Get to Know Your Food

This week's reading titled, The Pleasures of Eating, by Wendell Berry, is about the major problem with modern day consumers: a lack of knowledge regarding the food they eat. He describes today's industrial eater as, "one who does not know that eating is an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines the connections between eating and the land, and who is therefore necessarily passive and uncritical - in short, a victim" (146). Those who have industrialized the industry do not want the consumer to know the process of how the food gets to their plate. The overriding concerns of this industrialized food industry are not the quality of the food and health of the customer, but are volume and price. In order to overcome the flaws of the modern food industry and be healthier individuals, consumers must make an effort to know their food. Berry believes eating responsibly encompasses seven steps, all of which bring consumers closer to their food. He emphasizes buying food that is produced locally, and even growing your own food, but if not learning as much as possible about industrial techniques. Going back to the title of the essay, Berry intends for the reader to understand how to make eating pleasurable. He believes this can be done through forging a relationship with the food one eats; growing it, knowing it throughout its whole life, and eventually consuming it. "Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world" (152).

I have seen a constant trend in writing about the modern day food industry and the role of the consumer. All of us, the people who eat the food, at the end of the chain must research and get more involved with the food we eat. To be ignorant, and eat mindlessly, is damaging to all involved except the industrialists. Getting as close to the producer of your food as possible, makes eating much safer. If you can even grow it yourself, eating becomes rewarding. If every consumer makes a stronger effort to eat less food that is produced industrially and get "closer" to the food, the pleasure of eating will become more widespread.

What are some ways in which the average consumer can gather more information about the food they eat?
Can raising the food we eat create moral dilemmas that prevent us from truly enjoying the food to the extent that we should?