What Are You? A Reflection on our food identity crisis

Before we plunge into existence, we are all individually connected to our mothers through an umbilical cord. Consciousness is not fully formed during that stage, and therefore the sense of “I” is nowhere to be found. However, the moment the thread of oneness is cut off from our nurturer, we slowly begin to live a life that is encompassed with the “I”, “me”, “my”, and “mine”. Now, what is beautiful yet perplexing about life is that it seems to be quite cyclical in nature. That being said, as 21st century beings, we are quite stuck in an industrial consciousness that has a tendency to fall on the side of linear perception. However, when you put yourself in the right mindset or environment, flashes of insight into the true nature of reality can become a common occurrence. 

A gradual awareness washed over me during my experience at Hidden Villa in Los Altos. Those two days truly brought me back full circle, into deep connection with my nurturer: Mother Nature, and took me straight to the center of my Hara (“stomach” in Japanese). In Zen Buddhism, when one engages in meditation, the focus of concentration should be on the Hara. As Zen Master Harada-roshi once declared: “You must realize that the center of the universe is the pit of your belly!” So here I was, in the middle of Silicon Valley, surrounded by techno-optimists; but in the epicenter of it all was this tiny farm. Putting aside technological solutions, the farm brought into focus, the natural, holistic, and regenerative cosmology that pervades our food. Although it was a short period, two days was just enough to go through an evolution of perception. When I first arrived at Hidden Villa, I entered with the perception of the consumer (me), and gradually shifted to the perception of the system (we), and by the end of it, I departed with the perception of the interconnected web of life (all). 

When I decided to enroll into this course, I was curious to learn more about my relationship towards food and the ways in which it affects my body and the world around me. As someone who is passionate about the mind, brain and consciousness, my life has been mostly consumed by the dimension of thought. Ironically, my mind did not give much thought to what my body does and what it ingests. That all changed when I came across the idea of “the second brain.'' We all experience a “gut feeling”, or intuition throughout our lives. Many may believe that this is just the product of our brains and neural activity. However, research has shown that when you do experience a “gut feeling”, there are tiny sparks of electricity that get activated inside your stomach. “While your first brain serves as your intellectual hardware, your second brain - the gut is your spiritual and emotional GPS. Without it, you’re lost (Junger, 2013).” Thus, this concept of the second brain ignited a curiosity in me to further research and understand how food affects the gut, similarly to how toxic thoughts can affect consciousness. So at this point, I start with the narrative of a consumer; the being that is entirely focused on the “me”. 

“You are what you eat.” We’ve all heard this phrase growing up. While the concept of “the second brain” does give authority to this notion, the phrase seems to exclude a crucial aspect of the food story: supply chain. For years now, the majority of us have been simultaneously bombarded and educated with information regarding the corn industry. In Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan takes us through a detailed journey of Zea mays. Pollan explains the meticulous biology behind corn, and ultimately says that it is not us humans who have taken over the plant, but rather it is corn that has domesticated us. Pollan expands further into the economics of corn and how it has trickled into a large arrangement of commodities: “This is a system designed to keep production high and prices low. In fact, it’s designed to drive prices ever lower, since handing farmers deficiency payments (as compared to the previous system of providing loans to support prices) encourages them to produce as much corn as they possibly can, and then to dump it all on the market no matter what the price - a practice that inevitably pushes prices even lower. And as prices decline, the only way a farmer can keep his income from declining is by producing still more corn. So the mountain grows, from 4 billion bushels in 1970 to 10 billion bushels today. Moving that mountain of cheap corn - finding the people and animals to consume it, the cars to burn it, the new products to absorb it, and the nations to import it - has become the principal task of the industrial food system, since the supply of corn vastly exceeds the demand (Pollan, 2006).”  

