#122 – Why We Eat Local & Farm-Friendly Food
Why eat local? What if it isn’t easy? What if the things I want aren’t available? What’s the point? Alison and I have both considered these questions for ourselves and factored them into decisions that we’ve made about how we live our everyday lives. We didn’t make the changes overnight, and we don’t even suggest people do so. After the many books we have read, the real-life experiences we have had, and guests we have interviewed on the subject of factory farming vs humane peasant farming, we have come to some conclusions about eating local that might surprise you. They might not be the conclusions or the “arguments” you were expecting.
This episode features an aftershow which could possibly be described as a little bit salty, where some spicier opinions came to the fore. It was impossible to include everything we had to say and keep the main episode at a reasonable length of time. If you want to hear this aftershow as well as over 140 other episodes on our more informal, private podcast Kitchen Table Chats, hop over to ancestralkitchenpodcast.com/join and join at companionship or above level. Thank you for your continued support and to all the supporters, reviewers and listeners who made this episode possible.
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What We Covered:
- Simple breakfast, and pheasant in Britain
- A new, free rye resource from Alison
- What countries are our listeners coming from?
- How do they listen?
- See the full list on our podcast website
- Shout out to young listeners
- Why do we eat local?
- Eating like a human – behaving like a human
- What is farm-friendly food
- Is everything we eat local?
- Healthcare spending and food spending
- Money matters
- Our plan to save the world (it might shock you)
- What we can do
- What is our responsibility?
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We love 5* reviews on apple podcasts!
If you love the show here’s how to leave one:
- Open the Apple Podcast app
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Resources:
- To see the countries where we have AKP listeners, visit www.ancestralkitchenpodcast.com/downloads
- To get Alison’s Beginner’s Guide to Rye Sourdough, pop your details in the sign-up box that’s nestling inside either of these informative blog posts on her site:
https://ancestralkitchen.com/2021/01/04/everyday-wholegrain-sourdough-rye-loaf/
Or
https://ancestralkitchen.com/2025/04/14/how-to-make-sourdough-rye-bread-from-scratch/
Each of the episodes mentioned here includes an entirely packed show notes of further reading and links on that specific topic!
- Episode 46: Sir Patrick Holden
- Episode 116: Leftovers and Scraps in a Frugal Ancestral Kitchen
- Episode 103: 10 Nourishing Traditions Dishes Cheaper Than Supermarkets!
- Episode 102: The Guide to Getting Out of Supermarkets
- Episode 74: 14 Tips for Changing Your Food Habits
- Episode 69: Fake Food v Small Farms
- Episode 66: 50 Ways to Save Money on an Ancestral Diet Part I
- Episode 67: 50 Ways to Save Money Part II
- Episode 50: 20 Small Steps to an Ancestral Kitchen
- Episode 4: The 5 Most Expensive (and Yet the Cheapest) Foods
Suggested Reading
- Leah’s Rec: Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth (we haven’t read this yet, but are reading as a podcast together starting in Jan 2026)
- A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: one farm, six generations, and the future of food by Will Harris
- The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
- Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
- The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry by Wendell Berry
- Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin
- The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements by Sandor Ellix Katz
- The Joel Salatin book we mentioned a number of times: Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer’s Guide to Farm Friendly Food by Joel Salatin
His goal [with this book] is to:
• Empower food buyers to pursue positive alternatives to the industrialized food system
• Bring clean food farmers and their patrons into a teamwork relationship
• Marry the best of western technology with the soul of eastern ethics
• Educate food buyers about productions
• Create a food system that enhances nature’s ecology for future generations”
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Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? If so, we would love to hear from you! Visit our website here for how to share.
Thank you for listening – we’d love to connect more:
The podcast has a website here!
Alison is taking a break from Instagram. You can stay in touch with her via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on Instagram at Ancestral Kitchen Podcast
The podcast is mixed and the music is written and recorded by Alison’s husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
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Transcript:
Alison:
Hello, Andrea.
Andrea:
Hello, Alison. Happy almost Christmas to you.
Alison:
Oh, indeed. I can’t believe what has happened to the year and why do I say that every time it gets to this time of year?
Andrea:
I don’t know. But I have a feeling it will go faster and faster every year. Yeah. Isn’t that true?
Alison:
I think it does, especially when, you know, you watch little ones grow up, whether they’re yours or your grandkids or your friend’s little ones. It just seems to go ever so quicker when children are around and you think, gosh, it was only a few moments ago that they were two at Christmas, wasn’t it, you know?
Andrea:
It so does. When you’re just looking at each other as adults, it’s hard to see the time passing, but little kids just change so rapidly that you feel it.
Alison:
Yeah, yeah. So this is our last episode for the year, isn’t it? And just to celebrate, I sound like I’ve started smoking again, which I haven’t. I was like, well, I’m a little bit kind of bunged up still from a cold that… Happened we moved Stella Rob’s mum in with us um earlier early last week and so it’s kind of been chaos here and um I think in the process someone picked up a germ and so now we all have it but I was like oh I’ve got to record because you know we do something virtually every Tuesday recording for the main feed or recording for the supporters or meeting and um if we can’t do it it becomes quite difficult because we’ve both got lives as well. So you are being regarded with my voice is about like a fifth lower than it normally is. But luckily, you’re going to do most of the talking today. So anyway, have you had breakfast?
Andrea:
Yeah, I did actually. I had a simple, easy, quick one, which is I have a colander sitting in a pan on the stove of boiled potatoes. And I took a couple of those and just threw them in a pan with some butter and toasted them and then put salt and pepper on them and then I had made a lot of hard-boiled eggs and so I just took two of those out of the bowl of water in the sink and peeled those and and put all that in a bowl and then I took out I have a jar after I took Holly’s fermentation summit I was inspired by rachel de sample to make all these honey ferments and so i had at that time a whole big bag of jalapenos and so i sliced them and put them into a jar and then put a bunch of spices turmeric and mustard powder and whatnot in them and then i put just honey over the top and then they’ve fermented ever since okay and then i so i just took a couple out on a fork and put them on top of it all and it was so good and
Alison:
Then of course was the honey flavor strong or or was it kind of blasted out by the jalapenos.
