The Pleasures of Eating

Wendell Berry laments over consumer ignorance of food in the essay “The Pleasures of Eating” from his book What are People for? Urban consumers have no idea where their food comes from, but are content in their lack of knowledge, as are the industries that supply them food. They might have a basic idea that food comes from a farm somewhere, but know nothing about the path the food took to get from the farm to the table. Berry argues that eating food is in fact an agricultural process, and consumers don’t often realize it. Food all starts as something living, but industrial farming has made it more difficult to see this connection. Berry says that food industries want to keep consumers in the dark, because if they knew that the meat they are eating was an animal that used to stand in its own feces, and the vegetables were covered in pesticides that polluted waterways, then they would be less likely to buy their food. Food industries have made eating more convenient for consumers. They processed, prepackaged, and disguised food to the point where it isn’t recognizable as something that was once living. People can be passive eaters because industrial food allows them to eat without cooking or preparing it, but this passive mindset must be stopped. Berry outlines steps we can take to be more active in our food choices, which include: cooking the food yourself, composting, gardening, knowing where your food came from, and buying directly from farmers.
After reading this, I wondered how feasible these steps are for someone living in an urban setting to follow. As part of my job as a spokesperson for the dairy industry, I brought a calf to a festival in a city only 15 minutes away from where I live. I was surprised at the number of people who thought it was a dog, or had never even seen a cow before. They truly had no idea where their food came from. There is little space to grow a garden in the city, and many of the low income families did not have the opportunity to go and meet their local farmers. Is there a way to get low income families to buy locally grown food when processed food is so much cheaper? I also wonder if people are willing to give up eating bananas, pineapples, and mangoes because they certainly would not grow in upstate New York. Would consumers also be willing to go without fresh fruits or vegetables in the winter as well? I take pleasure in knowing where my food came from but how do we make it easier for consumers to make better food decisions?