As Pollan elucidates on this point, it becomes clear that the monopolization of one plant species changed the connotation behind the phrase “you are what you eat.” This is especially the case when we look deeper into another aspect of the food story: livestock. Due to the fact that there is an over-supply of corn, which in turn keeps the prices low, factory farms began to feed livestock animals, mainly cows, corn instead of grass. As humans intervened into this natural process, we destroyed an extremely intricate web of biodiversity and soil enrichment. “The coevolutionary relationship between cows and grass is one of nature’s underappreciated wonders; it also happens to be the key to understanding just about everything about modern meat. For the grasses, which have evolved to withstand the grazing of ruminants, the cow maintains and expands their habitat by preventing trees and shrubs from gaining a foothold and hogging the sunlight; the animal also spreads grass seed, plants it with his hooves, and then fertilizes it with his manure. In exchange for these services the grasses offer ruminants plentiful and exclusive supply of lunch. For cows (like sheep, bison, and other ruminants) have evolved the special ability to convert grass - which single-stomached creatures like us can’t digest - into high quality protein (Pollan, 2006).” Thus, while factory farms do not allow for this natural process to unfold, sustainable farms like Hidden Villa are putting this codependent evolutionary process into practice. Understanding how each animal and plant has a role to play in the flourishing of life on earth has been an important factor in my evolution of perception. Furthermore, Pollan’s extension of “you are what you eat” to “you are what what you eat eats” is vital to providing that ultimate shift from the perception of the consumer (me) to the perception of the interconnected web of life (all). 

Although this shift in perception is necessary for all humans to go through, not many are in a position to inquire and investigate into their relationship with food; especially in regards to the food supply chain. If I hadn’t had the opportunity to embark on this two-day course, I probably wouldn’t have given the study of food ethics much thought either. However, in addition to the dialogues, talks, and tours of Hidden Villa, the physical act of farming is what truly helped me realize my ignorance about the role I play in this entire unfolding of the food story. While the mind-boggling aspect of “the second brain” and other intellectual components broadened my consciousness, the element of touch was truly the missing piece in this entire process of understanding and empathizing. 

Touching, grasping, digging, and smelling the soil was an extremely primitive experience. I could slowly feel my industrial consciousness melting away, while my cosmological being began to break out of its perceptual prison. As renowned environmental thinker and activist, Vandana Shiva said in her book talk Soil not Oil: “We are all soil; we’ve forgotten that we are part of the Earth.” Similarly to how astrophysicists keep reiterating the fact that we are all stardusts, we must also make a conscious effort to psychological and physically root ourselves into the very ground we are standing on. Hidden Villa, being a community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm is quite revolutionary in that sense. Due to the fact that it provides a vast amount of opportunity for people to reconnect with the very soil they have emerged out of, it has tremendous capacity to reshape and rebuild our perception of the food industry, and ultimately reverse the effects of the climate crisis. Furthermore, one of the lead farmers at Hidden Villa also stated that we really just need more farmers. If we had more farmers, regardless of whether in a rural or urban environment, it would dramatically aid in the solution towards climate change. 

So how do we participate in this entire process? If it is evident that we must all return to a point in history where each individual played a vital role in the food production system, how do we adapt this change into our modern landscape? In the current state of our evolutionary journey, we consume more calories than we did in the past. Yet, only a small percentage of the global population are farmers. This high demand, low supply inevitably leads to corrupt and unsustainable methods of food production, such as monoculture. Along with the lack of biodiversity leading to a decrease in crop quality, and an increase in health risks, there are also social justice issues that emerge from the monopolization of food. Thus, this is where the perception of the system (we) comes into play. 

