You are what you eat.
Food is part of every system. Humanity was created in the moment that nutrition was transformed into culture. There is nothing about this process that cannot be reversed. Food is the ultimate mutually dependent binary. Food is not food if it is not nourishing an organism. Organisms cannot survive without food. And we are organisms; there is no doubt about that. Agriculture creates society. Cities form when there are enough surplus calories being produced to support non-farmers. The arts and sciences are born when there is time available for uses other than growing or hunting.
This disconnection between the production and consumption of food has deepened over time. Now, we, the non-producers, don’t trust ourselves to grow food. We don’t trust our soil and our rain. We’ve surrendered one of our most basic needs to strangers, corporations, and advertisers. As a result, we eat food that isn’t food: prepackaged, preservative-soaked material; pre-cooked and frozen meals re-heated and served at overpriced “casual dining” restaurants. We eat vegetables, if we eat them, that have been processed beyond recognition. Most often, we can’t even see, much less touch or smell, the food we’re buying until after we’ve purchased it and removed layers of plastic and cardboard packaging. Our ignorance is so complete that we do not even know what food is supposed to taste like. We eat meat from degraded animals killed in filthy conditions, and it doesn’t even taste good.
The reconsideration of food as a liberal art must include a number of facets: SUSTAINABILITY, or the ability to continue to produce calories sufficient to support the ever-increasing number of people not involved in agriculture; THE ETHICS OF DISCONNECTION, which leads not only to inhumane conditions, but to an inability to prevent contamination in the food supply chain; and the AESTHETICS AND PLEASURES OF TASTE, simple taste. Food is intrinsically connected to nature, ecology, politics, pop culture, family values, and economics.
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