by Ryan Robert Hallett

Created on: May 25, 2010   Last Updated: May 26, 2010

Where in previous days money and variety were peoples' main concerns regarding food, now we are more inclined to think about the food itself. What is it made of? Where does it come from? Who made it? What do we need from it?

The most important thing to people about food, whether they know it or not, is that it is, in fact, food. It should be made as much as possible out of the components of life, as we are what we eat and don't want to be made of chemicals and additives and other inventions.

Food has been linked at various times and in various ways to health and illness, both physiological and mental.

The trend seems to be that people who eat traditional diets are relatively free of diet-related disease and those who eat food full of additives will spend at least a portion of their lives battling the resulting ill health. This philosophy also works for the Earth.

If what we put into the soil are the by-products of food, the cycle completes itself and we can sustain ourselves. If what we put into the ground is not food, these will increasingly be the components of our environment and consequently, us.

Claims that synthetics are necessary deny the whole of history, where naturally produced foods brought us to be the brilliant species we are today.

We don't need better food, only better food management. 6 billion people eat more or less every day, and many people have never even met a farmer. The money, attention, and manpower we give to food production should reflect its importance to our survival.

Another top priority should be that the food we use our hard-earned money to bring to the table brings the people who produced it some money of their own. They certainly work harder to make it than we do to eat it. In the same spirit, we don't want unnecessary suffering to play a part in meeting our needs, or worse, our excesses. We don't want farmers to worry about losing their livelihoods, and it would be nice if the animals could have some sort of life.

Finally, our food should not have a negative impact on the planet as a whole. It should come from as nearby as possible, in lieu of non-polluting ways to ship it from afar.

Local is always best, of course, but when out-of-season, try to buy from as close as possible. A country or two over instead of the other side of the world.

We also don't want tons of packaging. It fills our dumps, lines our streets, and floats along our waterways. Most of it doesn't break down, is largely unrecycleable, and its manufacture pollutes while it depletes our oil resources.

Some companies offer biodegradable plastics and unbleached paper, which is great, but no manufacturing is still better than good manufacturing as far as the environment is concerned.

A bit of education, a swallow or two of pride, and maybe a bit of extra money and time here and there, and we're ready to go shopping. We may even opt not to buy the things we want from time to time, in order to help out our fellow man and the planet we live on.

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