Food Practicum

My conclusion from the food practicum wasn’t so surprising: we are, for the most part, distanced from our food. While reading Kingsolver, one thing that always stuck out to me was from the beginning chapters. The word “dirt” implies negative connotations in our minds—“dirty,” “soiled,” and “muddy.” I personally don’t relate the food I eat to the growing process I have only learned about second-hand, and the degree of distance I feel towards my food doesn’t really change much depending on how “organic” or “natural” the food seems. The grocery stores I visited specifically for this practicum (Whole Foods and Rouses) added to the distance I feel for my food. The produce is set up in rows, clean and well-lit by warm light. I can imagine the vegetables from the frozen Amy’s Kitchen burrito in my freezer growing in soil as little as I can imagine the corn growing in massive rows of crops that becomes the high-fructose corn syrup in almost all my meals. I cannot imagine the milking process involved to produce the yogurt I bought for sixty cents at Rouses. Furthermore, I feel removed from the food at restaurants, and specifically, I feel removed from the food that I work with at my job. The food is presented to look “appetizing;” the meat is sliced or cut up and sautéed out of recognition to anything it originally resembled. The rice is cooked in large pots, each sticky grain clumped to the next. Most of the food has been frozen and reheated. Nothing visual relates the food back to its source, and enough sauce is used that nothing taste or smells the way it “naturally” would. I felt almost helpless to alleviate the distance from my food; even after reading Kingsolver, I still don’t stop and think before I eat red licorice or macaroni and cheese—things that don’t even resemble a natural food. It seems too difficult to get away from these types of food though, when the only means of acquiring meals on my budget are from grocery stores that emphasize these types of food.