©July 2006

Flying over a city, it is hard to avoid comparing the pattern of highways, warehouses and agriculture below to the structure of a single overgrown organism.  Freeways, like enormous vessels, feed communities with a vital flow of traffic.  A nervous system is represented by a perplexing array of power lines and cables.  Neatly groomed fields and orchards provide nourishment.  And much like a single creature, our communities enlarge only through the increased complexity and reach of these organ systems.  The globalization of the food industry is an example of just such a system.  Worldwide food production and distribution has been anticipated for over a century as an answer to disparity and hunger.  However, the question has recently been raised whether the health of industrialized countries like the United States might be better served by relying more heavily upon food that is locally grown and processed.

Arguments supporting the use of local food sources are compelling.  Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse fame, has championed the sustainable food movement, pointing out that locally produced food often has both nutritional and culinary advantages.  Following the European model, locally baked goods and locally raised produce (so called “Slow Food”) can enrich food quality as well as community relations.

The recent notion of “Food Miles” has raised awareness of the ecological and social consequences of a globalized food industry.  Examining the catch on a glacier at the local supermarket recently revealed an eclectic mix of shrimp from the Phillipines, Mexico, China and the Gulf Coast.  While one could work up quite an appetite before locating locally harvested Tuolumne County shrimp for the dinner table, one might do better to settle for local trout.

In order  to produce food products on a scale that makes international shipping a profitable venture, systems must sometimes be employed that conflict with basic health interests.  Approximately 75% of the antibiotics used in this country are utilized by the food industry to prevent disease in densely populated herds and flocks.  As a result, a growing awareness of organic and natural husbandry practices has emerged.  Some of these safer organic techniques have been employed in locally raised turkey and beef.

It is also true that marketing ploys have made detecting the implications of such claims as “fat free,” “free range,” “cholesterol free,” and “low fat” perplexing.  It is best for a consumer to ask questions if such labels are unclear.

Many communities feature a Farmers Market during those months of the year that are conducive to locally grown produce.  No better example of the benefits of locally sourced food can be given than the displays at such Farmers Markets.  The allure of the produce at the market is so compelling that some regulars find morning cosmetic rituals refreshingly irrelevant prior to visiting the stands.  Often, social interactions with neighbors and friends are as inspiring as the opportunity to shop for fresh groceries.

Taking advantage of these local resources can provide benefits both for the health of individual local residents as well as for the health of the “community organism.”

©December 2004

Recently, most notably in local theaters, the obesity epidemic has been portrayed as a foot race between Desire and Rationality.   Examining human progress in these realms, or lack thereof, through the lens of natural selection may provide us with some fresh insights, and perhaps may ultimately inspire greater vigilance in our efforts to balance these volatile human capacities.  Whether we choose to do so or not is less a matter of earning praise for self discipline than a matter of social responsibility.

One line of reasoning identifies the roots of human intelligence in the interactions between a creature and its environment.  This theory has to do with avoidance of noxious environments by single celled organisms.  An ameba meanders away from an acidic environment through effects that the acid has on pseudopod movement, resulting in the surviving ameba distancing itself from the environmental threat posed by the acid.  Obviously, there is no thought involved – simply action.

More successful is the creature that is “programmed” by experiences with environmental threats to avoid similar future confrontations.  Such is the “memory” displayed by an ant colony laying a trail of pheromone to direct the workforce around obstacles in order to feast upon a forgotten cookie.  Even more elegant is the memory of the mouse who learns that it is much safer to be the second mouse to attempt to eat the cheese off of the mousetrap.

Now contemplate the human[*].  Consider that the earliest sign of mammals on this planet stems from a shrew-like creature from the Cretaceous Period over 70 million years ago.  Recognize that the search for food was as necessary and overwhelmingly important to that first shrew as it was later to Homo sapiens for survival.  Ultimately, hunter-gatherer societies devoted a great majority of their time to the development of a complex technology and took life-threatening risks to procure food stores for their communities.  To motivate such behavior in intelligent creatures we no longer refer to a bland interaction between a creature and it’s environment, but instead we subjectively recognize the immense capacity of headlong human “desire.”  The refinement and embodiment of “desire” in our hardware was emphasized and reinforced by at least 70 million years of experience with our environment, and was in large part responsible for driving our success and technological progress.

If we construct a timeline in which one millimeter represents 100 years, this 70 million years of reverence to Desire would be vaguely represented by a timeline seven football fields long.  Now consider that in that last one millimeter of time you provide society with a fast food restaurant within one mile and a means to purchase a calorie-packed meal at will.  An obesity epidemic in such a society seems inevitable.

The fact that bariatric surgery, or “stomach stapling,” has increased by nearly eight-fold in the past 15 years is testament to our vulnerability to a flirtatious food industry.  With such a stacked deck of cards imbedded in our genes, the evidence would suggest that Rationality is losing the race with Desire.

Whether we successfully harness our desires with the restraints of rational thought or not, we seem to have flung ourselves from the precipice, confident in our capacity to sustain flight on our own.  Whether we do so may have as much to do with the food industry as with our Body Mass Index.

[*] In deference to Creationists, I would suggest that evolutionary theory is not exclusive of Creationism.