Dear Dad,
The more that we buy and eats real whole foods the more widely available and affordable they will become. It’s called “voting with your fork” and it’s a result of supply and demand economics.
Each day you face various food choices. Depending what you eat and don’t eat you are supporting more or less manufacturing or growing of those foods. A bowl of breakfast cereal is a vote for greater production of processed breakfast cereals. A bowl of steel cut oats is a vote for more oat farming. Day by day, person by person, these food votes make up our population’s food culture. Each meal you have an opportunity to vote yes, no, or not participate.
When I played high school baseball our away games consisted of many long bus rides down the PA turnpike. Week after week the only place our bus would stop for dinner on the way home was a convenient store with an attached McDonald’s. Each week I’d take my $10 of per diem and slide it right into my pocket. To most people it looked like a forced choice: pick the better of two unhealthy options, either McDonald’s or a handful of snacks from the convenient store. I saw a third option, non participation, and I refused to support “the better of two bad options.” Instead, I advocated that our bus stop somewhere else next time and when that didn’t work I planned ahead with a healthy snack. Skipping a meal was fine, no food vendor is entitled to my dollars even if they seemed like the only options.
Each meal that you eat your casting a vote. Choose wisely. It might be the most impactful thing you do all day.
With Love,
JSR