Scot “Ass Munching Ball Sucking Raw
Dawging Genocide” Rowland
Dr. Leake
May 28, 2012
Eaters
Manifesto: The Balance between Sustainability and Enjoyment
Los Angeles
superstar Kobe Bryant commutes to every home basketball game in a helicopter.
How does one justify flying over all west-LA 405 traffic every day? With a 23
million dollar a year salary and a hate for wasting time in a Ferrari most
nights a week, not to mention how traveling by helicopter “ensures that he gets
to Staples Center feeling fresh, that his body is warm and loose and fluid as
mercury when he steps onto the court” which is imperative for such a superstar
(Helin: LA Times).
As extreme of an
example as Kobe Bryant is to explain anything normal, there is a noticeable
connection with his means of life and how current society functions as a whole.
As Americans, at the top of the world (at least for now) we have begun
exercising a mentality where we keep things that are out of sight out of mind.
Where does Kobe Bryant interact with the reality that the everyday man is going
through? He doesn’t have to, because he, like a lot of Americans, reached a
point where interacting with real things going on has become an inconvenience
and the easiest way to go through life is by allowing your consciousness to fly
high above the issues that are pressing in the world below.
These problems
people ignore are widespread from environmental issues to homelessness to 405
traffic and in them being ignored life does not only remain hard for those unlucky
members of society, but will truly impact the lives of the coming generations
until America no longer has the luxury of looking down at the world flying
above, but will wish it was able to reach those overhead. Now it is unfair to
blame every individual for these issues that are pressing on the future of our
nation, the way to commence the solution for all of them begins is a fairly
simply.
First is being
informed on how to act, second is thinking of realistic ways that actions taken
will positively impact the issue, and last is actually taking action. It isn’t
about saving the entire world as one individual, but rather making your
personal world one that is having the least amount of negative influence on
issues possible. For me personally, this is how I hope that I live every part
of my life especially pertaining to food choices I make. Due to a culmination of
a recent strive for mindfulness in the industries of food; I want to apply this
action model to my choices in eating in hopes to ensure a better future for my
children by creating a personal eater’s manifesto without complete sacrifice of
my enjoyment of meal time.
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Taste
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Nutrition
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Sustainability
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A manifesto is
connotatively holistic in expressing intentions, motives, and views. They lack
in one thing however; the practices that the issuer embarks on. As politicians
demonstrate, anyone can promise anything at any time, but what the people hold
onto is actions that are memorable for what they achieved. So although I can
say my manifesto is where taste meets health meets environmental sustainable
foods, there is no evidence to back it up. To publicly declare my intentions,
motives, and views on food is weightless unless it directly reciprocates from
my personal actions toward food. Action is the expression of motive. By looking
directly at my actions I can see the reality of my food manifesto versus a
dreamy idealistic picture of right answers and simple conclusions.
The best way to
get to the core of my manifesto on food, it is advantageous to analyze a sample
of what, where, when, and how I eat on a regular basis. To illustrate this I
have taken this shortened version of my food journal and starred things that
are locally grown, farmed, or raised:
Friday –
1. Lunch: Chai
Tea, **Dungeness Crab Caeser Salad, Clam linguine with spicy oil and
lemon, Wheat Bread
2. Dinner:
T-Bone steak - Marinated in italian dressing, ate around 16 oz. of steak. BBQ'd
Asparagus
3. Making
up for lack of Breakfast: **Chocolate shake, **Dicks Deluxe hamburger (2x), **french
fries.
Saturday –
1. Breakfast
(kind of): Chipotle wrap - It had chicken in some sort of hummus like paste
with jalapenos. It tasted like a mistake.
2. Lunch:
Casa D's Burrito - White tortilla with a strip of melted colby jack cheese with
rice and brown beans. **Carne Asada in mass, spicy pico de gallo, salsa verde,
1000 island dressing, and a line of level 10 habenero salsa. Jarrito Mango Soda
3. Dinner:
Chicken Pesto Pasta - honeycomb shaped pasta, barbecued chicken cut up and
added to the whole dish. Caeser salad - simple light homemade dressing on
lettuce wedge. Garlic Bread - crispy bread baked with garlic oil on top to add
moisture.
4. Dessert:
chocolate brownie, vanilla ice cream, raspberries, and chocolate syrup on top.
Sunday –
1. Breakfast:
Asparagus Keesh, Bacon, Buttermilk Pancakes, Orange Juice with Mango,
Fresh Raspberries, Maple Syrup
Fresh Raspberries, Maple Syrup
2. Lunch:
leftovers from dinner the night before.
3. Dinner:
**Illegal Pete's Burrito - Wheat tortilla, black beans, white rice, pesto,
lettuce, tomatoes, tortilla chips.
