One Foodie’s Experience

E.D. linked to a take down of “agri-intellectuals” by American farmer Blake Hurst at The American the other day wherein Hurst takes folks like Michael Pollan and Matthew Scully to task for their general inexperience with the practice of farming. To be certain, Hurst speaks with the authority of someone who has significant experience engaging with  trade in question and, as E.D. noted, makes a number of revealing claims about how we imagine farming to take place and how it in fact takes place, as well as busting through some of what he considers to be the most unhelpful myths of the anti-industrial farming sentiment that is increasing in prominence each year.

The article is worth reading, but it fundamentally fails to address what I consider to be the most persuasive elements of the agri-intellectual or conscientious foodie movements: first-hand experience.

Now, let me clear, I happen to be a bit of a foodie. I started cooking for myself at around the age of eleven after my father passed away and my mother had to go back to work full-time to support herself, my brother, and I. Both my brother and I wound up cooking for living as a result of our early years in the kitchen, though my experience was primarily a way of getting some initial work experience and then helping to support myself while in college and university (my brother, on the other hand, is now a sous chef and has backed his career up with formal education).

Throughout college and university, I took up residence with another foodie who wound up becoming my cooking (amongst other things) guru and we made conscious decisions to eat well throughout our four years of cohabitation. Friday and Saturday nights would often consist of organic veggie burgers with healthful accompaniments, fresh salads, and beer we’d brewed ourselves, or roasted root vegetables and oven baked chickens or turkeys basted in a variety of marinades, brown rice, and, of course, the beer. That foodie friend taught me the valuable lesson that gorging on healthful foods can both taste good and be relatively guilt free.

As someone who has always been a fan of food, this realization was golden (and still is).

But it wasn’t until about eight months ago that I really took control of my diet and came to a first hand understanding through experience about how vastly the food you place in your system effects your well-being and quality of life. Which is funny, because you’d think that after all that time spent in the kitchen this would be an elementary concept that I would have grasped long ago. And to some extent it was, but characterizing it as conceptual is key here and explains my late blossoming, as it were.

Back in December of 2008, my future wife decided to go see an herbalist who had been recommended to her and when she came home from that appointment she said that the herbalist had recommended she try something called The Wildrose Cleanse and would I be willing to do that with her? I’d considered doing a couple of cleanses in the past but had never gotten around to them, so I agreed. The cleanse is designed to clear your system of Candida, of which the average North American diet provides an abundance. To do so, the cleanse provides you with a host of all-natural herbal supplements and requires that you follow a restricted diet. So my wife and I cut out refined sugar, vinegar, dairy, and refined flour from our diet for a ten day period.

Let me be honest, the first few days were hell. They weren’t hell because of the restricted diet to which we were unaccustomed (that would come later), but rather because of all the physical experience of all the crap that my system was in the process of trying to rid itself.

But at about the five day mark, things started to look up. And by the end of the cleanse I felt like a completely different person. After a short break for Christmas, where amidst almost every temptation imaginable we still managed to hold back, I went to go see the herbalist myself and she noted that my response to the cleanse had been so positive and significant that, if I were game, she suggested I stay on the diet for the next month to see what happened.

That was six months ago and I wouldn’t go back to the way I was living and to what I was consuming if you paid me. My wife and I continue to largely avoid refined sugar, vinegar, dairy and refined flour, but we have also given up shopping at places like Safeway in favour of our local organic and locally sourced grocery store and farmer’s market. The reason is basically the same: doing so has made us feel better, both physically and emotionally.

I am thankful every day that I wake up now about the difference in how I feel as compared to just a year ago. I am more alert, more energetic, more lucid, and more friendly. I have overcome the plateau of weight loss that I had previously hit without fundamentally changing my workout regimen and started losing weight again without even trying. Many of the minor but ubiquitous medical annoyances that had previously plagued me — gastro-intestinal issues, chronic colds, headaches, phleminess, constipation — have all evaporated.

In addition to all those changes, I find myself in a better place as a friend, as a husband/partner, as a brother, a son, and a member of my community. Where in the past I would have avoided conversation with someone I didn’t know because the effort of the interaction seemed too much, now I engage in hearty and heart felt conversations with people that leave me feeling richer and happier for the effort. I’m more present to the movements of my relationship and find the intimacy between my wife and I (note: not code for sex, here) vastly improved. I am more inclined to become involved in a variety of avenues of community engagement, from volunteering to formal political engagement.

So, E.D. is quite right when he notes both that the organic food advocated by foodies/agri-intellectuals tastes better and that it is more expensive. But by my lights, that is money well spent because the improvement in my quality of life that eating this food helps to cultivate is, like the Mastercard commercial says, priceless.

So is the general attentiveness I now display about how the food I put in my mouth affects me and my well-being. I find myself much more picky about what I purchase, even when I browsing the organic grocery store, paying attention to all of the ingredients in the products on which I spend money and aware of which of them I want in my system and which of them I don’t. In a lot of ways, I have become convinced that diet is destiny and that if we want to take control of our lives in the ways we talk about at this site and others like it, then one of the first steps is take control of our diet and food consumption.

As that college foodie friend of mine, now my best friend, often says, “How can we expect to be vital citizens and people when we’re busy poisoning our systems with our base ignorance about food?” He’s said that to me a number of times, it wasn’t until I experienced what he was talking about first hand that I really understood it.

So this is the most powerful element of foodiness that I’ve found and it drives my motivation for living the way that I do and taking the time to listen to people like Michael Pollan. For me, it’s not primarily about the environment, local farmers, or the animals themselves, though I’m glad when the benefits accrue to them as well. Primarily my hyper-foodiness is about me and my ability to live in a way that feels like the best I can hope to achieve.

Image via Flickrer afroboof

Tagged as: agri-intellectuals, Blake Hurst, diet, foodies, industrial farming, organic food, quality of life, well being, Wildrose Cleanse