The Way We Eat

I love to eat. I'm an omnivore. But lately I've been thinking about the food on our plates really comes from. Maybe it was triggered by going to Barbara Kingsolver's lecture about her year living off her Appalachian farm in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The average distance food travels to get to our plates is 1500 miles, maybe even 2000 miles by more recent calculations.

Ok, so that got me thinking about the gas guzzling caused by my appetite but truth be told, thinking about fuel is a real turnoff when I'm just plain hungry. (Maybe that's part of the problem.) But I got a real kick out of New York magazine's cover story "My Empire of Dirt" about a guy who turns his Brooklyn backyard into a farm experiment and what happens when he can't get his rabbits to multiply and his chicken eats its own eggs like a crack addict. You gotta dig it. It's a pretty hysterical article without a hint of preachy-ness.