From a food
journal, much more than from a string of claims, the current state of a manifesto
is truly illuminated. Despite this, some beliefs that I would feel necessary
including in my manifesto are hard to put evidence to based off of this
particular weekend of eating. Regardless, there are certain themes that are
apparent in my choices that work as the body of my personal manifesto. A
personal manifesto is living document. With lives constantly changing and
information coming and going, a manifesto is inevitable to change. Therefore
after analyzing the state of my current manifesto, I will look to the future
and see how knowledge I have gained changes how I act in the future.
The first thing I
want to analyze is the effects of seafood consumption on the earth because I
ate it twice in one meal. This is one piece of evidence that supports my Venn
diagram of eating because I know what seafoods are harmful and what seafood is
sustainable environmentally speaking. The ocean is the ecosystem that has the
most mystery and rich biodiversity on earth. Growing up in Seattle Washington,
I learned to love seafood. But now living in Denver Colorado I have a hard time
justifying foods from the coast because of the ways it would have had to get
here. On top of that unfortunately systems in place for the food industry are
primarily focused on being as economical and efficient as possible and don’t
keep sustainability in mind.
Unfortunately, the
seafood agricultural industry has boomed in the past 50 years and the methods
of farming different shell and normal fish has been applied to the new demand
without changing method. Consumption of shrimp for example has exploded leaving
demolition in its wake. According to the Mangrove Action Plan, “We have already lost an estimated 1 million hectares
of important coastal wetlands, including mangroves, in order to make room for
the artificial shrimp ponds of this boom and bust industry”. Mangroves play a
pivotal role in ensuring oceanic balance of underwater ecosystems as well as
ensure that the biodiversity that the ocean has to offer flourish.
For me personally, I have thoroughly enjoyed the ocean
my entire life being lucky enough to snorkel all around the western hemisphere
from Mexico’s Pacific, Hawaii, and the Florida Keys. If me not eating shrimp
ensures that my children will get to see the ocean and let it have the impact
on them as it did me, than it is something I can without a doubt
sacrifice.
Sometimes
sacrificing what is in front of you to eat is the best choice you will ever
make for your taste buds. Farmers markets nationwide display delicious foods
that are locally grown. If you compare a Safeway strawberry with one that is
locally grown it parallels Muhammad Ali knocking out Sonny Liston without
breaking a sweat. On top of that eating local is better for you According to
the Center for the New American Dream, “Local foods are safer too. Even when
it’s not organic smaller farms seem to be less aggressive large factory farms about dousing their wares with
chemicals”. Chemical in food, mainly because they are so new and constantly
changing, are unknown on effects to humans. Certain diseases like Mad
Cow disease take years before they begin to effect humans. There is no need to
live a life in fear of what you are eating, however it is nice to know that
when you eat a strawberry it isn’t chalked full of harmful chemicals just based
off of the idea of it. The best way I think of a strawberry is that it is
growing on a vine next to a river with tall grasses and a warm breeze. As you
trot along toward the river’s edge you notice a few deer drinking upstream and
the sounds of bird’s chirping fill the air.The way that I would prefer not to
think of a strawberry that I am eating is one that is in a uniformed and
regimented field being showered from above with cakey powders and slimy liquids
while the sound of airplane screams in your ear. As unrealistic as my first
thought is I still believe that eating local falls closer to that ideal and
farther away from the corporate production of produce.
The last reason
that eating local is something important is the fact that it is environmentally
stable. “all farms are also more likely to grow
more variety, says CNAD, protecting biodiversity and preserving a wider
agricultural gene pool, an important factor in long-term food security.”
This argument makes complete sense. The earth is meant to be rich in
biodiversity everywhere you look. The new trends in agriculture, with uniform
single plants across hectares are not natural for the earth to be as rich in
plants and animals as it could be. There is another argument with how local
food is sustainable however which is illogical. “Rich
Pirog of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture reports that the
average fresh food item on our dinner table travels 1,500 miles to get there.
Buying locally produced food eliminates the need for all that fuel-guzzling
transportation”. On the surface this argument makes sense, but there is
one point that I want to make to counter it to justify my own eating habits
which are not always picked from local farms.
Say a truck is
traveling from Wanatchee Washington to Salt Lake City Utah with 10,000 apples.
The distance is about 780 miles. Now, if instead of looking at that distance
and gasping knowing that most semi-trucks get around 7 miles a gallon (so
overall around 110 – 115 gallons of gas on the trip there) think about the
efficiency of food carried. 10,000 apples at over 1,500 miles is about 6.66 apples/gallon.
