Tyler's review reminded me.

I should have liked Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma better than I did. My main objection to it was simply that I am already in the choir; I was bored reading a book intended to convince others of a food policy I’ve held for many years. I’ve mentioned before that in addition to being vegetarian, when I am preparing food, I eat strictly local and seasonal produce. We are nearing the end of tomatoes; when they go, I won’t eat a fresh tomato until next July. I haven’t had a banana in years and I don’t expect to eat another until I visit the tropics. I’ve bought my vegetables from the same growers for the eight years I’ve lived in Sac. Should I have a question about how they are produced, I’ll ask the guys when I see them Sunday. I would like to have that kind of direct link and transparency with all of my food purchases.

I can afford my freako food policy because I live in one of the great breadbaskets of the world, where something ripens every month of the year. When people from cold climates hear of my food policy, their first objection is that they would get no fruit or vegetables for all winter and spring. I don’t argue with people in person, but my absolutist stance is that no one should live in a place that cannot feed its people year round. Yeah. I truly believe that. Living in a physical system imposes limits on people and severing the link between landscape, food and people allows people to deny those limits. Northern hemisphere people eat a cherry in November as if the world hasn’t turned on its axis away from the sun, in thoughtless defiance of shortening daylight and cooling nights. Eating seasonally acknowledges and submits to the real restrictions of the natural world and most people in developed countries could use a lot of practice doing that*.

The next objection that people raise is that not everyone can move to places that can feed them. My response is that there should be radically fewer people. I read the blogs that are worried about countries with declining birthrates and for the life of me, I cannot understand why that is a problem**. A society of people individually and voluntarily choosing not to replace itself, partially because their quality of life is so high? That isn’t a problem, that’s the fucking solution. I want every population in the world to move to that stage as soon as possible, skipping the consumerist phase, if possible. I would love a return to a world with a low human population, clustered in richly productive lands with adequate water supplies, marginal lands and cities and industrial agricultural and global trade ensuring a supply of cheap plastic toys abandoned. I think a population crash is inevitable and I hope we take a soft path to get there.

I don’t talk about this stuff much, largely because I don’t expect to convince people to change their eating habits. If I could though, I would wish that people knew where their food comes from. I wish they made an aware choice about where they put their food money. I wish they were willing to pay for all the costs of their food production. If Pollan encourages that with Omnivore’s Dilemma, more power to him.








*I’m sure you can find a lot of food porn rhapsodizing about the joys of eating each thing in its season. I also think like that, but I’ll leave you to find some ode to a ripe peach elsewhere. After all these years, I no longer consider my food choices constrained, but that may be comfort with my habits. Over a year, I likely eat a broader range of produce than people who don’t follow the seasons.

** Because of the loss of a culture, like in France and Italy? Those cultures developed during centuries when the population was vastly lower than it is now; above some threshold, it isn’t that you need a number of people to sustain a culture, you need isolation so they don’t go intermarrying the hot Asian boys.