What is the Food Movement? Basically, it’s people caring about what they’re eating. Our mothers used to say “you are what you eat,” and they were probably right. If you want to be healthy and unadulterated, you should eat food that fits that description. There are a lot of good books out there about Food, and one of the best authors is Michael Pollan. He explains,
“It would be a mistake to conclude that the food movement’s agenda can be reduced to a set of laws, policies, and regulations, important as these may be. What is attracting so many people to the movement today (and young people in particular) is a much less conventional kind od politics, one that is about something more than food. The food movement is also about community, identity, pleasure, and, most notably, about carving out new social and economic space removed from the influence of big corporations on the one side and government on the other. As the Diggers used to say during their San Fancisco be-ins during thr 1960s, food can serve as an “edible dynamic”- a means to a political end that is only nominally about food itself.
“One can get a taste of this social space simply by hanging around a framers’ market, and activity that a great many people enjoy today regardless of whether they’re in the market for a bunch of carrots or a head of lettuce. Farmers’ markets are thriving, mores than five thousand strong, and there’s a a lot more going on in them that the exchange of money for food. Someone is collecting signatures on a petition. Someone else is playing music. Children are everywhere, sampling fresh produce, talking to farmers. Friends and acquaintances stop to chat. One sociologist calculated that people have ten times as many conversations at the farmers’ market than they do in the supermarket. Socially as well as sensually, the farmers’ market offers a remarkably rich and appealing environemnt. Someone buying food here may be acting not just as a consumer but also as a neighbor, a citizen, a parent, a cook. In many cities and towns, farmers’ markets have taken on (and not for the first time) the function of a lively new public square.”
