Quarter Year

We know very little about what’s in food and how it works in our bodies. Though we know about big things like carbs and protein and fat and fiber, there’re dozens, if not hundreds, of other ‘things’ that make up a pepper. These things – together I’m calling them ‘spirit’ – include anti-oxidants and other chemical compounds that we haven’t yet studied. We might not know their significance, but we do know we evolved eating veggies & animals complete with that spirit, and now we’re not.

Most food – even organic food – in most grocery stores comes from land where there’s only one crop in the ground. This practice is called monoculture. For example, peppers come from a farm where there are only peppers. This is cheaper because it means that the land can be worked by machine or at least in an assembly-line style. All the sun and water and fertilizer goes to the same crop, so they end up with huge, handsome peppers that are delicious to the eyes.

On the modern, industrial farm this means that the peppers keep pulling the same nutrients out of the soil. If the farm is going to keep producing peppers, the soil needs a boost from fertilizers. Large-scale farms will likely use man-made, industrial fertilizer, which supplies the nutrients that help peppers grow.

The fertilizer is good for making it grow, but is it good for making it whole? Probably not. Monoculture doesn’t exist in nature, in fact it’s unique in earth’s history to our modern age. Monoculture removes its peppers from the natural cycle of life, which is the source of spirit.

In the wild, a pepper lives among other plants, fights for resources, fights off bugs, eats decomposed vegetation that’s been pooped out by worms – the natural cycle of life. Plants evolved to live in close quarters with other plants of other species, so that’s how they’ll grow most healthily, that’s how they’ll develop spirit.

Our bodies evolved to eat foods that come from healthy soil (and water). Our bodies evolved to eat plants that live among other plants. We evolved to eat foods complete with spirit, so that’s how we’ll grow most healthily ourselves.

If farmers, to save money, make compromises on the health of their soil, we compromise our own health by buying their peppers.

This is why just eating vegetables isn’t good enough. This is why just eating organic isn’t good enough, this is why just eating local isn’t good enough. To eat healthily we need to eat from healthy land. What does this look like?

Healthy land lives. It has many different plants that take different nutrients from the soil and give other nutrients back. This is the basis of polyculture farming (or ideally, permaculture) – different plants help each other. Worms are another pillar of healthy land, turning dead vegetation into soil that’s rich in the nutrients that living plants love.

Womb-apples are prehistosexy.

So, what’s at stake? A lot of these ideas come directly from Michael Pollan. In his inspiring book, In Defense of Food, he makes a compelling argument that the diseases of civilization are the result of the modern industrial diet. These diseases include cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, varicose veins and hemorrhoids, and more. To me, the point is this: we know that we evolved eating foods that grew in a wild, natural context. Are we so arrogant that we think we can circumvent nature without compromising our health?

The best way to ensure that you’re eating from healthy soil is to eat what’s growing wild. The next best is to grow the food yourself. Failing that, go to a farmers’ market and buy from farmers who are small enough that they care about the quality of their soil and plants. If shopping at a grocery store, shop at a cooperative that has information on the farms from which it buys its produce.

Avoid buying vegetables in industrial packaging. Avoid buying veggies from grocery stores like QFC or Safeway or Costco. If you’re in a pinch for time, go home and throw together a meal from what you already have at home, I’ll bet you didn’t even need to shop that day.

Again, the closer you are to your source – the fewer hands through which your money passes to get to the soil – the more sure you can be that the health of the pepper is not being compromised. And, in turn, you’ll be healthier and spiritier.

Three times a day you medicate yourself. Be efficient and discriminating.

Be overjoyed about wild crab.