What an Inspiration!!

Yesterday, I actually had the opportunity to sit down and watch the recent 60 Minute interview with Alice Waters. She is an inspiration and revolutionary. What she has done in her life so far exceeds what most will do. She has even taken her concerns to the White House, proposing a White House garden where we can live in harmony with our food and Mother Nature. After watching her interview and reading Appetite for Change by Warren J. Belasco, I have decided to write an entry on how our food industry has flipped itself upside down in the last 40 years. Alice waters has summed up what I have been trying to tell people for the last year of my research on Local, Organic and Sustainable foods and what has inspired me to write this blog, get involved, and make a change. After spending a month in California on a food and wine seminar, and learning and seeing organic and sustainable farms, I have appreciated the changes Waters' is trying to convey; I even wrote a paper on why the government needs to intervene with definitions of sustainability. As Waters explains her philosophies and ideas she says "Good food should be a right, not a privilege." This takes me to the book Appetite for Change, where Warren J. Belasco researches how our food system began to change back in the late 50's and early 60's, with wide spread pesticide and insecticide use. At the time, these ideas were revolutionary. The argument was that our food was already "toxic" with disease, so why not spray "less toxic" chemicals on our plants to protect our well being and maybe even fight world hunger. Well, 40 years later, we have learned that the chemicals that we ingest in most of our food chain, especially in processed foods, are killing us. The rates of many chronic and life threatening diseases has risen exponentially, and the fact remains that world hunger still exists. My main concern is Hunger in America, though. Now organic foods are a commodity that is only accessible to the upper classes and middle class (if it actually still exists). The organic labels have been a marketing plan that only fortunate people can afford. This brings me back to Alice Waters' quote that good food should be a right and not a privilege. What boggles me is that this food, which has been eaten for hundreds of years without chemicals, has become such a marketing scheme that the lower class doesn't really have access to it. We need to do something about this: Good food is a right! Alice Waters has created programs in schools involving them in planting gardens and learning about the earth and soil and good food. I think education is essential to changing this process, especially in lower classes. We need to teach our children about how to shop and cook, so they can for their families. My goal is to go into schools and teach children about how they can be an active member in their family. I know many parents (both) work multiple jobs to just put food on the table but they need to know what they are putting in their childrens' stomachs so they can live long, healthy, and prosperous lives. We need to fix our system, that in such a short period of time have become riddled with such harmful "supposedly beneficial" measures. SO my next question is what are you doing about this? And if you can't really ask this question, would you like to do something and what? My goal is to educate, create restaurants that everyone can eat at in this nature, and bring the family back together. Also I think people need to learn to appreciate Mother Earth more than we do, which can be accomplished through education and opportunities to work with it. Lets make a difference and change, come together as one and work on this huge problem!!