Food is Political
Being a resourceful cook is a political act in the modern era
If you’ve read me for a while — you know two things, one, I pretty much post everything for everyone to read, there’s no need to subscribe. But I’m not doing THIS because it enriches my life. If you get something out of what I share online, wherever I share it, and you have the means, it would be great if you’d subscribe as a “hey, thanks, Steff!” because I have rent to pay. But for those who can’t afford it, I get that too and I’m here for ya.
I spent my weekend cooking and feel like a rebel.
So many societal problems stem from insane processed food trends in our modern era:
excessive governmental lobbying by corporate food producers
endlessly financially handicapping independent farmers
widespread health problems
the greed in for-profit healthcare where they exploit health/food consequences
packaging and eco-waste
increasing depression, lack of focus, etc., from poor diets
The list goes on and on and on.
How many JOBS depend on food? It’s not just farmers and retailers. It’s the people who make packages, folks in fertilizing, anyone who makes growing/harvesting implements, truck drivers who deliver the products every stop of the way, and so many more.
How many JOBS depend on ensuring people continue having bad diets? From lobbyists for companies like Nestle and Lay’s to every single person working in healthcare today, there is a LOT invested in you eating unhealthy convenience foods.
Coporate financial livelihoods are contingent upon you eating badly.
Seriously.
Hell, if you wanna go down the rabbithole, you could say half the economic machine of America is contingent on people having bad work/life balance so they’re noshing on processed food or fast food and chronically unhealthy.
Combining a for-profit healthcare system with the most processed-food manufacturing culture in the world is, well, a recipe for printing money.
But every time you make your own food, you stop change that negative cycle.
It’s powerful.
Ecologically, if you can learn to use everything in your fridge, you’ll help save the planet too. Food waste is between 23 and 28 times more damaging for greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide is. (Composting may trap those gases to save the planet, but food waste still means gas and water were wasted unnecessarily.)
Waste Not, Want Not? Sure
This weekend, I worked on stopping food waste in my fridge – pickled veggies, blitzed stale bread into breadcrumbs, boned my chicken for stock-making stuff, used $3 of about-to-spoil milk to make $8-worth of delicious ricotta, and more.
In fact, I turned $7 of chicken into the foundation of a massive pot of stock and a batch of delicious curry that’d cost me $60 to buy from a restaurant. The stock’s quality is that of one you’d pay $12+ per litre for, and I have 4.5 litres of it.
It’s hard work. It is. But I’d argue the convenience foods we eat only seem convenient when they’re actively part of what’s killing us.
And frankly, as someone who’s lost 95 pounds eating whatever the hell I like, as long as I’m the one making it, I think I’m in a good position to argue that convenience foods are part of the problem for health all the way around.
Every time I buy something packaged, like Cheezies or chips, it starts a weeks-long spiral.
I never buy it just once – I buy it again by the time the week is through, because it’s literally addictive. These are foods designed to pull you in. The sugar, the processes, something about them trips everything you got that tells your body “I NEED MORE OF THAT.”
Lay’s ain’t lying. You can’t eat just one.
“Real Food” isn’t a Buzz Word
These days, I don’t get down on myself if I go, OOH, I NEED A BAG OF HAWKIN’S CHEEZIES, because I recognize that we all deserve to eat what we crave sometimes. But the problem isn’t the Cheezies – it’s the serotonin or whatever else it’s tripping in us, because it’s a floodgate-opener.
It’s not one bag I buy. It’s the first of a few, and a spiral into bad choices for a week or two until I force myself to stop again. It’s not ‘willpower,’ it’s biochemical and it’s designed to make us fail.
(So, instead, I try to be “bad” with a big bowl of buttered popcorn, because at least it’s all real food and it’s sugar-free.)
Some people don’t have those slippery-slope issues the same way someone like me might.
But I didn’t get to 350 pounds because I was bad at making choices.
I got to 350 pounds because the mass food industry is designed to make us fat and unhealthy, and some of us are genetically and behaviorally far more susceptible to all the things they do to ensure we fall for their ploys.
Because that’s what largely keeps America’s economic engine humming. For-profit healthcare, man, it makes EVERYTHING problematic.
And it occurred to me in my bone-weary exhaustion after my epic food-making weekend that it’s a lot of work to do it well. It really is.
