What is real food?
Jamie Oliver, the British chef best known for his television series “The Naked Chef,” famously criticized highly processed foods: “Real food doesn’t have ingredients. Real food is ingredients.” Put differently, food author, journalist, and activist Michael Pollan said, “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food” (Pollan, p. 148).
Practically speaking, if you want to go grocery shopping for your health (and for real food), you should spend more time along the perimeter of the store than in the aisles. “[The perimeter] is where you’ll find the freshest foods, including produce, meat, and dairy. Fresh foods are generally healthier than the processed foods you’ll find in the center aisles” (Mayo Clinic Health System, 22 March 2018).
What is good food?
Certainly, good food should be real and healthy for you. But is that enough?
Some advocates believe we should consider more parts of the food system. For example, the Michigan Good Food Charter views good food as:
- Accessible: Everyone can access and afford healthy, culturally relevant food where they live, work, learn, and play.
- Equitable: The food system promotes just and fair inclusion in a society where all people can participate, prosper, and have the power to make decisions.
- Fair: No one is exploited in the food production process, and people working in food systems have access to living wages, benefits, safe work environments, and pathways for career advancement.
- Healthy: The food system supports opportunities for everyone to be as healthy as possible, physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually.
- Diverse: The food system encourages diversity – of scale, products, means of access, production strategies, markets, ownership models, and foodways – as a strength that fosters community and system resilience as we face an unknown future.
With two more criteria, I agree with this definition. Regarding real, good food, I’d add:
- Humane: It promotes the fairest treatment of animals possible.
And while it’s mentioned in the Equitable criterion, I’d devote a separate standard of:
- Participatory: Engagement would result in the populace appreciating sustainable agriculture and its process. While their participation may range from growing herbs on a windowsill to having several raised bed gardens in their backyard to volunteering at a CSA (i.e., community-supported agriculture), this participation would begin to build community awareness in sustainable food production, storage, and use: planning, growing, tending, harvesting, distributing, preserving, preparing, and composting, and more.
As a pescatarian who eats an ample amount of dairy each day, I know I fall short on a humane diet, especially by vegan standards. But I aspire to do better. That said, I cannot imagine a life without dairy. (Although, I could certainly eat less of it.)
On the other hand, being a decent heirloom gardener who produces considerable food for my household throughout the growing season, I feel proud about my participation in sustainable agriculture. My biggest downfall in this area is that while I know various ways to freeze produce, I need to learn how to can, ferment, or dry it.
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