For most of my life I've never had much concern for the food I ate. There were some things I liked and some things I didn't. I always enjoyed going to good restaurants, and if I had the time to cook a good meal at home I enjoyed that too. But beyond that, I'd never given much conscious thought towards what I was eating.
A few years ago I began to revisit my connection to Judaism. As a part of this, I'd decided to start keeping kosher. I had no particular or specific motivation; instead I'd wanted to try something new and see how things developed. I'd decided to go "kosher style" -- no pork or shellfish, and no mixing of milk or cheese with meat. At first, it was quite difficult, although maybe not for the reasons I'd expected. I had no powerful cravings. Cutting out pork is certainly not so dramatic as cutting out meat entirely. But rather the difficulty was more subtle. For the first time in my life, I drew a line and said "I won't eat this." For a few months I really struggled with the concept of choosing not to eat something, especially when I'd see my old chum the bacon, egg, and cheese grilling up at my favorite bagel shop in town. I've never actually eaten any treyf after making my decision, but for many months I'd have to remind myself that I'd decided not to every single time I had lunch at the company cafeteria. Today, the mechanics of eating are much different. I just wouldn't even think of eating a cheeseburger, in the same way I just wouldn't think of eating an ant or a piece of wood. The conscious effort of choosing not to eat a particular thing is no longer necessary.
I've often examined my choice to keep "kosher" and asked myself if it's been worthwhile. The answer is unequivocally yes. In the past, I'd eat whatever I felt like eating with no real understanding of why I wanted it or if I should want it. But now, I actually need to choose what to eat, as opposed to selecting based on unconscious impulse. While I no longer need to make an effort to stay away from the chicken cordon bleu, I still have to check what's available when I'm out to make sure there's something OK for me on the menu. The end result of all this is that I spend a little time every day actually thinking about the food I'm eating. I feel a little more connected to what I'm eating, and a little more connected to Judaism.
Another question I ask myself is if I'm diminished by keeping only "partial" kashrut. I still eat at my company cafeteria, and I'll eat at any restaurant at all provided there's at least one thing on the menu that I can eat. The conclusion I invariably reach is that I've made the right decision. No one else in my family keeps kosher, and many of my friends are not even Jewish. If I were to follow stricter guidelines, I'd no longer be able to eat with my family and friends. As one of my central goals in following Judaism is to achieve a deeper connection with other people in my life and with my community, it doesn't make sense to follow such a practice if it would cut me off from people I care about and spend most of my time with.
In just the past year I've had the opportunity to look at food in an entirely new light. There have been some great books and movies that talk about the environmental and social aspects of food, and these points have resonated deeply with my personal values. My introduction to the ethics of food consumption was the movie "Supersize Me." If you haven't already seen it, the movie is a hilarious documentary about the filmmaker, who chooses to eat only fast food for a month. At the end of the month, he's gained a lot of weight, he's lethargic, and he's moody. But throughout the movie he sneaks in a lot of salient points about the fast food industry. I enjoyed the movie, and while it didn't fill me with moral outrage it did make me think a lot more about the social impact of fast food.
A few months later I read Fast Food Nation, which was not funny at all. It focused very specifically on the social aspects of fast food consumption, and on the social and environmental aspects of how their product is manufactured. Fast food is very, very bad on both sides of its life cycle -- when it's made and when it's consumed. Meatworkers at plants that supply the fast food industry work under conditions that would make Upton Sinclair sit up and take notice. Many small and mid-size farms in the mid-west have gone out of business, as they are not able to compete with the giant corporations that supply the fast food industries. Also these large corporations use enormous amounts of fertilizers and pesticides. On the other end of the fast food chain, there are additional social detriments. Fast food is not healthy, but for many residents of poorer communities it is all they can afford to eat. Healthier foods are often not sold in their neighborhoods. Some schools actually sell fast food in their cafeterias, as it is cheaper to subcontract out the cafeteria to a McDonalds or a Burger King instead of running it locally. After I read this book, I made my one and only absolute culinary decision. I decided I would never eat fast food again, nor visit a fast food restaurant, and I have stuck to that resolution. I really do feel it to be a personal moral imperative.
Lastly I read "Fat Land" which is more of a scientific (rather than social) discussion of fast food. They give a particularly interesting discussion of soda. Colas used to be made with cane sugar up until the 70s. However, at that time a Japanese company discovered how to make sugar out of corn syrup, hence the HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) you see in many processed foods. Since corn is so cheap and easy to grow in large quantities, it became significantly cheaper to make soda along with many other processed foods. The sugar is practically free. But the downside is that people eat more foods with sugar, and the HFCS sugar is not quite as healthy anyway. What I decided to take from the book was to stop drinking corn-syrup based sodas as well as diet sodas. Initially, this was almost as hard as keeping kosher. I like having a soda in the afternoon, and there are plenty of soda machines at work! But I've stuck to it, although occasionally I'll buy cane sugar-based sodas at Whole Foods.
This latest personal development leads to some additional points and questions. These ideas and values make it easy to decide what I shouldn't eat and where I shouldn't go. But what should I eat, and where should I go? That's not so easy to answer. There's relatively little information available on food sold at the supermarket, and buying at Whole Foods and nowhere else can be quite expensive. Even the food at Whole Foods I can't be entirely sure about where it is coming from and the social conditions of where it is grown, other than the Fair Trade coffees.
Fortunately there is a new, local, answer to the dilemma of what and where to eat! Food co-ops are springing up around the country, and a new Jewish food co-op is starting up right next door at the West Orange JCC. The co-op (otherwise known as a CSA - Community Sponsored Agriculture) is called Tuv Ha-Aretz. Members join the co-op at the beginning of the season, and buy a share of the farmer's crop. Then each week people pick up their shares at the MetroWest JCC on Wednesday nights over the course of the growing season. I have already decided to become a shareholder.
I find the idea of a Jewish CSA to be rewarding on many levels. It fulfills my Jewish values in several ways. I'll meet fellow community members each Wednesday night when I pick up my food. There will be a periodic newsletter containing recipes and also Jewish learning, and perhaps a few programs as well over the course of the summer. IÕll have a much closer connection to the food I'm eating -- I've already met the farmer who is growing the vegetables! IÕll be supporting my local community, as the farmerÕs only other CSA as based in the Bloomfield-Montclair area. It will address my health concerns about food. What could be more healthy than eating organic produce? Also I have never cooked day in and day out before, so it will be quite a new experience for me to make my own meals every day. Finally, and most importantly for me, the CSA addresses my moral concerns about food. I care deeply about how the food I eat affects the environment where it is grown, the cost to the environment and to society of getting that food to me, and where I buy my food from. A local organic farm is very healthy for the community in which it is situated, particularly so in New Jersey. Much fewer resources are needed to transport each week's output from Blairstown to West Orange, as opposed to produce in supermarkets that often comes from around the world. The money I'm spending on food is going to a local farmer, rather than (most likely) to a huge corporation that gives relatively little thought to the community where the food is grown and sold. By buying from a local CSA, I'm supporting a local farmer and also a local community interesting in growing and eating organic foods.
If you would like more information on the new Tuv Ha'Aretz CSA, please ask me in person or e-mail me at feinbergj@comcast.net. You can also check my web site for links that give much more specific information, at http://www.johnfeinberg.com/tuv-ha-aretz.html
Tuv Ha-Aretz
Jewish Food co-op starting at JCC MetroWest
Runs from June to November,
Wednesday night pickups