Subway Sunday: Eat Fresh?

Every Sunday my fraternity brothers and some friends go out and enjoy a nice subway lunch. We have determined that this is the best hangover remedy for any Saturday night bad decisions. Our logic is that fresh foods make you feel fresh and if you eat better you will feel better. I think this is pretty sound logic. But this past Sunday after eating, I got to thinking, where does Subway's food actually come from? When I am "eating fresh," what does fresh actually mean? Then we came to class on Monday and we saw how fresh foods actually are...
In the movie Food Fight, they discussed how the government dictates what we eat and by doing so, they add sooooo many things to foods just to preserve them to get them to the stores. One of the things that I found that was added to almost all of Subway's food items was sodium erythorbate, which helps to preserve the pink color of meats and preserves the flavor of fresh foods. I realize that all of my blogs have been about the government and "the man" bringing us down, but stop to realize how true this is! Big business is leading to our consumerism and provoking capitalism, leading us to have foods that don't even taste the same anymore, including the freshness of Subway's food! What is the world coming too?

This week when we foraged, and by foraged, I mean we went out and picked a lot of weeds that looked like they could be eaten. I tasted some of them, but I just have no idea how people could have foraged back in the day and survived off of the land. My grandparents had gardens and I used to collect food from there and eat from that, but this was a new experience. This was what fresh is like...so what exactly is fresh now? I read another blog that said that it takes 6 weeks to train your taste buds. What have we trained our taste buds to associate fresh with? What exactly is our version of fresh now?

The Subway Sunday did get me to thinking, how fresh is my food? How many preservatives are in my tomatoes? Where does it come from? What is in it? It turns out, they really try to keep it local. Well as local as they can be I guess... The Subway website made me realize how the produce economy can be dictated by a large corporation such as Subway. If Subway wanted to only go local and natural, they could dictate how farmers grow. Why shouldn't this be an option? When we talk about small changes, think about a small change that ONE company can make to change a large aspect of our society. If this were to happen, think about how it could affect schools! We might be able to finally get things on track for a healthier lifestyle. Until then, I guess we will have to "eat fresh" but never really know what freshness means until we get back to a different life or realize how natural things can be. The take away message: What can we do to change? What is fresh? Try to forage and listen to what your taste buds are telling you about freshness.