Andrea:
The jalapenos are quite mild. And I think it’s because they grew, there’s these wonderful, sweet, two little ladies. It’s a mother and daughter. And they have a farm down the road where we get our, usually our cat and dog food and also chicken and duck feed as well. And they also have a huge garden and they sell the produce out of it. And so they had jalapenos and i said well i’ll take whatever you’ve got and then call me if you have more and i’ll come back and get them and so we we have been enjoying those but they they grew over here where it’s so wet so they’re not really that hot i see so um so yeah i feel like the honey flavor you know you let it drip off of the jalapenos you know when you scoop them out but it still is this kind of sweet burst on top of the peppery potatoes and the you know the eggs so it’s it’s a really nice sensation
Alison:
Hard bored eggs are so useful to have hanging around i i try to remember always to when i boil my eggs to just do three or four more and then just have them in the fridge because sometimes i just want a snack and I think, oh, I don’t want carb again. I want some protein, you know, and an egg is just absolutely perfect size for a snack, isn’t it? Hardballed egg. It is.
Andrea:
It’s the perfect packaged meal. Did you eat before we
Alison:
Got on here? Yeah, we did. Yeah, we had a dish that Gabriel has named pheasants in duvets rather than pigs in blankets.
Andrea:
If that isn’t posh then i just don’t know
Alison:
He loves bacon like majorly obviously i got some pheasant breasts from the game stall at the market last week um they’re cheaper than a lot of the other stuff we buy there and they’re um they’re wild um and so and we also had some bacon and I thought well instead of wrapping sausages in bacon to make pigs in blankets I could wrap these pheasant breasts in bacon because pheasant’s so lean that it kind of needs treating carefully so it doesn’t dry out um so I’m learning different ways to do that and so I wrapped two of the pheasant breasts in some bacon really thick slice of back bacon which I I don’t think you have back bacon in the states do you do you have that.
Andrea:
Well, okay. Sometimes I don’t know if we have a thing and we just call it something else.
Alison:
Okay. Well, back bacon is not, we have back bacon and streaky bacon. And streaky bacon is mostly fat with some streaks of meat through it. Whereas back bacon is about probably % meat to % fat. And it has a big kind of wodge of the meat at one end of the rasher. So it’s a different shape to streak it’s kind of bulbous on the end do.
Andrea:
You have that i’d have to see i’d have to see your streaky bacon to know but honestly your back bacon sounds a little bit more like the bacon that is typically available for sale
Alison:
Okay okay.
Andrea:
Because it is pretty meaty
Alison:
Yeah we had this back bacon which um i then wrapped around the pheasant breast and i chopped some onions some celery and some cabbage put them in a casserole dish um with half of a jar of sieved tomatoes some rosemary and some thyme stirred that all around first then put the pheasant wrapped in bacon on the top and um then put the lid on the casserole dish and put it in the oven it was delicious and um i had mine with a couple of potatoes that i put in the oven at the same time and the boys had bread and Rob had rye and Gabriel had a bread, which I’ve been experimenting with recently, which is with a wheat called YQ wheat, which I think we talked about on the private podcast episode last. It’s about % that and then about % emma and % rye. And it just, the combo is wonderful. The emma brings the sweetness to it. Sounds so good. The rye brings the depth. It’s lovely. So I baked up one of those yesterday and Gabriel had that bread. and I like.
Andrea:
The idea of putting the bacon around the wild game bird
Alison:
It worked because.
Andrea:
Those birds are pretty lean
Alison:
Yeah typically it really was it was moist and soft and not dry at all you know I suppose the equivalent for not game is just cooking a chicken breast without the bone on and without any skin and you just cook that in the oven and it just can go so dry and tough, particularly if you cook it a bit too much and so the pheasant I guess.
Andrea:
Is a bit
Alison:
Like that and just wrapping it in that bacon it’s just sealing it in and obviously the castle dish had a lid as well which helps and I didn’t leave it in the oven for too long but it was beautifully soft it was lovely yeah.
Andrea:
Do they skin the pheasants or do they there’s no
Alison:
Skin yeah you can buy them they must.
Andrea:
They must have got skin on
Alison:
But the um the actual breasts when you buy them um are completely skin less oh okay.
Andrea:
Okay i just looked up a picture to see streaky bacon versus back bacon yeah yeah we need somebody rebecca rebecca did you have bacon when you were there tell us but it actually looks like your streaky bacon is just how our bacon is and then back bacon looks more like um What people call Canadian bacon over here, which we always have the joke. What do Canadians call Canadian bacon? Bacon?
Alison:
Yeah, probably. Odd.
Andrea:
So, yeah, maybe some Canadians and some international travelers can weigh in and tell us. Please tell us, because obviously this is going to torture us. And pheasants are not native to the UK, are they?
Alison:
I don’t know.
Andrea:
I had to look them up after. so the conversation came up in discord okay and then and then rebecca said gosh we did see the pheasants when we were over there and so i looked it up because i thought oh the pheasants native a kind of interesting looking bird in it the internet said no they weren’t it said the normans brought them over in the s okay around when they destroyed our language they’re
Alison:
They’re a french import then are they yeah i.
Andrea:
Don’t even know if they are native to france they maybe that were like some African birds.
Alison:
There’s loads of them here. Who knows? Like loads of them. If you go out for a walk in the morning, particularly, you see them. And they’re quite attractive birds, I think.
Andrea:
Oh, they’re gorgeous. And they’re tasty too. They look good in a painting too.
Alison:
Yeah, yeah.
Andrea:
All those paintings of your hunting hounds and… You know, birds. Alison, I have a review I was going to read. I’m going to read it because I don’t want to wear your voice out. So thank you. So just sit back, relax and enjoy. The title is Favorite Podcast. This podcast has been my favorite for a while now. It is the perfect blend of educating, inspiring, welcoming and comforting. The way the hosts interact is peaceful and fun. The content, interesting enough to keep my scattered mom brain engaged and soothing enough to be a place of rest and refreshment for my overstimulated mind. It really is a safe place to learn and take the next step without feeling like you’re doing it all wrong if you’re not perfect. Thank you both. I love feeling like I’m getting to sit at your table while listening to your fascinating conversation. And that is from K. Ballman. I’m not sure if I said that right. But thank you for that review.
Alison:
That’s so clear. It’s so well written as a review. Oh, yeah. Everything. You can sort of tell that every thing that he or she feels is clearly expressed. Thank you. It’s lovely. Yeah.
Andrea:
Can you imagine this mind without… If this is a scattered mom brain. Yeah. Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah. I don’t know if you can hear the baby yelling, but don’t worry, Gary’s up there with him. So just up there on his own.
