Eating politics: some priorities.

If eating is a political act (see previous post), then it can be a virtuous act, too.   "Sustainability" being one of the New Virtues — really it’s just good stewardship under another guise.  But I’ve known lots of different people whose eating was really a form of self-expression, and I’ve gone through stages of expressing different priorities at the grocery store myself.  How many modes are there in which a person can shop and eat as a political act, or a virtuous act, or an expression of personal ideology?  Here are a few.

1. "I walk lightly on the planet!"  Measure it however you will:  carbon footprint, pounds of pesticide runoff per person, deforestation.   Whatever it is you think is bad for the planet and its denizens on a global scale, plenty of folks out there are shopping to minimize it.
2. "I refuse to put ‘chemicals’ in my body!" Often seen in company with #1 but really a different animal.  These folks are trying to keep icky stuff out of their own family’s bodies mostly.  So, for instance, they might not care nearly as much about, say, chemical fertilizers as about pesticide residues.  And they’d rather eat cane sugar than a volume of equivalent-carbon-footprint high-fructose corn syrup, just ‘cuz the HFCS is more chemickally.
3. "I look for the best deal and don’t waste my money." I have met numerous people who pride themselves on feeding their families at very low cost.  Coupon clipping, sale surfing, bulk buying, discount grocers, home canning and preserving, maybe gardening or wildgathering if your local climate allows.   Organic food, with its extra cost, is a luxury item not often chosen.  It’s not the way I would want to eat — nonfat dried milk and other cheap foodstuff has always repulsed me — but I do have a certain respect for frugality as an end, even when it comes to food.
4. "I don’t short change my family on nutrition."  The biggest priority is a wide variety of food that packs a lot of nutrients per calorie.  Much easier now that we have cross-country refrigerated trucks. 
5. "If it’s not in season, I don’t eat it."  One way to support local producers and a different way of looking at the "variety" concept.  Can be boring in Minnesota.  (Potatoes and dried fish again?)
6. "I don’t eat food with a face."  Ah, veganism!  Definitely in conflict with #4, if you ask me, at least for growing children and women of childbearing age.
7. "I don’t eat food with a frowny face."  Humane treatment of animals; I can respect that.
8. "I only eat the finest stuff."  Gourmets or gourmands… you make the choice.  The polar opposite of #3.

…. this list is getting long.  Solidarity with exploited workers… raw-foodism… the latest diet crazes probably count too.  As much as I like producing exhaustive lists that rigorously outline every class of option so that the entire field of possibilities can be analyzed, it’s getting late and I want to stop now.

Some of these priorities go together pretty smoothly.  Others are opposed to each other.  And for some it depends how it’s enacted.  For instance, it’s possible to be both very frugal and to tread lightly on the planet… if you grow a lot of your own food, eat low on the food chain, etc.  But if you’re buying supermarket veggies, the cheap choices are decidedly industrial. 

I suppose you could also add a priority along the lines of "I don’t think too hard about it, I just eat what I like when I like it."  Frankly, it’s not without appeal or plaintalking respectability.  People spend a lot of time thinking and enacting food-as-politics.  (In a way, it is a form of gluttony… what C.S. Lewis called "the gluttony of delicacy." ) If you don’t enjoy that, you can certainly pass your time thinking and enacting something more fun.