Our government has boldly stepped forward in their recent guidelines and told us what  we all know.  The answer to obesity is to eat less, less sodium, and  more fruits and vegetables instead. But as Mark Bittman points out in A Food Manifesto for the Future, that doesn’t mean putting a slice of tomato on your cheeseburger and fries.  And if fat people could eat less– don’t you think they would?

I stand at the sink rinsing and scrubbing vegetables wondering if all this washing is doing any good.  Why wouldn’t pesticides and herbicides and fertilizers get absorbed by growing plants?  I’m sure Big Ag has an answer.

 Who do you believe?  Big Ag, the processed food industry, or your local organic farmer?

 We’re so used to finding out that we’ve been lied to, I’m expecting any day a warning that organic foods are a fraud as well. 

 But not believing anything is as foolish as believing everything.

 In the meantime I buy a box of produce every week from Abundant Harvest Organics   located in Kingsville. Simply, they are “an alliance of small family farmers in Central California dedicated to growing superior organic produce and getting it to you in the simplest manner possible…without the use of chemicals or packaging materials. We grow locally and supply locally, cutting the need for expensive and wasteful fuel and packing resources.”

 This is not an ad for Abundant Harvest. It’s expensive at $21.80 a week for one person and I know how lucky I am to be able to afford it.   However,  tomatoes do not taste like baseballs; apples are so sweet they spurt juice when you bite in. 

 As I write in February 2011, tomatoes are not in season, but apples, kiwi, and oranges are, and carrots you eat like candy. I’ve learned how to deal with kale but daikon radish must be a taste acquired in childhood. I grew up long ago in the north of Ontario, Canada, where fresh produce made it to Toronto maybe, but not where we lived. But ah, the peaches in summer, the figs, and great tasting kinds of lettuce and greens I’ve never seen before.

 Each week a flyer accompanies your box telling you the name of the farmer and his location in the Central Valley and some of Old Uncle Vern’s homespun teachings. Where I live the delivery truck brings our order to Lebec and a volunteer freights it up the hill for all of us.  I like that idea.

 Bittman suggests that people who produce and sell actual food should receive subsidies rather than corn and soy farms who grow food for livestock and cars. How about an increased subsidy for school lunches instead? Small farmers and those who work for them should receive a living wage?

Whew! What a revolutionary idea.

But I see this week the government has sold us out to Monsanto.  They’re licking their chops now over at Monsanto.  Oh, don’t get me started on Monsanto.