If you haven't already picked up on this, I'm reading through an essay collection by Barbara Kingsolver right now in all my free time (read with sarcasm). Anyway, I'm loving her, and I'm sure you do, too. So, here's a good excerpt for today:
"Of all the ways we consume, food is a sensible one to attend to. Eating is a genuine need, continuous from our first day to our last, amounting over time to our most significant statement of what we are made of and what we have chosen to make of our connection to home ground. We can hardly choose not to eat, but we have to choose how and choices can have astounding consequences. Consider this: The average food item set before a U.S. consumer traveled 1,300 miles to get there. If Mr. Average eats ten or so items a day (and most of us eat more), in a year's time his food will have conquered 5 million miles by land, sea, and air. Picture a truck loaded with apples and oranges and iceberg lettuce rumbling to the moon and back ten times a year, all just for you. Multiply that by the number of Americans who like to eat -- picture that flotilla of 285 million trucks on their way to the moon -- and tell me you don't think it's time to revise this scenario."
No comments:
Post a Comment