Now, compare that to a local farmer’s market apple travelling in a truck with
500 apples from a farm in Quincy Washington to Seattle Washington, a trip of
around 160 miles in a Ford F-250 (around 12-15 MPG). Overall the locally grown
trip has an efficiency of about 3.125 apples/mile. Based on this reasoning,
local foods are not the sustainable messiah that people so easily give it
credit for being as far as fuel consumption. Despite this local foods are still
sustainable, most specifically because of the biodiversity that is preserves
overall.
In accordance to
my diagram, eating local lands right in the middle of the three circles; it
tastes better, is better for you, and is better for the earth. The biggest
issue with eating local, with is not included in my manifesto’s diagram which
is its biggest flaw, it price. Eating local is flawless for the 1%, but
unfortunately not everyone can afford the prices that farmer’s markets demand.
Because of this,
sometimes you need to take more economical eating routes. Hence the one of the
more delicious creations to the eating world: The Burrito. Typically a burrito
consists of a tortilla, beans, rice, salsas, some kind of meat or poultry, and
magic. Taste wise, burritos are off the chart. That leaves sustainability and
nutritional value left to see where they land on my manifesto’s Venn diagram.
Sustainability
wise, as modeled in my food journal my two favorite burrito places are Casa D’s
Taqueria, which is a locally owned hole in the wall type restaurant in my home
town, and Illegal Pete’s, which is a Colorado chain only in the state. Both of
these places pride themselves on using meats from locally grown farms, and well
as sustainable rice and beans. Whether or not this is true I will never know,
but at least it allows my consciousness to rest knowing that at least these
eateries are making some sort of local effort in order to ensure sustainable
foods. Now let’s evaluate nutrition.
Burritos have a
lot of variables, so being able to figure out if they are good for you or not
is having to understand multiple health implications of a variety of foods. To
get an overall breakdown I have calculated my ideal burrito through Chipotle
Mexican restaurant’s nutrition calculator (Chipotle bears close similarity to
Illegal’s and Casa’s).
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When looking at this burrito
one thing is clear, they are filling. This is one of their main appeals, not
only do they taste delicious and are overall sustainable (depending on the
restaurant you buy them) but they are a rock of energy that keeps you going for
a long period of time which is helpful with busy lifestyles. As a 14 – 20 year
old male, one’s appetite is much larger than that of a middle aged woman (given
she isn’t pregnant) and more calories are needed to get filled up. However the
huge amounts of fats and sodium are not ideal for a healthy body in the
quantities that burritos carry and therefore eating burrito’s falls in the
overlap between taste and sustainability. The nutritional content of the
burrito parallels America’s need to over consume especially with salts and
fats. As I grow older, I will have to increasingly steer clear of burritos
because of this, which is why an eater’s manifesto has to remain a living
document.
Eventually the sizes of my
circles will have to change. When I am 50 I cannot value taste in equivalence
to nutrition because of the increasing importance on eating healthy to remain
in the best shape possible. Based off of the sample of my food journal, it
seems that I support my manifesto through my eating actions. Increasingly I am
aware of the harmful effects of eating on the earth and how to choose wisely to
ensure that generations to come will get to enjoy it in the same beauty that I
did. Secondly, taste is the easiest thing to come by, therefore most likely the
first thing to go as I get older and be less reckless with my eating and put
more emphasis on nutritional value of what I am eating.
What
will be detrimental to society is if more people take the Kobe Bryant approach
to eating. An individual their own health is one thing, but by not making
conscious food choices on how it will affect the world might take some by
surprise when they find their helicopter landing in a less beautiful world than
they took off from. Moving forward the only option to ensure not only personal
enjoyment of eating but also sustainability on earth we all must take
informative action in our personal lives to make the collective life of those
in the future be filled with the richness that the earth has to offer.
Battack,
Mary, and Alfredo Quarto, eds. "Mangrove Action Project, Information Paper
28 Oct 2009 Web. 2 Jun 2012. <http://mangroveactionproject.org/files/Shrimp%20Aquaculture%20Info%20Paper(05May08).pdf>.
Douglas,
Timothy. "How Does Eating Locally Grown Food Help the Environment?." About.Com. About.com, 02 Jun 2012. Web. 2 Jun 2012.
<http://environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/locally_grown.htm>.
Helin,
Kurt. "Kobe Bryant Takes A Helicopter to Work."NBC Southern California [LA] 16 Feb 2010, n. pag. Web. 2 Jun.
2012.
<http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/sports/Kobe-Takes-A-Helicopter-To-Work-84494657.html>.
Pirog, Rich. "How Does Eating Locally Grown Food Help
the Environment?." eopold Center for Sustainable
Agriculture. Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, 02 Jun 2012.
Web. 2 Jun 2012. <http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/>.
