Food Bites

My father taught me that if I bought a Rolex for $15 from a street vendor who swore it was real and later discovered that it was a fake, I was a fool. But if I bought a Rolex for $15 from a street vendor who swore it was real, and later discovered it was, I was a thief.

Nothing of great value comes cheap. Either I should have known it was fake or I should have known it was hot. Either way, I should not have bought it.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Especially when it comes to food. Look at America's food prices compared to those around the world. How we can continue to believe that cheap meat, cheap sodas, cheap junk food is (a) really food (the healthy, wholesome, natural stuff we are born to eat) and (b) cheap. Either it is faked or it is under-priced. In our case, it is both.

Someone, somehow, somewhere is paying for it - and that someone, in a conspiracy of ignorance, is us. In taxes, health and environmental degradation.

U.S. farm subsidies run about $15 billion, corn being one of the government's biggest commodity subsidies. That is why corn is so much cheaper than, say, carrots or broccoli or peppers.

And if you have seen the documentary Food, Inc., or King Corn, or otherwise noticed the ubiquitous nature of corn in products from asbestos to yogurt, you begin to understand the power and impact, both good and bad, of subsidies.

The good news is that we are mining the corn plant - the most heavily subsidize American food commodity - for all it is worth. The bad news is that it is cheaper to buy a box of 10 Twinkies (made with "Corn Syrup, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Water, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable and/or Animal Shortening (Soybean, Cottonseed and/or Canola Oil, Beef Fat)" than two organic red peppers.

Yes, we can blame the Big Guys and the government in league with them, but we can only blame them so much. For business only works if the consumer buys.

75% or more of America's economy runs on personal consumer purchases. Which means that every purchase we make - or refuse to make - is a vote.

Those of us who can afford to color our hair, get our nails done regularly, eat out several times a week, own more than four pairs of shoes, have two or more winter coats, buy a data plan for our phones and a computer every other year can afford to buy organic, fair-trade, environmentally-friendly, animal-friendly, worker-friendly, restorative food.

We, the consumer, especially the consumer with a modicum of discretionary spending, must admit to our share in supporting environmentally degrading practices in our food system. While we need to continue to lobby for labeling of foods so we know where what-we-eat comes from, what's in it and how it might affect us; while we need to probe into and limit the monopolistic practices of big businesses like Monsanto and Perdue, we also must look to our role in the supporting this bad system.

It is our choices that keep them alive. Those of us with enough discretionary funds to choose to buy this and not that, to support this company and not that company, must do so. Every purchase is a statement; every bite is a vote.

And those of us who can afford it must put our money where our mouth is - or our mouth where our money is. Whichever: we need to buy food that is healthy for us, healthy for the farmers, healthy for the animals, and healthy for the planet. We need to use the power of the purse to support a wholesale change in a broken food system. If we won't, who will?