Alison:
So, Alison. Yeah. Before we dive in to the wonderful content that you’ve prepped for today, which I’m really looking forward to hear you talk about, I want to just tell listeners that I have a new freebie. Have you seen it, Andrea? Actually, that’s.
Andrea:
What I was literally just going to ask you about was the rye freebie because i knew you were writing one but i haven’t seen it so you got to tell me where i’m going to get it and how i’m going to get
Alison:
It okay so basic i’ll tell you what it is first it’s a beginner’s guide to whole grain rye sourdough and it’s a four-page document that you can download and it’s got kind of an introduction to rye at the beginning explains why you’d want to break with whole grain rye then it explains what to expect you know compared to wheat why rye is different and how that will show up and then it explains to you how to to get started there are links in it to um blog posts and free courses on my site and then there’s a recipe for a first rye sourdough loaf that you could make a kind of whole grain rye sourdough everyday loaf the one that right the one that rob ate for his lunch there’s a full recipe in there with detailed instructions and will guide you through kind of if you haven’t cooked if you haven’t baked with whole grain rye before this will be a kind of a handhold to get you making your first loaf and I know that a lot of people have used that recipe and surprised themselves by making a rye loaf that they love it’s % whole grain so that’s the document.
Andrea:
Oh this is awesome
Alison:
And I haven’t made a separate page for it on my site yet, but there are two blog posts that are on my site that there’s a little box in the middle of them nestled in there that you can pop your details in and that will automatically send you the download to your inbox. So the first blog post is called How to Make Whole Grain Sourdough Rye Bread from Scratch. The second blog post is called whole grain rye sourdough bread recipe so on my site and there is a search box at the top my site is ancestral kitchen.com there’s a search a magnifying glass icon so you could type either of those blog posts in there how to make whole grain sour rye bread sourdough rye bread from scratch or whole grain rye sourdough bread recipe or you could go to the show notes that’s the simpler way and we will put direct links to both of those posts in the show notes so you can just copy and paste them into your browser pop your details in and i will send you that pdf about um whole grain rice sourdough into your inbox oh.
Andrea:
My gosh alison i clicked i i made the mistake of clicking on your link
Alison:
Oh did you whoops this.
Andrea:
Looks so good this looks so good so your post has tons of pictures so we can actually see what it looks like. And you have taught me that the rye is quite different than all the other ancestral grains in terms of the gluten is actually different. You know, spelt and whatnot has less gluten and they are somewhat different to work with, but this is a totally different beast altogether. And that’s where we end up with those mistakes of, you know, accidental way over fermenting and things like that yeah and also why you never see % rye recipes virtually anywhere I mean other than you I don’t actually think I’ve seen % rye anywhere so no
Alison:
Well if it’s interesting because if you type um whole grain rye sourdough bread into google you you end up with a ton of recipes on the first page that they’ve got wheat in I’m like what.
Andrea:
Right I mean it’s fun to mix grains I do that all the time but understanding how to do rye on its own yeah that’s now britney i already said this on our private podcast episode but she’s she’s got your rye course and immediately has fallen in love with it and she’s been doing gluten free for a bit longer than i have and so we’ve talked about i think when we kind of come back into the fold we’ll probably start with the rye because just kind of kind of learning from rob’s experience that might be the best way to go about it so yeah
Alison:
It’s certainly something that a lot of people who struggle with wheat find they can have rye particularly rye sourdough without problems and you know you go into the stores and you rarely find rye breads that are % rye so you really don’t.
Andrea:
Have never the luxury
Alison:
Of being able to do that with store-bought bread whereas if you.
Andrea:
Might find it if you’re like in Russia or Germany I imagine it’s probably easier but certainly in the but
Alison:
You can make it yourself and you can use my recipe and i will guide you in that pdf or if you choose to come and you know dive in with my course.
Andrea:
You’ll get um
Alison:
You’ll get one-to-one time with me in my kitchen so yeah it’s available.
Andrea:
And it’s
Alison:
Possible and it’s fun.
Andrea:
All the things that we love. Yeah. Well, Allison, I’m going to introduce our topic. We have two parts to today’s episode, and one is for you, Katie. Katie is a listener in Germany, and she shared in our Discord that she would really like to hear some stats on who is listening to the podcast and where they come from. So I’m going to share that first. And after that, we’re going to talk a little bit about eating local. And I have quite a few resources to share. And I’m going to put those in the show notes because at first I was going to read them out on the air, but then it got longer and longer.
Alison:
Your show notes are epic. They are well known in the Ancestral Kitchen podcast community and everyone who works on the podcast for being very long, very detailed and kind of rabbit holes that you could fall down, many of them.
Andrea:
So many we love a rabbit hole i also i also bumped some off into the after show allison just because when i was trying to structure the timing i couldn’t really see how to keep this thing under you know four hours so my voice might last four hours trust me some of the more salty opinions went into the after show so if you know people want to hear that. They can go there. Yeah. And first, Allison, though, let’s give the people what they want and play quick ad. Okay. So coming back in, let’s give Katie the very thing she asked for and talk about our stats. So we have listeners and I checked. Let’s see. The time you’re listening to this, I probably checked this three weeks, four weeks before. So we have listeners in countries.
Alison:
Wow. That’s incredible.
Andrea:
That is incredible. The bulk of our listeners are in the US. followed by the UK. So suppose it’s our family and friends. And then we’re followed in this order by Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, South Africa, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Brazil, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland. And unless you want to hear me read the names of almost countries, you can go to the website and see if your country is listed. I put the full list in, Alison, how do we say, where you log in to? I don’t think it’s a private post. I think anybody can see it.
Alison:
Yeah, the download section of the website. Yeah.
Andrea:
Yeah. So you can see all the countries and see if your country’s on there. And most of our listeners listen through Apple podcasts, % of the listeners. So if you are on Apple, do leave us a review right now if you are driving, please. Five-star review. Apple absolutely lives and dies by the reviews. The podcast platforms do not really tell you if the content of a podcast is good or not but it’s just the reviews that get them moving so definitely leave us a review thank you and percent of our listeners are on spotify that’s a huge number also and i believe you can leave reviews on there also i
Alison:
Think on spotify you can leave a rating and possibly you can leave a review on individual episodes.
