Heart your eat-out (while you can still afford it)

I’ve had food shoved in my face lately, and it’s left me full (of questions and concerns). A number of issues surrounding food have been brought to my attention through friends (hat tip Heather), talk show hosts (thanks Stephen Colbert), a magazine subscription (Maclean’s courtesy of Rogers appreciating my business) and RBC p2p’s very own Michel Savoie. There are financial considerations with all these items.

First on the docket:

BEES
First, there’s this little issue of bees disappearing in the US. Do yourself a favour and research this further, as there are some serious implications to having bees vanish, seeing as how they are crucial to the pollination of many fruit and vegetable crops. Oh, and if that doesn’t scare you maybe this will. I, for one, love ice cream.

In other insect news:

BUGS
Although you may think eating bugs is disgusting, you’ll be interested to know that David Gracer says this may just be something worth examining. Recently featured on The Colbert Report, Gracer eats bugs and as crazy as it may seem you may change your opinion when you read about the next two issues that have come to my attention. After all, as Gracer puts it “Insects can feed the world. Cows and pigs are the S.U.V.’s; bugs are the bicycles.” and we have plenty of reasons to consider his ideas.

They still make these?

BOOKS
When I mentioned the idea I had for a blog about food, Michel mentioned a book to me and upon checking out the website I realized just how relevant the idea is. In this ever-increasing eco-conscious age where transporting food thousands of miles (x 1.609344 for km’s) to its destination seems environmentally unfriendly, the idea with this diet is to only purchase food that originates within 100 miles (160 km) of you. This is not an easy task, but the website makes it simple to figure out your 100-mile circle. Where I’m located, that means most of mainland Nova Scotia is within my circle.

Thanks to George Stroumboulopoulos and The Hour (http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1992), I learned about Michael Pollan and his book, In Defense of Food : An Eater’s Manifesto. Essentially he contends that much of what we eat isn’t even really food. “Edible foodlike substances” is what he calls them, and I can’t say that I really disagree if I think about some of the things I eat, personally. His argument can be summed up in 7 words. (1) Eat (2) Food. (3) Not (4) Too (5) Much. (6) Mostly (7) Plants.

Now, on to the scary stuff:

BILLS
Maclean’s had a cover story a few weeks back that reinforced what a friend had told me, about the world facing a global food shortage and the threat of increasing prices for common food items. The article, available online, is a long read but I highly suggest you read it. It may be the single most important thing you read (besides this blog entry, of course) this year. We appear to be at a crucial point in history where our species can go one of two ways. I hope our rationality and compassion can overcome our greed and laziness.

All this talk has really left me craving reasonably-priced “Insects Inside” (this doesn’t really exist, but maybe I’ll create it) ice cream from Truro! Until next time, that’s life as I know it.