I could mention her relevant undergraduate study, work and volunteer experience, and publication credit, but what’s really important is that Keely O’Connell is a very good friend of mine and that I think she has some really interesting things to say about food. I’m Dan Copulsky, and Keely answered my questions in June 2010.
What restrictions on the food you eat do you follow or try to follow?
Restrictions is a word that I wouldn’t choose to use: I think it perpetuates this idea that something must necessarily be lost in the process of changing the way that you eat. I like to think of what I’m doing to my food experience as amplifying or enhancing or any word that means making it BIGGER. Originally, when my manfriend Sean and I set out to change our eating habits, we wanted to eat primarily food from local sources that use practices that we feel are environmentally and socially responsible. This works well during the summer and fall, when a fantastic variety of foods are available at farmers markets, and less well in the winter and early spring. We did some canning, dehydrating and freezing during the growing season, but it wasn’t enough to get us through this winter. We had to turn to other sources for most of our food as we’d been doing all along for exotic but indispensable things like sugar, olive oil, and ginger. We sought sources that had qualities other than local-ness to recommend them. Most of the time this meant buying more expensive organic foods, but when you end up with a grocery and a good feeling about it, it’s okay. The good feeling about it is what we really shop for when we buy food.
What concerns shape these choices?
1. Personal and interpersonal well-being:
Last spring I made the decision to change my foodyhabits. I’d been stressing my sweetheart out with my exhaustion and moodiness, I’d had the flu twice, and I’d been unhappy and strung out for months because I didn’t enjoy the food served in my college’s dining hall and didn’t eat it. I didn’t have time to cook for myself much. When I did have time I was usually too worn out to bother. It sucked. Things change and now I eat the way I do in part because my health is on the line. I’m pretty much a nutritional philistine, but I know that eating less meat puts me at a lower risk of heart disease and other crap. There are health benefits to eating fresh food, seasonal food, organic food, and home-cooked food, and I’m going to be tactful and shut up because I’m not very well informed about this and I want to talk about other things. My health is a factor in my choices, but it isn’t as important to me as the others.
Sean and I have a blast cooking together. We usually end up talking about our dinner at the table: the origin of our vegetables, the recipes we’ve tried, what to do differently next time. I hope we have a garden to play in together someday. This food thing is responsible for a lot of our closeness. It’s a passion that we’ve discovered and enacted together. Most romantic. I’ve also found that with a partner it’s easier to take responsibility for things like nutrition. I have to take care of him too, see?
2. Environmental stewardship:
Eat local, save gas: eat organic, save the planet. Less packaging, fewer harmful algal blooms, better fats in your meat, reduced danger from spinach, soil enhancement instead of degradation… I could elaborate. Lots of people could. Ask around if you’re interested in details. Ask me! I realize that my answers don’t all fit neatly under their headings, by the way, but hey, this thing is all about integrating systems anyway. Buzz word: sustainability.
3. Social responsibility:
Capitalism runs on choice: If I pay for a product, I am responsible for the consequences of that product’s production, human and environmental. Civic duty is something I’ve been turning over in my head a lot lately. For me, it plays in right about here, though for others it may not. That’s a different conversation. Others may feel that it’s their job to buy things at Wal-mart to stimulate the economy or some crap. I feel that it’s my job to choose my purchases carefully, since by doing so I can help to keep money in my community (maybe the farmer I pay will buy her daughter a prom corsage at the flower shop that forks over my paycheck) or in the hands of people who will put it to sound uses instead of in the distant pockets of people who don’t give a damn about me or my community or my planet and its future. That crap baffles me: I think evil tycoons must all be sterile or something.
I want to mention that I really dislike hearing people talking about how they’d like to buy local or organic food and citing the “prohibitive” cost as the reason that they don’t. This food costs so much because its sale is supporting an individual or a family or a business that uses practices that you say that you want to see flourish. If you truly find the cost prohibitive, you shouldn’t be whining, you should be finding a way to eat that sits right with your morals and your wallet (and your belly).
How do you explain your diet to others, particularly when they are offering you food?
I try to eat little meat that doesn’t meet my standards, though I have a weakness for pepperoni. Sometimes it’s easiest to tell people that I’m a vegetarian. I used to lie and say I was a vegan because I don’t like cheese, but for some reason I adore pizza. I couldn’t live without pizza and butter, so I stopped that.