Andrea:
Oh that’s why they say please write and review yeah and then we have a lot of people who actually listen right from our website ancestral kitchen podcast.com on the browser and allison i asked you if people can leave a review on the website and you said yes they can leave a comment on any of the episode posts scroll down past the transcript because did you know all of these episodes are transcript and time stamped on our website so if you were thinking i know they talked about this and that and something in that episode i actually used that search feature on the website allison to find something for the notes today i went back and found the exact time stamp of where we mentioned something previously which will come up in notes okay a lot of the listeners the majority are listening on mobile apps but there are a fair amount listening on desktop browsers and shout out to julie because I know she’s listening at work while she just works on papers and filing and copy work and or copying papers and whatnot and she said it really helps the day go by.
Andrea:
I also wanted to tell you, Alison, about Kirsten M. She is in Canada and her mom, Ellen, really loved your spelt cookbook, Alison. So shout out to you, Kirsten. Ellen has been baking with spelt for years. And she said that your book is the best spelt sourdough resource she has ever found, which is amazing.
Andrea:
And then she told me Kirsten has been listening to the podcast on her own. So awesome, Kirsten. I’m so happy to hear that. And it makes me really happy to hear that kind of the next wave of cooks and plate changers is listening and thinking about these things, because that is really what it’s going to take to make the changes we need.
Alison:
Absolutely.
Andrea:
And Ellen did say that Kirsten is an excellent baker as well. I think i think all of alan’s kids can cook and bake but good job and i it it’s kind of like the review said alice and that i like to think that we have good clean content that people can listen to and their kids can listen to yeah and i also wanted to give another shout out to luna so luna is down in Texas, which is a gigantic state.
Andrea:
And her mom sent me a message the other day and said, your voice is wafting through the house right now as Luna was listening to the podcast. So thank you for listening, Luna. Luna is a young herbalist and a reader. I think she’s actually in the same good books class, the same time block as Jacob is with the literary life. Okay so thank you luna for listening it is because of your grandkids and kirsten is because of your grandkids that we’re doing this because that we want this way of food and this way of life to be available and easier for them than it was for us absolutely coming in second third fourth generations of eating this way so yeah so thank you ladies and young ladies allison let’s take another quick ad break and come back in.
Andrea:
Okay, here we go. Eating local. Yay. Why do we eat local and farm-friendly food? And what does that even mean? So the, well, are you going to tell me,
Alison:
Alison? Well, I’m here with my, I’ve got two cups of tea to keep my voice.
Andrea:
I was going to ask you,
Alison:
What tea do you have? With my tea and I’ve got one oat straw and one ginger, lemon and clove. and i’m i’m sitting here and waiting for you to tell me why we just ready, i’ll probably get i’ll probably get excited at some point during the episode because that usually happens and then oh yeah and then i’ll have something to say i.
Andrea:
Don’t think we’ll be able to get through this one without
Alison:
No without.
Andrea:
You jumping up off the seat metaphorically speaking Well, first off, I’ll say that just like with everything else, Alison, we are not here to convince anybody. The epiphanies and revelations that each one of us has along the journey, finding the ways of really being that are the most important to us, and then what it takes to move ourself and our life into the space of the being and the things that we’re doing aligning with our beliefs. Those come through personal life experience and all the things that you’re reading and exposed to and that you’re seeing and smelling and experiencing so what we are here is here to do is to share details about why we are doing what we do but it is up to each individual to make those choices for themselves I
Alison:
Think already I want to say something I think that you know often supporters have asked us how do we how do I explain to my parents or my neighbors or whoever it is my friend at church how do I explain how I eat this way when they’re kind of you know being a bit confrontational and we’ve always said we can’t convert people you know we’re not here to convince anyone because change comes from inside it comes from like you said personal actual experience and processing and and so what we can do is just model what we’re doing and continue doing what feels right to us inside our hearts inside our minds inside our bodies, and that’s really what we’re doing here. We’re sharing what’s going on in our lives and amazingly, a community is sprung up of people who actually feel so similar and feel as enthusiastic and passionate as we do. And we can create bigger community together and be stronger together. But like you said, we can’t convince anyone and that’s not our job. Yeah, indeed.
Andrea:
Absolutely. It’s actually surprising as I worked my way through this, the notes for this episode, the number of things we take on as a job that aren’t our job that can actually slow us down from, you know, if you’re spending a lot of time trying to convince people and raging, then you’re not enjoying your life as much. So thank you to Naomi for asking the question, why would somebody eat local anyways? You always ask the most thoughtful questions. And Alison, I know you and I love working on her questions together. They’ve inspired some great episodes, one of which I’ll be referring to later during this podcast. So to be a little bit surprising, perhaps, I’m going to start out by saying there are many, many great books and even podcast episodes out there, including on our own podcast, with long lists of facts, statistics, and bar graphs about the value of eating local.
Andrea:
I will be linking a lot of those resources in the show notes for those of you who want to see the long lists. But to be honest, somebody with an argumentative mind could probably produce just as many facts, statistics, and bar graphs to defend their position on the value of eating a globalized factory food diet. And it could turn into a subjective fight over opinion and value systems. I might say, without regenerative farm-friendly food, we will run out of tilth and fertility to grow food at all. And someone else with a different set of values could argue, in that case, we just need to focus harder on the factory food and we need to grow lab meat and petri dishes because it’s just about calories. And their differing value system would support their conclusion. That being said, a long list of facts is not what this episode is going to be about. We’re going to talk about being human and the way the modern food system separates us from our humanity in a thousand little ways. It’s a death by a thousand cuts. So, Alison.
Alison:
You know, I wanted to say to you about that word humanity, because I kind of meditated a bit on your title last week, and I wrote down about six or seven things on the page of things that I wanted to have said by the end of the episode. And humanity is the top of the list.
Andrea:
Like in big
Alison:
Letters and you I didn’t know that you had written that bit or we’re gonna say that bit but um yeah humanity in a thousand little ways it’s completely I’m I’m % with you.
Andrea:
It’s like we spend four to eight hours a week talking to each other for the past five years yeah
Alison:
Who’d have known.
Andrea:
It is amazing Alison how we tend seem to have the same thought from the other side of the world and then we get together and it’s like were you thinking this so was I I was thinking this It’s just crazy. So first, let me ask you, is % of your diet absolutely local?
