Evolution of Food

As we sat eating our lunch at the farmers market this week, I realized that the evolution of what we eat has been a complicated one.  Parts of this evolution have actually been more of a devolution of food in fact. 

For starters, my grandparents were everything you think of when the image of old Vermont dairy farmers come to mind.  Both grew up during the Depression; nothing was wasted.  As much food as they could glean from the land they did.  My grandparents stopped diary farming right around the time I was born, but my grandfather was still an incredible gardener and hunter.  I spent many hours eating fresh tomatoes from the garden and while I have never actually skinned a deer, I have seen it done many times.  My grandmother was an incredible baker despite the fact that she was diabetic (you only ate from the wrong pie once, before you asked if it was the one with or without sugar). Most of the pies she made were made with berries and rhubarb from the farm.  They also had the most incredible compost system ever! We may have used some of the worms from it for fishing in the stream that ran through the farm.  So what happened to our food from there?

Next, my parents' generation moved away from the farm and were then slammed with an economic boom.  Rather than the labor intensive job of raising your own food, everything turned to convenience.  Mac and cheese from a box, ravioli from a can, and the ever-present drive through.  I look back at my childhood and often realize that what I ate whas horrible.  Not that everything I ate was bad, my dad is a wonderful cook and until a few years ago continued to hunt.  In addition to this, I have noticed that both of my parents have gone back to gardening and both seem to have this green thumb that I unfortunately do not posses.  While my plants are barely hanging in, both of them are harvesting monster vegetables out of their gardens.  So even their generation is beginning to turn back to the way things were.

Then you come to my generation.  A generation that grew up on convenience, yet spent time at the family farm.  A generation that has seen its parents turn back to the way things used to be.  A generation that is incredibly obese and does not want their children to end up the same way.  We have turned back to local and organic foods.  Raising our own animals and growing gardens.  Maybe not at the same scale as our grandparents (we don't have the time) but a smaller reflection of that time.  But there is something different.  In addition to wanting our food to be safe, we are also a much more culturally diverse generation.  There are cultures and flavors that have made their way to be added into the classics.  The farmer's market doesn't just consist of farmers, but people who have come here from other places and are trying to start up small businesses.  My son knows what African, Pakistani and a whole variety of Asian foods taste like.  Some of it he craves, knowing he can only get it at the farmer's market.  It is wonderful; not only have we ventured back to our much healthier roots, we have added something a little different to it.  There is still hope and good food does still exist. 

 

Just because I needed a picture.