From the Editor: Table Talk

In the political world of food and water, an array of trends good and bad are running neck and neck. It’s hard to be sure which ones are getting the upper hand. They’re all bidding to define our moment.

It’s hopeful, for instance, to hear that some 300,000 people marched recently in New York City to protest global inaction on climate change. Protesters are connecting earth care to the health and integrity of our food and water. They’re determined to be heard.

At the same time, labor conditions in the food industry languish. Many who harvest our food aren’t paid enough to afford a healthy meal for their own families, as reported by foodfirst.org. Union representation is in decline. For restaurant employees, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers is as low as $2.13 an hour, which hasn’t changed in two decades.

It’s encouraging that the number of local farmers’ markets, nearly 8,300, is higher than ever, putting a human face on the food system and reconnecting growers and consumers in new ways. Disgust is rising over junk food, the processing, the sugar, the calories.

Elsewhere in America, however, food typically travels 1,500-2,500 fuel-burning miles from farm to plate, an increase of up to 25 percent since 1980, according to Home Grown: The Case For Local Food In A Global Market (Worldwatch Paper #163).

And nearly 24 million Americans still live in food-desert neighborhoods, where fresh produce doesn’t exist because no grocery store is nearby. Because of bad diet and other factors, more than one-third of U.S. adults are obese. Their annual medical costs are some $1,400 higher than those of people of normal weight, says the Centers for Disease Control.

Yes, the food system is vast and contradictory, ever adjusting to factors of market, weather, and policy. It’s difficult to summarize or assess. It’s not always easy to know where our food or water come from or what’s in it or what its true cost is when you factor the damage done to land, groundwater, cholesterol count, and immune system. 

We all need help where we can find it – advice, arguments, theological hints. From Michael Pollan’s book Food Rules, I read: Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce. 

From We the Eaters: If We Change Dinner, We Can Change the World by Ellen Gustafson: “Most of us can afford to spend more on good food by recapturing all the money we spend on ‘bad food’ and regularly eating out and redirecting it toward good food, and more eating in.” 

And First Corinthians declares: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.”

A book I keep handy these days is Jennifer R. Ayers’ Good Food: Grounded Practical Theology (Baylor, 2013). She gives a deft primer on the global food system and argues that people of faith should respond with hope and resistance.

She identifies several Christian moral commitments that are inspired by a theology of the table. It was around Eucharistic tables and mealtimes that Jesus created communities and challenged hearers. A Eucharistic theology, she says, asks us to give priority to the hungry, seek justice and dignity for the workers of the land, care gently for the earth, and reestablish bonds with the sources of our food. Get to know the environmental costs to our food and water. Support farmers. Start youth gardening programs. Share meals. Connect with the contributions being made right now by “everyday visionaries.” Practice hope, she says.

“Healing the food system is not solely a matter of addressing intellectual or even theological gaps, but of repairing real, material relationships in the world,” writes Ayers, who teaches at Emory’s Candler School of Theology. 

“It requires, quite literally, getting one’s hands dirty – planting, cooking, harvesting, feeding – and a willingness to persevere even in the midst of a broken food system.”

Every contributor to this Fall 2014 Reflections speaks in some way to a reckoning: the need to be more attentive to what we eat and drink, the consequences of inattention, the good effects of discovering the good earth again.