Alison:
No, it’s not. Kind of from the, some obvious things are we have, Rob has coffee. Um i have tea redbush tea from south africa and we have chocolate which isn’t local and since we’ve moved back to this country we have non-local olive oil of course that used to be local in italy but it’s not anymore um there are also some more kind of pantry things um our tinned tomatoes although we grew fresh tomatoes this year in containers before we moved house i stripped all of the tomato plants and kept them going red on the windowsill our tinned tomatoes, aren’t local they come from italy and our fish isn’t always local um because gable can’t eat eggs i mean i don’t eat much um sort of pantry fish as in tinned fish because i eat eggs every day but gable can’t eat eggs and so you know we generally do meat at one meal um but then i want to give him another good protein for his supper so that’s usually fish and that fish isn’t local so no % of my diet is not local.
Andrea:
How about you same here same here and some of the same obvious suspects in my diet luxuries that i am accustomed to having in my life our salt is not from here we don’t live on the ocean not really sure if you’d want to eat out of our ocean here anyways and the coffee is not going here the chocolate yeah a clear staple is not grown here we don’t really have much olive oil we don’t really have much coconut oil but we do have coconut products from time to time and those obviously don’t grow here our coconut product comes from the philippines so that’s a ways away so yeah there’s a number of things part of why i wanted to ask you that question allison was Because Naomi, when she asked me about the local food, and then we started kind of prodding through that question, I started realizing it wasn’t actually just, it isn’t purely local that matters to me. And it isn’t purely, and it isn’t, um.
Andrea:
It’s because of this humanity side of things was what I started to realize because you can have local food that is not farm friendly and you can have farm friendly food that isn’t local. So there’s a Tyson plant in town. So not too far from us, there are some CAFO type farms that raise chickens.
Andrea:
Maybe like an hour drive away. And then minutes closer to us, there’s a Tyson plant where they process millions of chickens every week, millions and millions of chickens. So I could say the chickens were raised here, the chickens are processed here. And of course, now it’s local. I’m going to eat it. But those are part of the inhumane system. And I’m actually not even referring to the handling of the chickens here when I say inhumane. Those are part of the inhumane system that is based on entirely based on profit. And therefore, the humanity of the company doesn’t really come up in equations. It’s just about the money. So even if those are in my neighborhood, I’m not participating in their product. Meanwhile, I am enjoying my grains from ancient grains, even though they’re an eight hour drive away or whatever it is in Idaho.
Andrea:
But the way that family is raising the grains and then getting them bulk shipped periodically is an incredible thing to me. Now, I could go for an absolutely locovore diet. That is an option. And that’s not to say somebody couldn’t do that. Where I would probably not really have much in the way of grains, I would find different ways to get that nutrient for myself. And I would focus just on the things that exclusively grow out here. I would say the dominant portion of our diet is very, very local. But it doesn’t go against my personal ethics to have things brought in periodically. % we’re going to have oranges at Christmas. You better just believe it. So how do you feel about all of that, Alison?
Alison:
Yeah, I feel like what you said, the dominant part of your diet, you know, the staples that we have, the meat that we eat here, the eggs that we eat here, the vegetables that we eat here, the fat that I render that we eat here all of that is local and that’s what I’m eating for most of my food you know I did put tomatoes as you heard in my lunch that I cooked but aside from that all of the vegetables all of the meat was local the half a jar of passata sieved tomatoes that I put in wasn’t um and the grains that I made the bread with were local and so I feel like you know the bulk of what I’m eating is local and like you said I could if we gave up coffee and we gave up chocolate and I worked hard to make more meat produce so Gable didn’t have to have fish and we gave up tomatoes then we could eat completely local probably but where I sit how I feel when I look around my kitchen and in my cupboards I feel comfortable with the.
Alison:
The things that those small imported items give us. I think if I, you know, the space that coffee beans take up on a boat or a plane compared to the space that celery or kale would take up if it’s shipped in, or beans, you know, a lot of the beans in supermarkets here, the green beans and the sweet corn and the radishes come from senegal a country in africa wow and you know and there was a bbc food program bbc food program did an episode talking about what’s why is senegal feeding the uk you know and if i was eating sweet corn and beans and radishes when they’re out of season in my kitchen every day then that wouldn’t feel right to me but the coffee and the chocolate I’m okay with.
Andrea:
Thinking back to the epic episode that you did with Marcus. And we must have a shared gene with that guy. Because when he said, I just like to see if I could do without it. I was like, yeah, that is so me. Like, how many years I would say I would refuse to buy certain tools for the kitchen, because I was like, let me just see if I can just do this with a knife. And with the luxuries, it feels like that if all of a sudden everything dropped out and you had to focus exclusively on eating the only the things you could get around you yes our diet would change but it wouldn’t be as much of a shock no and you you know you could probably go if you and i said hey let’s let’s uh swear a blood oath to only eat exactly local foods for the next month we would it would be fun actually we really enjoy ourselves and maybe we should do that in the discord one day but it wouldn’t ruin our lives or you know cause us any emotional distress by any means so it
Alison:
Would just mean a little bit of extra planning to figure out you know a new routine for some of the things.
Andrea:
Right well and you know and i know because we’ve done it that that’s where really interesting things come through because you start working through the puzzle and you say well Gabriel can’t have eggs but he can’t have fish now what’s a different little solution and then the just the interesting things you learn that maybe we wouldn’t have if we hadn’t been forced to try yeah
Alison:
Creativity as we’ve said before comes from being restricted very often and so I know that if if the situation arose where I wanted to or had to do that then new things would come out of me that hadn’t come out of me before.
Andrea:
Absolutely And it’s funny you said that about the creativity, Allison, because I was thinking about this last night. Leah and Brittany and I were talking about art and music. And I was thinking about how so much of the great art and music came out of the church. And I had started thinking I wondered because I was sort of thinking of you know the availability of options to somebody as like a diet in a way and I thought I wonder if part of that incredible creativity came because you kind of had a you know you only had a certain amount of options to work with you know you’re doing paintings of the saints or you know music from psalms or something. And I just thought, I wonder if that just that incredible creativity was being pressed out like oils out of olives in a press in some way. So important aspects that I see in a local diet. Allison, one of my favorite things. Okay, so things that you would look for in your farm friendly food.
Andrea:
I’m going to reference a book towards a couple points into this. And I think if anybody’s a little bit curious about all of this, the book will be very helpful for them. But first, I’ll say that one of the things that I have found the most helpful in bringing humanity back into food is having a face-to-face relationship with the producers of your food. And if you don’t think that this matters with food it’s because you haven’t experienced it yet
Alison:
Yeah, I think there is. Can I jump in here and say something about that?
Andrea:
Please do.
