Could you do it if your food depended on it?

            One morning, someone walks up to you on the street and says he will give you $1000 if you can succeed at his challenge. You jump at the opportunity and agree. He then tells you that you must only feed yourself with food for that entire day if you know exactly where it came from. There you are on the sidewalk hungry and bewildered at what you just agreed to. Then you have an idea: organic food!!! You laugh and tell the man he just lost $1000 because you can go buy organic food at the grocery store. The man smiles and says that even though it is less processed, do you really know where that food came from? Who grew or raised it? He’s right. What do you do now? (stomach growls…)

I thought of this scenario and realized I would have no clue where to go to buy food. It is sad, but true. Here at Hanover I would only have an idea after learning from our professors that we are going to a farmer’s market in Madison. I’m from Indianapolis, would I know if I was at home? Around where I live I have only seen people selling food on the streets a few times. If I stopped there, I would still have to find out if those people grew the food. Luckily my great Uncle has a huge garden. I could get fruit and vegetables from him.

 What about meat? My brother hunts and hopefully he might have some deer still left in his freezer. If not, I’m probably out of luck. Although I didn’t know the butcher that he took the deer to anyway. What if I wanted bread? I maybe could find someone who made the bread, but what about individual ingredients used to make that bread? Thinking about the ingredients is far fetched, but the man could say it technically is still in line with this challenge. I think many people would fail this challenge and not win $1000. 

                         What kind of statement does that make about our food?

            It is sad and somewhat scary how much faith (or maybe lack of thought) we have about where the food we put into our bodies comes from.  What we have learned so far has greatly changed my perspective on food, even if organic, that I buy from the grocery store. Although it takes less effort than what was first proposed, I think it creates greater risk for the nourishment of our bodies.