“You are what what you eat eats” is a necessary extension to “you are what you eat” as it allows us to ponder over the interconnectedness of life. In many ways it is quite poetic, and speaks to our heart. However, if it is not already evident, life seems to embrace contradictions. So with that poetry comes a deep sense of inaction. Thus, on a systemic level it may be important to add another type of extension to the initial phrase. Paul Thompson’s From Field to Fork introduces the idea that ”you are what you buy.” Most consumers are relatively removed from the vast majority of the food supply chain, as we mostly engage with the retailer and have minimal interaction with the distributor, processor, and farmer. However, how we purchase our food has a tremendous impact on all levels of the food supply chain. Thompson dives deep into the topic of food ethics and social justice and states that: “the industrial food system relies heavily on low-wage labor [...] Bad faith negotiations, exploitation and violation of work rules, end even felony violations of basic civil and human rights are all too common in the industrial food system. No theory of justice would countenance the more extreme acts of injustice perpetrated by food industry firms, but they are able to get away with it largely because the people who are victimized by these practices often find themselves in desperate straits due to poverty, lack of education, and vulnerabilities that relate to their immigration status, work history, or family situations. From the perspective of these workers, there is no sharp distinction between being victimized by violations of the law and legally sanctioned victimization through part-time, minimum-wage employment and work rules that keep people at or near the poverty level (Thompson, 2015).” 

Building monopolies inevitably cuts off various human interactions that are crucial for building trust and empathy. Due to the fact that consumers don’t see the injustices that have contaminated the food industry, we carelessly purchase food that contains not only manufactured nutrients, but also tainted energy from all the hard but underappreciated labor that flows from the farmer all the way to the retailer. Thus, there was something so direct and natural about the act of harvesting vegetables and fruits in preparation for our own meal on the farm of Hidden Villa. One of the evenings, we all had a dialogue about our auto-gastronomy, and I talked about my journey from eating Gujarati Indian food with my hands, to eating more Westernized food with utensils. This act of introducing a set of tools into the natural process of eating is something only our species has done. So yet again, it seems to be some sort of habit that we can’t seem to shake off; this notion of removing ourselves from the direct experience of the “what is.” Our industrial consciousness can’t help but consistently add layers and layers of conditioning onto our existence. 

“I don’t even like tomatoes!” I thought to myself while harvesting. To my surprise, eating a ripe tomato straight from its tree created a splendid sensation in my mouth. The fact that I didn’t even have the option to think about or use tools to eat this tomato allowed for such a direct and raw experience, that in an instance it changed my relationship towards this plant species. We all need these kind of encounters; not only for the fact that it has the capacity to alter the trajectory of the climate crisis, but for its miraculous ability to heal our souls. So what’s the solution from the perception of the system (we)? It’s pretty simple: organic and local. Shiva provides the following principles of organic and local in her book Soil not Oil: “Food for the soil and her millions of microorganisms: Organic can be organic only if the food rights of millions of soil organisms are protected. This involves the law of return, if growing food for the soil, not just growing commodities for the market; food and nutrition for the farming family: It is criminal that our annadatas, our food providers, should themselves be hungry. That is why we ensure that every producer family that is a member of Navdanya first grows healthy and nutritious foods for the household and only trades any surplus; food for local communities: If local communities do not eat local produce, biodiversity will disappear from our farms and cultural diversity will disappear from our diets, making both the land and its people poorer; and unique products for long-distance trade and exports: Trade in food must be restricted to what cannot be grown locally; it must be restricted to foods with both a high value and small ecological footprint in terms of land and water use (Shiva, 2015).” Lastly, Shiva also emphasized the importance of building community gardens and having plenty of access to seed libraries; especially in urban environments. 

Shiva ended her talk by stating: “climate change is nothing but waste from the industrial age.” If we keep thinking in a linear manner, the industrial waste will keep persisting. However, if we return to the notion that life is cyclical, and that a beautiful web of interconnectedness (all) embraces our life, then we should begin to compost the waste of the industrial age. What may have been considered “waste” to my pregnant mother, turned into sustenance for me. Thus, it is all a matter of shifting our perception. Just like the Buddhists perceive life on a non-dualistic dimension, we must all notice and embrace the beautiful lotus flower that blossoms out of the thick, dark mud. The climate crisis is our mother’s way of telling us that we are not being properly nourished, that the fetus (which is us) is committing an act of suicide. She wants us to live; she wants us to wake up to our derangement, and realize that all we really need in order to flourish in life, is life itself. 

References

Junger, A. (2013). Clean Gut. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. 

Pollan, M. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Shiva, V. (2015). Soil not Oil. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. 

Thompson, P. (2015). From Field to Fork. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.