Alison:
Yeah, I feel like in the world that we live in, we’re encouraged to kind of hide behind virtual relationships or digital relationships. And we kind of think it’s easier and it’s better in quotes for us because if we talk to someone via email, we don’t have to hear discomfort in their voice or we don’t have to have a confrontation or we don’t have to be nervous about what we’re going to say. Or if we go to a supermarket, we choose the checkout that beeps us through and we do it all ourselves because then we don’t have to actually talk to a human. And, you know, it kind of it feels like a…
Alison:
I don’t know, like a big ask for the world that we live in to actually have a relationship with someone, to look at a human and to have to converse with them. And I feel like this is forcing us or pushing us slowly into this place where we feel like that’s normal and that’s okay. And we don’t realise what we’re losing when we’re not having that experience. And when we go out and we talk to people, particularly if we’re introverts which I am or if we have problems with anxiety we might feel like you know this is quite difficult to look someone in the face and to have a conversation and perhaps to ask them how they raise their meat or what they feed their chickens you know that feels like it might be quite difficult and so that pushes us away from doing it but the rewards like you said If you don’t think this matters, it’s because you haven’t experienced yet. The rewards of looking people in the eyes who’ve grown or raised your food, of having conversations with them, of getting to know them and understanding.
Alison:
Oh, this is what they do at the weekend when they’re not farming, or this is what happened with the harvest this year. You know, we were just talking this week to Day’s Farm, who make who have an incredible variety of um heritage apples and sell cider and apple cider vinegar at the market and she was saying we’ve got all the apples in now we’ve got them in store we had a really good harvest this year we’ve got them in the cold store we’re gonna have apples through till march for everyone and you know she’s asking me about my book we we know what what they did when they took their two weeks off in the summer and the the depth that it brings to your life, connecting with people locally, who then provides you with the food that’s on your bowl, on your plate, that you chop, that you cook, that you serve to those you love. Once you experience it, it’s like you realize how much you’re missing it. It’s like a drug. You’re like, wow. But that’s actually what we’re supposed to be. That’s who we are. We’re humans. We’re supposed to be in relationship. We’re supposed to have behaviors like that. And our world is encouraging us not to have them. And the loss to humanity, the loss of humanity is incredible. So, yeah, I just wanted to jump in and say that.
Andrea:
That’s everything, Alison. And that is, I really don’t know what else I need to say. That’s a good episode. No, but truly, the connections in… In Seattle, there’s an Amazon store where you can walk into the store, you scan your Amazon app to walk in, and you just get what you want and you walk out. And their computer sensors pick up, they know what you’re picking up, and they bill it to your account. So you don’t check out, there’s no cashier, you don’t have to scan the products as you pick them up. It’s literally insane. And this has been there for a while.
Alison:
Okay.
Andrea:
So in there, there actually is an element of beginning to have this experience of face to face with your food, with a grocery store. And I’ll say that because when I was a kid, we would go to the grocery store, all the cashiers, all the people who worked there, they knew our whole family. They knew what we were going to get. They knew when we would come in. Like it was like going in and you see just your friends scattered all over the store and it felt like there’s a relationship. The stores have become more and more like you said pushing you away from having human contact when you’re in there so you walk into the store there’s a security guard sitting there staring at you you know because let me tell you the amount of stuff that is stolen from stores every day like all y’all listening in the store are probably the only people not shoplifting it’s insane and you can go to the self-checkout and don’t make eye contact with anybody and beep all your stuff and walk out and
Andrea:
It is possible to start having that experience. If you’ve ever have this store that you like going to, because the little old lady’s always like, oh, how’s the children? How’s the book coming along? Then you’re already starting to get a feeling for that experience. And then when you and your farmer are so bound up in the wellbeing and the livelihood of each other, there’s such a positive relationship and there is something to be said for your nourishment and your well-being
Andrea:
And the local economy interacting together and there’s a different level of stability that comes from that so there’s this megalithic machine of government in the factory industry that has systematically removed food one piece at a time from kitchens and kitchen gardens and the small abattoirs that used to exist, multiple in every county, the little small fish canneries, the small produce barns and the small cottage bakeries. This machine convinced an entire generation of people that food without government oversight is inherently unsafe and that the food must be regulated to the eyeballs in order to be made safe. And they’ve distanced us so far from the people raising our food that most of us couldn’t name a single person who contributed to the food in our last meal.
Andrea:
That is weird. I don’t know if anybody else thinks it’s weird, but that’s weird. It’s weird.
Alison:
Like that is new. And it’s debasing our humanity to the point where, you know, we think that that’s a normal state of being. And then we apply that to all the other areas of our life. few areas where we might be trying to work together to make laws or trying to work together to school children or trying to work together to to build things in community and if we approach those in the same way the same attitude that’s been instilled in us by this kind of distancing then community just breaks down you know nothing is being made together with right ideals that come together to we.
Andrea:
Are being told in a thousand passive ways that the things that make you human don’t actually matter not as much as the bottom line of the almighty dollar
Alison:
Yeah so.
Andrea:
This is interesting to years ago people spent of their income on food and on health care. The numbers have now flipped. We saved money with industrial factory food, but we paid for it by trying to buy back a version of our health with medical care. We now have % of our income spent on health and % or %, depending on which number you look at, on food. More is said on that subject in episode , Nourishing Traditions Dishes Cheaper Than Supermarkets. And I use the timestamps on the transcript to be able to tell you it’s right at minutes and seconds in that episode. Wow. And if you want the bar graph of those statistics, that is also referenced in the show notes. And it is from a government website, so you know you can trust it.
Alison:
Oh, yeah. Okay.
Andrea:
So, those statistics were originally introduced to me by Joel Salatin, and I had gone after and pursued finding if the statistics were still current, which they were. Allison, here’s a quote from Joel, and it is from the book that I want to recommend to everybody listening if they have an interest in whatever we’re talking about. It’s from Chelsea Green, by the way. It’s called Holy Cows and Hog Heaven. The Food Buyer’s Guide to Farm-Friendly Food by Joel Salatin.
Alison:
Okay.
Andrea:
And a quote from that book, he said, here’s an idea. He has ideas at the end of every chapter, just little things you can do to start moving towards farm-friendly food. And one of them, he says, eat like our ancestors to avoid the Western degenerative diseases so rampant in our culture. So we really do exchange our inheritance for a bowl of factory farmed, industrially canned red beans soup like Esau in the Bible. And it’s unfortunate, Allison, because I feel like staying healthy is more fun than trying to pay to be healthy again. And the perhaps intangible and hard to quantify cost of the mental breakdown of people through this loss of humanity, since we’ve dehumanized the food system, we dehumanized the work system, we dehumanized, well, shall I say, we created systems for these things, which alone dehumanized them. Instead of it being a part of a functioning society. It is now a feature of a business.