There’s a reason everyone’s buying what they’re selling.
We just don’t have time.
What is “Convenience”?
We don’t have time for sleep, for joy, for fun, for family. We just don’t have time.
I get it!
But it also dawned on me that all the time some folks spend running and going to the gym, is time I’ll spend in the kitchen. I walk or do 20-minute Qi Gong routines – that’s my “fitness plan” that’s gotten me to losing 95 pounds.
My success all happens in the kitchen.
You might be working out and doing great that way, but the minute you rely on takeout food as part of the fitness solution, you’re likely undoing your effort.
As a cook, I’m telling you – even the best restaurants put a lot more salt, fat, and sugar into your food than you think. Even the ‘boiled’ veggies you get at your fave steak house probably had sugar in the water, as an example. And any sugar will sustain that addictive nature some food has.
The only way you stop that is by cooking yourself.
And yeah, you just don’t have time, do you?
We Pay the Price, One Way or Another
The ‘system’ is designed to leave you without time, to leave you needing “time-savers.” You get the pleasure of working 40 hours a week with 10+ hours spent in traffic, eating at least one meal away from home daily. Ain’t it GREAT?
It’s another way remote working is so ‘disruptive’ to the economy as we know it. So many large companies have their hands in so many pies – is the company really advocating for “good business culture” by insisting workers return to the office, or are they protecting other vested interests in healthcare and convenience food industry?
As a remote worker, I can put something on to braise as I work, or I can use what was once a 60-minutes-plus return commute and cook myself some proper food instead.
Fighting food waste is political. Cooking for yourself is political.
You may not have the means or time to go 100% scratch-made – even I’m buying jarred mayo again – but if you’re unable to make more money than you presently do, getting inventive can double or triple how far your food money truly goes.
If you’re unhealthy, investing time in cooking with regular short walks may turn out to be just as effective for you as going to the gym, but cooking and walking are both cheaper and more sustainable in the long run.
Food is political.
Change Your Food, Change Your Life
Sometime in the last six weeks, my changing health has hit the plateau where I really, really see it in the mirror every time I look at myself, and I’m feeling it in all kinds of positive ways.
Whatever my ‘obsession’ with food is, it’s changed my health, it’s changing my finances, and it keeps me feeling less resentful about an economy that leaves so many of us behind.
And in my own small way, I’m helping save the planet every time I pickle or re-process something that’s about to go to waste from my fridge.
Cooking everything is likely not something you can feasibly do, but doing more than you presently do is likely about learning handy tricks – like how to spend 5 minutes to make ricotta from milk that’s about to go bad, or how to do a pickle brine for everything from carrots and kohlrabi to the 22 remaining Thai chilies in that “convenient pack” they make you buy now — again, it takes 10 minutes or less to do.
This ain’t rocket science — it’s food preservation stuff people have done for hundreds of years, but which we’ve been programmed to stop doing in the last 50 years. Because the economy profits when we take shortcuts, and everything is about profit — you know it is.
For me, it kinda just started with making sourdough. Three years later, I’m pickling things, making yogurt and chilli oil and so much more.
It’s a culture you learn slowly — you don’t go 0 to 60 overnight. Start making one new thing. It’ll likely inspire you to learn and do more — but start with one small thing.
Food is political.
Eat well. Have a great day!
DID SOMEBODY SAY PIZZA?
Here’s one delicious way to stop the commercial cycle of food, especially for a whole family – learn to make delicious pizza!
Buy a digital scale so you’re much more accurate, and either use the yeasted version of this dough or acquire a sourdough starter (from a friend or for under $5 at a bakery, which you can keep alive for YEARS), and make this sourdough pizza.
I can make a restaurant-quality pizza, with 5 minutes spent on making FOUR PORTIONS of dough and 10 minutes spent on each pie, for $7 or so, and I don’t have to leave the house or pull out my credit card. But watch a Google video on how to shape pizza, because it makes a much better product if you can do it the right way.
It’s a fun, and tasty, art to learn. It takes time, but if you do it well enough like I do, you’ll never buy it again.
Great article. I agree with the 'you can't just have one bag of Lays'. Junk food is my downfall but taking off the pounds takes a lot of patience and commitment.