Our Common Ground- Food

 Every being must eat.

What we eat varies due to personal preferences, ethics, financial ability, for in our world, food is a commodity and no pay, no eat, is the rule; culture and political and religious beliefs also play a role when we choose our fare.

Regardless of our food choices, the one choice that we cannot and usually do not want to make is to not eat. We eat or we die,

If we eat but do not get the nutrition that our body requires from the food we choose then we become ill. If we do not eat enough, even of good food, then we weaken and become ill.

In North America, we often complain of our fast-paced lives and how busy we are; this reality is well reflected in our food lifestyle, fast food dominates the food scene. Drive-thrus and delivery, microwaves, and frozen entrées have replaced cooking; which, along with growing our own food, is a basic survival skill.

How many people would suffer greatly, if they could no longer pick up or order in their supper or no longer pop something into the microwave and wait a few minutes for dinner?

How many days of food do you have in your pantry or storage cupboards? When was the last time that you preserved any food?

How long would your food last if the transportation system broke down and the food you buy was no longer on the grocery store shelves and the pizza place was out of dough?

North Americans have let the food supply system slip out of their grasp and the very item, the second most important need that we have, after air; water being the first, is in the hands of companies that are in many cases far away.

We can live for up to three weeks without food, but only 3 days without water.

Food is trucked, flown, and put in boxcars so that it can be shipped to its destination. How fresh can it be if it has been sitting in a container for 2 weeks before it reaches your plate?

Do you know how far your last meal traveled before it became a meal?

Tomatoes, for example, are being bred for their ability to travel rather than their flavour. So we get tomatoes that can travel but are tasteless.

Even the fast-food that we so dearly love relies on transport to deliver the bulk of what it serves.

Transportation requires the use of fossil fuels to power the truck that carry much of our food and the airplanes that fly in the foods from distant ports. The price of gasoline is rising in many places as is the price of food, they are connected.

The agriculture industry is one of the biggest users of fossil fuels, not just for transportation, but for the production of pesticides and fertilizers as well.

There is an episode of West Wing where President Bartlett is speaking to his chief of staff. The topic is the news that mad cow disease has raised its head in the United States. The President says and I am slightly paraphrasing this: “Often what we take for granted is the very thing that turns around and bites us in the ass”.

The conditions that the animals that we consume are kept in are all too often appalling, to say the least; this means that before they are killed they suffer. This reality is the reason that many people become vegetarians.

There are a number of food-based movements that are working to address food quality, local economies, and the sheer pleasure of preparing and sharing a meal with friends and family. The organic movement has become big business, the push to local food has drawn national attention and the slow food movement has spread across nations.

If we have any real interest in improving our quality of life, our environment and address issues such as poverty and hunger then we only need to look inside our cupboards and refrigerators and begin to change with what we put in them on shopping day.

Food is our common ground; we all eat so let’s give our next meal some thought.

The Food Chain

If you want to understand an animal’s behaviour, the most effective way is to observe that animal in its natural habitat, its ecosystem. For example, watching what an animal or bird eats will give you important information about that animal.

The food chain, or what eats what is the living part of an ecosystem. A food chain shows how each living thing gets its food. Some animals eat plants and some animals eat other animals.

Al of this is possible because of the relationship between the Sun and the Earth. The Sun reaches the Earth and provides the energy that ecosystems need to produce the green leafy plants that form the basis of our food system. This process is called photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis converts light energy into chemical energy; the leaves of green plants receive energy from the sun and transform this into food that animals and humans, for example, can consume.

In photosynthesis, the energy absorbed by chlorophyll transforms carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates and oxygen. Chlorophyll channels the energy of sunlight into chemical energy.

All the food that people eat is dependent upon plants for their basic energy source. This is true whether people consume plants, animals or both. The animals that we eat, eat the plants or derivatives of the plants, to produce the food (meat) that we turn into steaks, chops and burgers.

Vegetarians and carnivores may argue over what makes an acceptable meal but both rely on photosynthesis for supper.

Just where do human sit on the food chain? Well, food chains are composed of producers, consumers, which are broken down into herbivores and carnivores, and decomposers. All are essential for the circle to keep on turning.

Humans fit into the consumer category and humans are both herbivores and carnivores and some will say that humans are actually omnivores, because when faced with starvation, we will eat just about anything, including each other.

I often hear people refer to humans as being at the top of the food chain, but consider this; you are out walking along a forest or mountain trail when suddenly just up ahead there is a grizzly bear looking straight at you, who is higher on the food chain at that moment/

You are swimming in the ocean and are suddenly confronted by a shark, who is lunch?

Okay, these are extremes examples and properly trained and armed the human is likely to come out on tops in either encounter.

Let’s look at a smaller example, the mosquito, they feed off of us and other warm-blooded animals, sure we can slap them and spray them and coat ourselves in lotion to keep them at bay but should one get a good drink from us and we may become ill.

Lyme disease is another threat carried by very small beings and to get even smaller still what about the colds and flues that assault humans every year? Where do they sit on the food chain?

By studying food chains and the interconnected relationships between the various members of the chain we are able to gain an understanding of how Nature works.

Everything eats and this is the common ground that connects us all together. Everything plays a role and we do not really know what role anyone element plays until after it vanishes and things begin to change.

What we do know is that creature had someone for lunch and was someone else’s lunch? Who will go uneaten and who will go unfed if that creature is removed from the ecosystem?

What effects will these changes bring? These are questions that need to be answered before we shrug off a species’ disappearance from the Great Food Chain that is Earth.