Andrea:
So it’s more than just trying to find local food. It’s finding humane food. Local doesn’t always factor into humane and humane doesn’t always factor into local.
Alison:
I want to just say something about the intangible and kind of unquantifiable side of it. I feel like the mental shift that our kind of money-driven society is having on communities and individuals is, like you said, is not quantifiable. There are, we know when we hear any news, we see all of the mental health problems that are happening in the world now and all of the loneliness and all of the breakdown of communities. And no one seems to be tying it to the way that we treat our land, the way that we treat our food and our animals, the way that we treat the people who work in the food system, that it’s about a disconnection. And with that reconnection, we could…
Alison:
Really make many inroads in as far as I believe into the dislocation that so many of us feel, but because it’s intangible you can’t put it in one of those stats that you were talking about at the beginning that this equals this you can’t say well that equals that equals that and no one’s going to trace it back no one wants to but the people who put the media out there don’t want to because they’re the ones being paid by the people who are making money you know they’re they’re the ones who are part of this are so inherently part of this system that they’re never even going to put that information out there even if someone could tie the information together you know the people who are saying things like this are like you and I who sit in our bedroom and aren’t paid by anyone to any corporation to say things out here we’re here because and we’ve been here for five years almost because we care about this and it takes us sitting here in our bedrooms with our other halves you know getting us the technology to do this and thankfully a group of wonderful supporters who care about it enough to keep us going to for this information to be available on the airwaves for people um but going back to my point that you’re right this.
Alison:
Unquantifiable kind of loss and change means that it’s very hard for us to say okay well this is what’s happening let’s try and go back there um I can’t quite remember where I started from with this but I know I interrupted you so you should carry on Alison.
Andrea:
Are you telling me we’re not going to get paid for this what are we even
Alison:
Doing no no I know um.
Andrea:
Well, that is, that’s just it though, Alison. And it is something that is hard to explain until somebody experiences it. And Naomi gave such a great example. And sorry, I might get some of the details of the story wrong, but I’ll see if I can get it approximately right. She borrowed something or bought something from her neighbor and then started a conversation with her neighbor and then her neighbor needed her roof fixed so naomi’s husband went over to help with that and then the neighbor loaned something to naomi i’m i know i’m muddling the details but it was something where it started out with we needed something the exchange happened and then there’s a relationship happened and naomi said maybe this person would now like enjoy seeing these plants over here and it won’t bother them or we could have a good relationship about these things.
Andrea:
Just imagine every single transaction in your life being like that. I mean, it’s really, when I, okay, first of all, when people say food with a face on it, that kind of is creepy because you’re like, I didn’t see somebody’s face in my bowl. But when I made my breakfast this morning, I thought about, it’s not like I was meditating on it but you can’t not think about the family that raised the potatoes and had to dig them by hand that I went and got the potatoes from and then the family that I got these eggs from because our chickens are laying like two eggs a day and I got these eggs from a family that I love and thinking about oh their kids are like growing up and look at how cute they all are and so good to have been up there and now she and I have been texting and just, you know, having fun. And like, all I was trying to do was get eggs, you know? And is it about the, this is where, again, Marcus touched on so many nerves that I have about this food situation, because when he said, it isn’t about this specific nutrient and that specific nutrient and this molecule, it’s about the whole thing the whole food is the medicine and i thought of c.s lewis when he said
Andrea:
You know in the um the dawn treader when i think eustace was like well we don’t stars are made out of gases and he said well that’s what a star is made of but that isn’t what a star is and and i thought like this isn’t like you i could give you the statistics and and we have and they’re linked in episodes and here and elsewhere, and I’ll give you the books that give you the statistics and we’ll talk about money.
Andrea:
You could tell somebody, well, here’s this reason and that reason, and there’s this nutrient and that nutrient, and here’s all the reasons to eat a local diet. But that’s not what eating a local diet is. It’s a relationship, and it’s a part of being a human. So it’s very intangible at times, which is not popular these days.
Alison:
No, no, no.
Andrea:
So money. Yeah, this is important. It is important. And I don’t want to just gloss over it. You and I have covered the money side of things in other episodes. So I’m not going to beat it too hard here. But I will be frank. We could not afford a processed food diet. I do not know how people do the local bulk and farm friendly food is the only way to go it does take time once you’re fully enmeshed in those systems and you’ve kind of got like allison you sort of know when you’re gonna get your orders of grains again or your barley or whatever like you’ve got your routine down yeah and you can plan towards it like oh we have to set this much aside because we’re working towards getting this gigantic bag of chocolate or whatever, your cocoa beans or whatever you have coming. And so it takes time to start building those infrastructures. But if you just understand that layer after layer, you’re piling on these relationship-based transactions and these relationship-based experiences that,
Andrea:
There, it doesn’t have to be, again, I think when a lot of times people complain about the price of organic food, they’re looking at the organic food in the grocery store, which I complain too. Because then you, you get the side by side and, and you’re just checking out at the same grocery store. Like, oh, look, this one’s more expensive. This one’s cheaper.
Alison:
Yeah.
Andrea:
They look the same. They smell the same. I’m going to buy the cheaper one and nothing else in your life changes. But when you have your local farm stand and you have your relationship with the farmer, it’s a completely different proposition than just buying this versus that in the grocery store. Did you have something to say on that, Alison?
Alison:
Yeah, I’m just writing something down because otherwise I’m going to forget it. Yeah, you said I’m going to buy the cheaper one. And, you know, that is so strong because we’re all on budgets. Absolutely. working really hard to feed ourselves and those we love with with good food but.
Andrea:
With not you
Alison:
Know pockets that go on forever and yet I know that if I’m in if I was to go into a supermarket if I’m in a supermarket and I see oh well look that’s the cheaper one I know from having talked to so many people you know the real cost of food is just not put on that price tag in the supermarket but if it’s cheaper it’s because somewhere something has been exploited and that might be a person a country’s resources it might be it might be a ton of things down the line but, you know that it’s that cheap because it’s come from somewhere where someone has not been paid a fair wage or something has not, has been taken for granted or literally stolen from somewhere to make it that cheap.
