industrial food system

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

- Confucius

I live in Minneapolis, where eating lots of local food is not at all strange. Many of my neighbors are CSA members, and we have been known to share ingredients, recipes, and restaurant recommendations. On my block, nearly everyone seems to know how to cook kale and how to grow tomatoes. It's easy for me to think that this is normal. It isn't.

In the past two weeks, I've had the opportunity to attend two events focused on good food. Both were excellent, and left lasting impressions.

Last week I wrote a post on reasons to eat locally-sourced foods. While writing that article, it occurred to me that there are also good reasons not to eat local food. Oftentimes the “local” label is applied liberally to refer to food grown on small-scale farms who produce according to organic and sustainable principles. But really, “local” just means grown and/or processed within a certain radius of where you live.

Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals" is one of my favorite food books ever. I don't agree with everything it says, but the book is so incredibly compelling, the arguments so well reasoned, and the descriptions so very vivid, that I recommend it to anyone who is thinking seriously about our food and where it comes from.

Early in the book, Safran Foer takes great pains to describe why we should be eating dogs. He even goes so far as to provide a "classic Filipino" recipe. Here's a small excerpt:

Alex Christensen is a regular contributor to Simple, Good, and Tasty.