Last month, while the world celebrated World Food Day, I attended a good friend’s wedding, and, with help from the rest of the wedding party, raucously ate the bride’s bouquet.
Eating her bouquet? My friend, concerned about the environmental impact of the cut flower industry, carried a beautiful bunch of flowering kale down the aisle. She also set the tables at the reception with edible centerpieces made of purple carrots, potatoes and kohlrabi. The caterers were chosen for their commitment to sustainable food as much as their fine recipes.
That was a pretty unusual food day, even for me. I’m home now, back to my regular diet of organic veggies and raw milk from local farms.
Did World Food Day change my life? No. I suspect that’s true for most people who celebrated it, whether their festivities were zany like mine or completely serious. That’s fine. The value of World Food Day, like Earth Day or May Day, is not in the power of the event itself. It’s in its ability to energize, inspire or educate people about a cause.
World Food Day is worth celebrating because it can literally feed us as food activists. It’s a moment to come together, celebrate our triumphs, try something new, or do something a little crazy. Like going to a wedding and eating the bride’s bouquet.
What really matters, of course, is not how sustainable my meals were last Saturday. What matters is my everyday diet. What matters even more than the sustainability of what goes into my mouth in global terms is the sustainability of those choices for me. Deciding to become a vegan subsistence farmer might zero out my carbon debt over the next six months, but it won’t help anyone if six months from now I find myself exhausted by a choice that doesn’t fit my lifestyle and boomerang back to a diet of McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts.
There are, ultimately, many right paths to a sustainable diet. You can choose to be vegan or to support small meat-producing local farms. You can grow your own vegetables or subscribe to a CSA or shop at your farmer’s market. You can become an expert cook or suss out the responsible restaurants and delivery services in your area.
What matters is that you do something. Begin where you are, and take a step forward, toward a more sustainable diet. One that will bring more health and life to you and the planet. You can do this whether you’ve never questioned your diet at all or you’ve been eating with the planet’s health in mind your whole life. Taking one small step will feel good, will give you a space to take another. It will, in the long run, prove more sustainable than leaping off a dietary cliff.
What steps have you taken to “green” your diet in the past year? What can you commit to in the coming year?
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