If you think there’s no action around the food movement taking place in a neighborhood near you, think again. The stories of Community Voices from grassroots.whyhunger.org share stories from communities in areas ranging from New Mexico to Minnesota.

As a Foodworks Fellow studying in Middlebury, Vermont, I see this state’s recognition as a leader in local food systems as being well deserved, however, the kind of mindset that promotes one region as being “the best” may minimize the push for collaboration and growth, activities which might otherwise move the food movement further.

The Strolling of the Heifers’ 2015 Locavore Index rates Vermont as number one in its commitment to locally sourced food, demonstrating the way in which Vermont’s success in fostering its local food system is quantitative and widely recognized. However, is it possible that this status has gone to our heads in a way that has stunted the future growth of sustainable food?

The ability to bring local, fresh produce to people is not limited to the borders of Vermont; ideas from across the country should be shared if quality food is to become a reality for all. Bed-Stuy, New York is evolving a food scene that tempts corporate workers out of their offices and into food shelter shelves and chicken coops (grassroots.whyhunger.org); young adults of West Oakland, California are taking their health and the health of their families into their own hands by engaging in work to bring access to fruits and vegetables to their community (grassroots.whyhunger.org). So let FEED Vermont exchange ideas with the schools in Seattle that work with FareStart to bring sweet potato quesadillas and fresh cut cantaloupe to their students, and have farmers across the country learn about the humane, mobile slaughterhouse that travels through New Mexico to offer a new processing method to farmers raising sustainable meat.

In our future work with the food system, the key to success will come from shared efforts and ideas that help strengthen the work of others, even those thousands of miles away. Let us not limit ourselves with titles of “leader” and rankings of progress, but instead use these successes in a way that pushes us to think differently and engage with those outside our normal range of collaboration.

The stream of light amber re-coats a sticky spout with a new layer of syrup. Upon contact with the surface of hot pancake, the liquid pools momentarily before splitting its path to cascade over the layered edges of the stack in a synthetic drizzle. An ultimate “imitation food” (Pollan 153), this combination of caramel coloring and corn syrup makes a sweet mixture not as sincere, but equally as mysterious as maple syrup itself.

The “mystical acts” that have come to represent the making of food products illustrate the increasing amount of unfamiliarity we have with the processes that form our food (Trubek 217). If the steps involved in making wine or maple syrup seem like wizardry to the average consumer, how do we begin to comprehend the processes that go into making a diet Coke or Mrs. Butterworth’s sugar free syrup? These food-like products take us even further from an understanding of food and immerse us in a foodscape dictated by health claims and nutrition labels. The compartmentalization that separates processes from results is a key factor in solidifying the “foodviews” held by consumers, so that an individual’s connection to the place or people involved in a food’s journey is eliminated from the process of food selection (Trubek 222).

In contrast to the French, who are very aware of how and where their food is produced (Trubek 84), it seems that Americans can drown their waffles in sodium hexametaphosphate and high fructose corn syrup while still viewing their breakfast condiment as a relative of maple syrup. The secrecy that is so prevalent in the food systems of the United States is not tolerated in France, as demonstrated by the events that made up the Mondavi case (Trubek 84). Unlike the French, American consumers don’t know where their food comes from, which makes them a lot less likely to fight for the protection of a given place or the use of a certain production method, since they have no connection to these things in the first place.

How can we begin to care enough about the land our food is made on to be willing to fight to protect it? Without a culture that ties us to traditional methods of production and a respect for land, it becomes exponentially more difficult to promote sustainable practices that honor a food’s natural form and the longevity of the land on which it’s produced. Moving forward, we must realize the value in knowing how a food is made, and use that knowledge as leverage to begin questioning the products that end up on our plate.

The twenty-first century tomato: consistently firm, consistently flavorless, consistently consumed. It’s the go-to food for that pop of red you need in your salad or the slice of color to brighten up your burger, but at what cost do we continue to stock this “vegetable” on our grocery store shelves year-round? Maybe it’s the status that comes with purchasing a summer product in the middle of winter, or maybe it’s the combination of habit and ignorance that work to eternalize the place of the tomato on our grocery lists. Whatever it is that drives us to purchase the industrially produced versions of this crop, it is not flavor; it is not pleasure.

The workings of our current food system illustrate the ways in which we value access to and availability of food more than the wellbeing of the individuals who produce it.¹ This attitude towards food relates to the “lines of logic that fetishize the commoditization of food for profit.” (Agyeman, McEntee 211). In a world where economic gains (such as GDP and GNP) are used to measure success and prosperity, we have failed to see just how poor we really are when it comes to our food and its production. In viewing food solely as a commodity (Agyeman, McEntree 211), we remain blind to the social and cultural aspects that make up so much of our food system. This is especially problematic given that, “for most people, the identity of food is masked until it appears in a highly managed form on the supermarket shelf” (Agyeman, McEntee 215). With this view of food, it is not only the ingredients and processing that remain a mystery, but also the labor that is involved in production.

