Are You Sure That’s 100% Tuna You’re Eating?
Why we can’t trust our food system until we reduce our food distance
My grandmother lived in rural Alabama and had a much closer connection to what she ate than most of us will ever have. She raised, killed, plucked, prepped, and cooked chickens. She milked cows, birthed calves, and grew fruits and vegetables on her farm.
Although Grandma never had a harsh word to say about anyone, she could wring the neck of a chicken with terrifying suddenness. She was intimately familiar with the food she and her family consumed. However, as future generations progressed, the physical and emotional distance between the food people ate and how it got from the farm to the table grew.
Today we live in a world where many kids don’t know that milk, cheese, and hamburgers come from cows. Or that pickles started as cucumbers, that raisins are grapes, and ketchup is from tomatoes. This lack of food knowledge is understandable for kids but not adults.
Every once in and a while, a story catches people’s attention and encourages some of them to ask more questions about their food, which I think is healthy for us to do. Such is the case with the latest tuna sandwich mystery.