Alison:
And when you start to, you know, look people in the eyes when you buy your food and get to know people, then you look at that option of, oh, but it’s cheaper. And you think, oh I really don’t have much money this month it’s cheaper but then you because your humanity’s been kind of tugged at by perhaps going and buying some food locally you think well do I want to be part of a system that it’s that it’s exploiting people and we all know we can go onto the media and find stories of you know animals that are being mistreated people who are working in meat.
Alison:
Packing factories for for much less than the minimum wage you know water systems that are being used to grow food for the UK when they should be used to to make food for people in Senegal that I just explained and do I want to be part of that world do I want to give my money to making that world stronger to making that world exist or do I want to either go without this food or find an alternative that’s a bit cheaper or make my meal go further by adding some lentils in it or perhaps using liver that’s cheaper instead of this other thing is there another way I can do that and be more creative in my own kitchen and feel like a human rather than someone who’s just looked away because oh it is cheaper and I know how hard it is because I’ve been there but I know how much more whole I feel when I choose to not.
Alison:
Give my money to those systems of exploitation instead to give my money to someone who i can see and i can read about and i can touch and i can talk to um locally, right.
Andrea:
And that that is something that can strengthen in you over time
Alison:
Yeah where it becomes it happens naturally if the more you buy it locally the more you that part it’s like you have an antenna that comes up and it comes alongside with the joy that you get from building these connections there’s this antenna that comes up that says like i don’t i really don’t want to be part of that anymore how can i make that happen in the kitchen and.
Andrea:
The more you quiet that voice the harder it is to hear as well
Alison:
Yeah yeah.
Andrea:
And you and I, I know it is often considered the purview of the rich having high quality food, but jump on to the after show to hear my thoughts on that. But in episode allison that i referred to you can hear me give some actual price breakdowns and notice how while i tended to try and choose more generally available products like ones from azure so the prices were more generally common for american listeners i still pulled from my local market when pricing things and i’m in washington state and our prices and california’s and new yorks are about the highest okay well i don’t even know if we’re supposed to include alaska on this list or not but alaska just trumps everybody because there there there’s a lot shipped in yeah
Alison:
But it’s a bit cold.
Andrea:
Yeah it’s a whole thing but our prices were it’s not like they’re very low so i still pulled from my local market when i was pricing things and sometimes individual item looks more expensive, like the cabbage might be two or three times as much as a factory cabbage. But then in the face of all the other bulk and homemade savings from making the bone broth, grinding up wheat or whatever, the overall cost of each meal was still astonishingly low, and almost always lower than if you were to source it at Walmart.
Andrea:
And it was all organic as well. So another thing that happens when you are Eating local is you value the food more. Alison, there’s a quote from Joel’s book, Holy Cows and Hog Heaven, that I chuckled when I read it, because he said, get a single produce book, like something that just talks about one thing. And just really learn that thing and different ways to make it. I thought, oh, good, the oat book. yeah but when you have you know a really good source of oats you’re like let me find ways to make oats and then you start to realize why that region had all these different little niche unique things that they made out of oats or what have you because that was what they had and they got creative with it and something you and i have talked about a lot is when you value the food more more of yourself went into it more of your humanity was costed in getting that food and then you know the person it came from and you know the animal and all those things you use it better and you waste less and you repurpose more yeah in episode we literally just talked about every single thing we talked about making on there is made out of something that is usually thrown away.
Andrea:
And I would also suggest, if anybody’s interested in this, listen to episode with Sir Patrick Holden, especially if you are interested in just, is this even possible aspect of things? Because he made an entire plan for the UK to feed themselves. And he did a lot more math than I’m willing to do. And it was fascinating hearing him talk about that. Did you have anything you want to jump in with, Alison, here?
Alison:
No, other than, was that really episode ? We’ve done a lot since then. I know.
Andrea:
Oh, my gosh. I know. That’s what I thought. I looked it up. I was like, what? That’s ? Yeah. So, Alison, do we have a plan to save the world? Let’s take a quick tea break and come back with the answer.
Andrea:
Do we have a plan to save the world? No. Shame. I did work on coming up with one, but I couldn’t get it done in time for this episode to air. So the fact is that saving the world is actually not even our responsibility. And I know it feels shocking to say that. What we can do is fill our plates with one humane choice after another and we can share with everyone we come into contact with you can share this podcast with everybody literally everybody and know that you are touching a thousand plates when you do yeah sometimes it is overwhelming to think, can we make enough changes? Can we encourage enough changes? Can we change the world fast enough to see it in our lifetime? Maybe we can, maybe we can’t. I really don’t know. The trajectory of these things is not always linear and the paradigm shifts involved are much greater than just buy eggs from your neighbor.
Andrea:
Maybe Allison, you and I, whoever is listening to this, Kirsten and Luna, everybody listening, maybe we are part of the lineage of voices that are leading the quiet revolution in kitchens and on tables and in canvas tote bags filled with dirty carrots and unlabeled jars of milk.
Andrea:
Being responsible for our table, our corner, our impact on the world, that can be enough. As we gain knowledge and conviction and strength, we go past our own plate and we are able to help others with theirs. We can share books. We can read together. We can discuss ideas and the consequences of ideas. And together we can break the back of the utilitarian greed-driven machine at the root of all this industrial food because i don’t know if you know this allison but let me tell you a little secret the industrial food system is not about feeding the world it isn’t about food security it isn’t about food affordability and it definitely isn’t about your health The fact that we believe they are earnestly trying to feed the world from their hearts and that they are trying to make food affordable in some noble cause and that they give one fig about our health or the future of our children or the health of the soil, this is all a credit to their brilliant marketing. Another quote from Joel, if the government can’t be trusted to choose our religion, why should it be trusted to choose our food?
Andrea:
The truth. Peasant food is cheap. Peasant food is pleasant food. Peasant food is nourishment and comfort. Peasant food drives a local economy. It does produce security and stability. Peasant food is loving your neighbor. Peasant food does not feed the fat machine of progress or line the CEO of a food company’s pockets with another million dollars. Peasant food is real. Is there anything you wanted to add, Alison, to why we eat local and farm friendly food?
Alison:
I can’t say anything better than, than you’ve just rounded it all out there. Thank you.
Andrea:
Excellent. Well, let’s, let’s go to the after show and for everybody listening here if you want to hear any
Andrea:
Of our after shows they are available to our supporters on the private podcast feed which i just noticed the other day there’s over episodes in there so it’s there’s a lot but