According to the Food Chain Workers Alliance, zero percent of agricultural workers receive a living wage (Ammons 10), and Lappé lists the average life expectancy of a farmer in the United States to be forty-nine years (1). What if the flamboyance of labels advertising low fat, natural, and organic products was also used to identify labor? Just as the packaging of Pop Tarts advertises the stale pastries as a “good source of fiber,” and Lay’s potato chips are “Light,” our food could also have bright colored banners to identify the amount of labor that was involved in its production. For example, the sticker on a Florida tomato would read, “harvested with 100% slave labor.” Similar to the way in which rBGH in milk was brought to consumers’ attention through the labeling of dairy products, we must bring attention to the people who hand pick our fruits and vegetables, so that our eating and food purchasing habits can be shaken by the unappetizing reality of our food system.

¹ Read Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland for further details and exemplification of the slavery present in the 21^st century food system.

The standard grocery store offers a handful of tomato varieties (cherry, “vine-ripened”) compared to a seriously long list of variations on the Oreo cookie (fudge crèmes mint, double stuff, reduced fat, mega stuff golden, chocolate stuff, just to name a few). And so the setup of the food industry provides an extensive selection of packaged goods that cater to our salt, sugar, and fat cravings, but that limit our exploration of fruits, vegetables, and other less processed foods. It is this kind of shopping setting that Pollan describes as providing an “extraordinary abundance” of food choices, the quantity of which is a key factor in complicating the American consumer’s grocery list (5). However, it is not necessarily the abundance of options that is the problem. Rather, the types of items we are given to choose from may be the root cause of the problems we face around our food selections.

As a result of nutrition information (Pollan 5) and the dominating role of science in our food system (Schlosser 6), we, as American consumers, are described to “no longer [be] confident of our senses” when it comes to choosing our food (Pollan 5). By forfeiting our knowledge to the industrial food system, we may have temporarily deactivated our food senses, but our innate ability to taste and decipher flavors remains a part of our human abilities. This is demonstrated in Trubek’s experiments with varieties of Vermont maple syrup, and her findings that consumers could, in fact, taste the difference between syrups produced in different places and by using different methods (229).

If we have the ability to differentiate between the varying tastes of a condiment normally overpowered by the presence of carbohydrates (think pancakes and waffles), then image the possibility for us to explore the array of flavors offered by purple carrots, tomatoes that are orange, and other fruit and veggie varieties that we are currently unaccustomed to. Pleasure is “deepened by knowledge” (Pollan 11), and knowledge can be expanded through taste. By allowing ourselves to experience new flavors, and by demanding an extended variety of fresh produce from the food industry, we can begin to rebuild our food knowledge and start our journey towards more pleasurable eating.

I remember the way a flaky, amber exterior coated the soft center of each McNugget with a subtle crunch. Only later did I realize this addictive texture came from the hot oils of a deep fryer. Evenly tender, and white in color, the meaty insides implied a purity of product, although the blob shape of each nugget gave no hint as to what part of the animal it had come from. Despite the sweetness of the bare nugget, I would drown each solidified glob into an even sweeter sauce. Many pairings were available for the choosing: tangy barbeque, honey mustard, sweet ‘n sour; each a shiny corn syrup concoction ready to be absorbed by the crackling surface of freshly fried batter. Greasy, bone-less, uniform, blob-like: this is the twenty-first century idea of chicken.

Whether you eat a ten or a forty-piece order of Chicken McNuggets, you won’t increase the pleasure of your experience: a common case of quantity over quality. Instead, you will have ingested and invested in an imitation food (Pollan 150), processed and manipulated to resemble the raw form of the original animal product. These types of food like substances are efficient in mimicking the qualities of their natural counterparts. Aspects of industrial agriculture and advances in the food industry allow for alterations to the original product to go unquestioned, if not unnoticed. Without respect for the raw characteristics of an animal, there come additions of growth hormones, antibiotics, and other such “unnatural” elements included in production (Petrini 103). As a result, consumers lose their understanding of where food comes from, and are denied the opportunity to experience, and therefore recognize, exceptional food (Pollan 160).

In the presence of imitation foods like the Chicken McNugget, consumers fail to gain an understanding of the physical characteristics of a food before it appears on their plate. They also remain uninformed about the labor that goes into its production, and what the raw version of that food tastes like. Along with the increasing number of imitation foods that continue to fill the shelves of our grocery stores and the cupboards of our kitchens, there is a subsequent decrease in the opportunity for consumers to experience truly exceptional food. Without understanding our food and without tasting its unprocessed form, an abstracted idea of food begins to dominate the relationships we form with what ends up on our plate (Berry 146).

A byproduct of this distanced relationship with food is a loss of pleasure in eating (Petrini 105). Knowledge about food is more likely to lead to the choice of superior food products (good, clean, fair) (Petrini 97-135), and therefore the experience of exceptionally good food. Without access to educational and monetary resources, how does one go about enhancing the pleasure of eating? Is it possible to make the consumption of a Happy Meal a happier experience? If consumers do not care about their food, they are not likely to make changes to their food choices. In order to bring people’s awareness to the sources of their food, we must first bring their attention back to the act of eating. After all, food culture is not just made up of what you eat, but also how you eat it (Pollan 173).

Along this line of thinking, we can take preliminary steps towards happier eating through actions that don’t require a designated amount of money or knowledge. So even though a family may not be able to afford free-range chicken, they can make the choice to take their Happy Meals out of the car and around a table where they can eat their food together. In our efforts to attain widespread sustainable food production and consumption, addressing the faults in our current food system has a vital role. However, observations of how we eat our food are also informative, especially when working to bring better food experiences and better food choices to those who don’t necessarily have the means to spend their whole wallet on a selection of whole foods.