I don’t like to antagonize people about food. It’s sensitive. If they want to talk, I’ll explain my choices, but I don’t volunteer the information most of the time. It’s not really a restrictive diet: it centers around the notion of choice, and if it seems most prudent to accept an offer of food, I choose not to turn it down for my political agenda. It’s just that: MY political agenda. I don’t need to go foisting it off on the generous.
There’s a stigma attached to high quality food, meat in particular. You can’t ask someone to serve you organic vegetables and grass-finished beef because they’re expensive. You get this tolerant “oh you’re privileged” thing. It’s true I’ve been lucky this year to have a job and a free place to live, but I eat much less meat than most people do. Personally, I think the cost works out. Trying to explain that you eat only these high quality (and yes, expensive) foods looks snobby and critical. Detaching these foods from this stigma would go a long way toward making communication about eating habits much easier.
There’s a good word for people who don’t eat meat. There’s a good word for people who eat seafood but not other kinds of meat, though not enough people know it. Do you think it would be good if we had some more words to describe dietary choices like yours?
Since not enough people know the word pescatarian I don’t think having more labels would help. If people did learn them, they might create expectations and collect associations that don’t fit what individual eaters are trying to do with their choices. The way we eat can be influenced by things ranging from religion to politics to personal taste. The degree to which we adhere to strict dietary rules varies similarly. A few umbrella words can’t begin to cover that sort of variety.
It would be phenomenal if people were more interested in having conversations about food and eating-related choices, but we’re not. We like the stereotype, the quick-and-easy box with packaged implications (lunchables).
I’m all about adjectives because they link up together in descriptive, short-version-of-a-long-story-type strings. I don’t try to be a vegetarian, a vegan, a locavore or a raw foodist; instead, I try to be a discerning, well-informed, well-nourished, food-eater who might sometimes be vegetarian or vegan or local-voracious. I guess I just like the wiggle-room that adjectives allow. This is a hard question to answer. It goes so closely together with the question about explaining my foodychoices to others: for me, the choice is more political than nutritional, more choice-based than strict. I’m still working on the language I want to use to talk about this thing. Others have to find their own words.
If someone wants to eat better but doesn’t know where to start, do you have any suggestions for a good first step?
1. Find a buddy.
2. Go to the farmers market.
3. Try a food you’ve never tried before. At market this fall we came across a southern Appalachian heirloom squash called a candy-roaster. The vendor told us that it was uncommonly sweet and delicious and gave us instructions for preparing it to best effect. We tried it, it tasted like candy, and we wished we’d bought more.
4. Try cooking at home more often. Homemade food is usually better tasting and better for you. And the more you do this, the more you’ll appreciate quality ingredients.
Be clear with yourself about the reasons you want to eat better (and what “better” means for you). Remember that food is one of the most basic elements of life. A dramatic change in the way you eat could necessitate a dramatic change in the way you live. Take it slow, make it fun and don’t get discouraged by costs in time or money: remember why you want to make the investment. Be creative.
How do you hope to continue changing what you eat as time goes on?
I have just started my own food garden and my radishes are already beyond the wee-little-cotyledon stage. Next year I’m thinking of rounding up some friends to rent a place with a little more room (right now I live in a town) so that I can have chickens and maybe a pig. I’m learning to make more and more of my own food at home from ingredients of my choosing. Pasta is my favorite example of something that’s about as easy to make at home as it is to buy. I hope to discover more foods like that, put more food by in the summer and fall, eat more seasonally, and learn skills (I recently learned to gut and fillet fish!) that will help me to become less dependent on the grocery store.
Self-righteousness is unappealing, but if a person sincerely believes they’re doing something good, then it’s no surprise they think it would be good if other people did likewise. Is there a good way to try to influence others’ choices about what they eat?
Feed them really excellent food and let them exclaim. Invite them back for more. If they ask you to talk, talk. If you’re really passionate about this stuff, let it show in how well informed you are, not in how aggressive you can be (I’m bad at this).
I went to see a movie called FRESH with my father a few days ago. It’s all about food sources. Off the top of my head, I’d recommend that, King Corn, and Food Inc. to anyone who likes documentaries. There are also excellent books about food: for starters there’s Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma or Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
This stuff is happening now and it’s happening fast. When I saw FRESH with my dad the other day, he told me that he thinks political apathy is one of the biggest characteristics of my generation. I think so much of that has to do with our sense of impotence. Every change seems to be in the hands of the card sharks, so it’s easy to just stop playing. This, though, isn’t voting in an election that occurs every four years; this happens three times a day.