tums" calcium carbonate tablets come in handy for helping us to get over the queasy acidic stomach feelings. The food may have tasted wonderful while on the tongue, but upon entrance into the stomach everything changed. This example may seem exaggerated in the moment, but if you really consider food gratification the truth reveals itself. If food gratification were none existent, there would probably be fewer heart related diseases, fewer children with diabetes, and more people with the energy to keep themselves healthier through exercise. There would also be fewer people working at huge grocery store food companies ....what could be a viable alternative for employment? If employment at local farmer's markets would allow these same hard working people to earn livable wages, while providing a needed service to the community, and creating a space where the worker felt valued, could we make a change?

Farmer's markets are a great place to buy our foods for so many reasons, they create a sense of community and are usually held in neighborhoods, the food sellers are usually well informed about the nutritional facts of the foods they are selling, the packaging of the foods are considerably less environmentally damaging. It is rare if ever that a well-packaged box of cereal with a cartooned looking tiger is on display at a farmer's market; bulk granola….this is the usual cereal sold.

Creating community in food selling could make it so that people talked while shopping, in-turn making it so that people have the opportunity to know each other more intimately. Because farmer's markets are usually held in neighborhoods more people could consider walking to buy their foods, which translates into more exercise, the exercise of non-strenuous walking.

Food Sellers knowing some of the nutritional facts about foods they sell is a huge factor in food purchasing. People knowing where their food is grown, who grew it, how it grows, and what nutrients it provides to the body is unquantifiable knowledge. Of course not every buyer would want to know all of these things, but imagine how much better a choice a person could make if given the opportunity to know. As it stands, knowing about the foods we eat is not readily if at all available without extensive research.

Food packaging in such excess could be reduced considerably if farmer's markets were places where the masses bought their groceries. Our foods come into our homes so heavily wrapped, often plastic coverings in plastic coverings, inside of cardboard shiny colored boxes. These same heavily boxed and wrapped foods are put onto grocery store shelves after being removed from other boxes that were wrapped in cellophane plastic wrappers. Just how much protection (from all sorts of critters) do we need? Have we considered the protection we did not require from the pesticides, water poisoning, and plastic chemicals? If we want protection on the back end, we should want it on the front start, but it is the front start were we have little or no knowledge; farmer's markets are a way of changing this food experience.

The reason it's so convenient to create waste by, say, using disposable plastic bags, is because of decisions made at corporate and governmental levels. And those decisions made are largely determined by the larger system—industrial civilization—that corporations and governments are embedded in. Specific programs and laws that reduce waste can—and generally should—be put into effect. But these tend to have small impact in the scheme of things, partly because they focus on consumer-level issues. (1)

Where and how we buy our food is incredibly important and the factors influencing food is more than eating and the nutrition gained through eating. Food has to be analyzed as a cost, a cost beyond paper money, a cost steeped in energy, Earth's energy. Our Earth fixes energy into soil and rocks, and we have to eat the soil through the plants that grow form it or eat the animals that ate the plants that grew from it; either way, we must eat the soil to live off the energy the Earth provides. We have grown into a culture completely dependent on extracting every bit of energy from the rocks the Earth took millions of years to make. We have come to depend on so much of this energy that we are now worried about what we will do when we have depleted our sources.

We live in great abundance and the Earth has enough energy to supply us with all of our learned abundant needs and wants, for now that is. But we should consider the way we live with a tad more mindfulness, and a tad more conscious thought about what our want habits are or are not creating for our descendants. If it is in our collective consciousness to live more harmoniously with Earth, then we have to make wiser decisions about what we buy (food and more) and how it affects our food source, Earth. There must be some form of accountability that makes us take note that those that inhabit this Earth after us just may want to live the easy life too, and what challenges and opportunities will we pass on to them?

Mental voyage: Think about just a few very basic reasons we may want to make better, smarter decisions about the foods we eat? Cash register cost:

(2,3,4)

These listed prices are not paper money cheap nor are they reflective of the real paper money cost, because they do not reflect what it costs to produce a gallon of milk, a frozen box of Hot Pockets or a loaf of bread, these prices do not include the gas needed to transport them from where ever they come or the price to store them so they do not melt or spoil in route to the store where they will be stored until purchased. Yes, it is true; our government subsidizes food prices so that we have enough food to put into our garbage cans once a week. But the biggest and most concerning part of the cost that is not included is the taxing cost to the environment that cannot be measured monetarily. The Earth and the Earth's sun rotate and revolve as they do, and with each revolution and rotation energy is captured, baked, and stored for the time (millions of years) it takes to ready itself for our use.

Michael Morris is lead agriculture economist at the World Bank. The price of food in American supermarkets does not reflect the true cost of production of rice, wheat, corn, or livestock that fatten on it. "The low prices are there partly because of the first—world efficiencies, but mostly thanks to subsidies," he said. "And subsidies have a depressing effect on producers in developing countries. They sharply reduce incentives." (5)

On its face, cheap food is a godsend, especially for urbanites and the rural landless. But frequently this benefit is short-lived. Over the long term, over reliance on cheap food contributes to food dependency, complacency, and—when prices rise as they have in recent years—social unrest and devastation. (6)

When food prices are cheap people can't compete to make a living in growing food, so they don't. Even local growers who usually sell their products at farmer's markets can't compete with the low prices and sale prices offered by big corporate grocery stores like Safeway and Wal-Mart.

The New York Times reported: "During a year when the sock market lost a third of its value—its worst performance since the Great Depression—shares of McDonald's gained nearly 6 percent, making the company one of the only tow in the Dow Jones Industrial Average whose share prices rose in 2008. (7)

Energy is unlimited; this is one way many of us have learned to think about energy, and this way of thinking is one of the contributing factors for our concerns about environmental issues, global warming, greenhouse gasses, weather changes, nature's fury. It seems we want different results with horizontal changes versus creating different results because we made vertical changes. In the most simplistic way we think energy comes in the form of electricity from the electrical sockets built into our walls; energy comes in the form of fire from our stovetops; energy comes in the form of octane molecules, pumped from the hoses at our gas stations; in a nutshell we have learned to think that all we have to do is plug it in, push it in, or turn the knob, and the energy will flow…..Well this is true for most Americans, unless you are poor. Issues of poverty creates another whole set of rules and regulations.

Marketing

Energy-food-production and waste are so incredibly important and these ideas and concepts are up against very smart and well-trained artists of advertisements. McDonald's spent over $ 1.3 billion on advertising in 2002 in the United States alone. Kraft Foods (owned by Phillip Morris, also known as Altria Group) marker of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Oreos, and Kool-Aid, spent about $ 465 million in 2001. Quaker Oats spent $ 15 million pitching Cap'n Crunch. Food ads account for most of the marketing that targets kids. There are links between media and food manufacturers. Food advertising effectiveness is quite powerful and effective, and we usually want what we were told to want.