Animal, Vegetable, Junk / Mark Bittman

 

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was a difficult read for a woman who grew up on a farm. Mind you, it was a small farm and we did mixed farming, a rarity these days. I learned to milk cows and to gather eggs. God help you if you said you were bored in the summertime! Mom would send us directly to the garden to pick peas, beans or berries. If none of those were ready, there was always weeding, a thankless task, as boring and repetitive as housework. The big days, when one of Mom's sisters would generally come over, were the canning days (pickles, relish, fruit) or chicken “processing" which involved decapitation (scary when you’re a kid), feather plucking (stinky), and evisceration (most fascinating, but I couldn't be convinced to do it). We ate venison until Mom announced that we were well enough off to eat our own beef & pork. We probably had a very healthy diet.

But as time went on, we were pushed more and more towards the “efficient “ factory farm model. I once asked my dad if he was disappointed that he didn't have a son to take over the farm. He replied that he was relieved that none of us felt compelled to carry on.

The adoption of agriculture has certainly led us directions that weren't readily apparent at the outset. Truly, it seemed like a good idea at the time. There are a lot of these books that examine the food industry and its many flaws. What it comes down to is big food businesses being greedy and exploitative. They don't want to pay workers, hence migrant labourers from Latin America. Our immigrants, who desperately need jobs, end up working horrible jobs in meat packing plants. Covid revealed how little their employers valued them and their health. We produce enough food worldwide to feed all seven billion of us, but distribution is uneven and governed by uncontrolled capitalism. What ever happened to earning enough to be comfortable and to helping our neighbours who have less? When did everyone decide that we should all aspire to be billionaires and grind others into the dust to achieve it?

This is a bit of a depressing read—agriculture, which should just be pure food production, turns out to have driven our history. Colonialism, slavery, monoculture crops, pesticides, genetically modified seed, ultra-processed foods, global warming, ongoing inequality, and forced migration. It's enough to make me long for a little piece of land with a well and a garden plot.

My to-do list:
- Support legislation to make life better for migrant labourers and low paid people in the food industry (remember that grocery store staff were called heroes during the pandemic and the grocery stores withdrew their higher pay at the first opportunity, despite making record profits?)
- Here in Canada, we need to provide a fast track to citizenship to Temporary Foreign Workers and welcome families of these folks.
- Community gardens! Enable city dwellers to grow some of their own food.
- Weed ultra-processed foods from my diet. I know this is difficult. I’ve developed a taste for some of it (Hawkins Cheezies, I'm looking at you).
- Support marketing restrictions, especially those targeting advertising junk to children.
- Support local farmers and growers. Shop at farmers markets. Buy local produce at the grocery store. Eat seasonally. (Half the reason I love cherries so much is that they are only available for a short time each year).
- Reduce meat consumption. Yes, it's delicious, but I can enjoy it sparingly.
- Support more palatable food in hospitals and elder housing facilities. Better food helps people heal faster and our elders deserve to look forward to their meals.

If Covid-19 has taught us nothing else, we now know the limitations of our food supply system. I've never seen more empty shelves in the stores. Various things that I couldn't find: garlic, baking powder, rice, and eggs. I know I'm going to be checking labels for things like country of origin now. Covid revealed that Canada had no vaccine production facilities and weren't making our own PPE. Yes, under normal circumstances we can import them cheaper, but we have to admit that some things are just worth spending more on. Health and food are among them.


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