No, not conscience -- conscious. As in being deliberately aware, thoughtful, reflective and curious.
Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, Carlo Petrini, Eric Schlossberg and others have inspired us to be conscious about the food we consume. That what we buy, cook and eat really matters.
An example – you’re shopping at the supermarket, thinking about what to have for dinner. The ground beef at $1.99/lb catches your eye – it has a beautiful red bloom and appears to have been freshly ground. You consider for a few moments how much you’ll need and how you’ll prepare it. Maybe you’ll even think about upgrading to the leaner ground beef at $3.99/lb. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty seconds of deliberation, and it’s done – the meat goes into your cart, into your home, and eventually, into your body.
For most of us, that’s as far as it goes – the ground beef is trivial. It’s just one of the thousands of small, half-conscious decisions we make every day, not worthy of comment or further thought.
But, there’s a problem. Like it or not, when you buy, you unwittingly send a signal to the market that you’re ok with everything about that product at that price. This is really important, and worth repeating: when you buy, you are telling the market that you are ok with everything about it. You are agreeing that the price is a fair exchange. Sure, you’d prefer it if it were $0.10 less; you’d probably be alright with it costing $0.10 more. In the ground beef example, $1.99/lb seems fair. If for some strange reason the same ground beef were $99.99/lb, that won’t be a fair deal; you’d tell the market – no, I’m not ok with that.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the ground beef in our example (and just about every other industrially manufactured product) is the presence of negative externalities– e.g. costs that society incurs that aren’t paid for by the consumer or producer. In the $1.99/lb ground beef example, these hidden costs include: the manure waste run-off from the feedlot that pollutes rivers, streams and coastal waterways; the risks associated with increasingly resistant bacteria due to excessive use of antibiotics in cattle; the costs to public health through over-consumption of meat; the cost of green-house gasses generated by the industrial food system; the cost to the animals, who endure unfathomably miserable lives.
Problem number two with our example: the “unwittingly” part. The externalities are hidden, or are very abstract. You can’t see any of these negative impacts – no warnings printed on the package, no history lessons posted at the meat counter, no tax on the $1.99/lb price to accurately reflect its true cost.
The catch (problem number three): we ultimately pay for the externalities, one way or another, at some point. We’re paying that price today, and it keeps going up.
So that’s where conscious consumption comes in. We can be deliberately, aware, thoughtful, reflective and curious about what we eat. Being aware (and helping others be more aware) of the hidden costs of our food is a key component of changing our seriously broken industrial food system. When we’re aware/conscious of this stuff, we can send new signals to the market. For instance, we can choose to eat less of the high external cost foods (like meat), or choose to avoid it entirely (vegan). We can send a signal that we prefer foods that are lighter in impact – locally grown, humanely raised, organic. If we have the space, we can even step outside the system further by growing some of our own food. Also, if we commit the time and develop the skill, we can bypass parts of the system by preparing our own meals from scratch (e.g., whole or minimally processed ingredients), rather than relying on convenience or fast foods.
The beauty in this approach is that it’s win-win. When food requires more of our attention and resources, we’re apt to appreciate it more and consume less of it (healthier spiritually and physically). When we’re closer to food production or participate in it directly, we have more of a choice (and voice) in the impact this activity has on the environment, our health, and on the lives of the plants and animals we consume. We not only eat better, we save the world too.
Further thoughts on being a conscious food consumer:
The Slow Food Manifesto
An Eater's Manifesto
I'm fascinated with old cookbooks. Anything prior to 1970 is bound to be interesting; the older, the better. The website Feeding America is a goldmine of really old American cookbooks dating from the 18th to early 20th centuries. Each book in the collection -- there are more than 70 -- is viewable in a full-color PDF format, or text (transcribed verbatim from the originals). We can thank Michigan State University Library and the MSU Museum for partnering together to make this site possible.
