So here I am in the land of fast food.
Food is not only about how it tastes when you eat it.
– food technologists can make food taste good.
But how did the food taste before the additives were added?
And how does it feel in your gut after you have eaten?
Fast food ruins my digestion. To be avoided at all costs.
Thank god for fresh food at Flagstaff farmers’ market
Above – fresh organic beets and chard from Seacat Gardens.
And Flagstaff farmer’s market now accepts food stamps.
– thanks, Kennedy, for that hot-off-the-press info.
Praise-be for Community Shared Agriculture too.
Such as Crooked Sky Farms
where you can give your labour in exchange for a share in the harvest.
Community Shared Agriculture – like fast food – originated in the United States.
Ah, complex beautiful country, providing both the problems
and the cutting-edge solutions!
Real Food Lover 
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No no Elisabeth, fast food doesn’t taste better!
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Eeeek – did I make it sound as if I think fast food tastes better than real food?!
Thanks Choclette.
Let me correct that immediately.
What I meant to say is that fast food can taste tasty because of the additives and other food technology chemicals.
So taste is not the true test.
The true test of fast food is how you feel a few hours later!
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empirical testing on the family suggests that home grown (organic in all but certification) tastes best, organic and farm produce (no chemicals but no certification) next, followed by minimal chem. farm produce, shop fresh (local), local authentic restaurants, friend’s family fests, local ‘fast food’ and village feasts, in that order, with supermarket and american style fast food somewhere at the bottom along with school and hospital food.
this may be distorted (a) by having a daughter who is proud to have reached twenty without ever tasting a macdoh and (b) by living in breizh (brittany) where a family fest can sit anything up to a hundred and fifty people to a meal which starts around midday and reaches the after coffee spirits somewhere around seven in the evening (often for two or three days in a row)!
incidentally, i would like to suggest that the breton habit of cooking filled galettes (the buckwheat pancake not to be confused with the cake) and crêpes at all public occasions is faster than american fast food and probably predates the colonisation of either brittany or america.
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Just eating my garden’s raspberries and strawberries and raw chocolate mousse as I read this…the more I eat good food, the less my digestive system tolerates rubbish, be it fast or slow.
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Hi Catharine – I know exactly what you mean…And funnily enough had this exact same conversation yesterday with Kennedy, who is a vegan.
Yes, it is true. The more you eat well, the more your body notices when it is being invaded by unwholesome additions!
By the way – thanks again, Catharine, for that super vegan mousse recipe. Easier than a classic mousse with only three ingredients: avocados + agave nectar + cocoa. Yes!
Seng-gye, I love your descriptions of Brittany food. France – where food is still real…
Apparently the countries such as Britain with a poor food culture are the ones where the industrial revolution came early – the people moved off the land to the overcrowded cities and lost control of their food supply.
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Nice article Elisabeth and some interesting comments. I too am picking fresh raspberries & strawberries off my plot – sooo tasty.
I get a big kick out of producing daily meals from fresh ingedients. It’s not difficult and need not be time consuming. There are plenty of great recipes around, including yours of course. The thought of eating a McD turns my stomach now although I’ll admit to bending to the pressure when my daughter was small.
I love the French approach too – good weekly markets & long, slow, sociable meals. Not so many TV dinners over there! You make a very valid point about the industrial revolution. Never thought about that before.
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Hi Gambo – nice to hear from you and glad also to hear you are enjoying the fresh fruits from your plot.
Your comment about McD made me think about something I often conjure with.
Pardon me as I go with it…and it is: how do I talk about problems (as I see it) with junk food without inducing guilt?
Put another way: I feel passionately about breastfeeding, about the way baby formula has become a money-making exercise, that breasts have become fetishised and babies have lost out.
But I do not want to make a woman for whom breastfeeding has not worked out to feel bad…
Or is it inevitable? Yet guilt is not a good motivator.
Ai! Hard!
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Elisabeth, how I would love to discuss these conundrums over a plate of good food. A few lines in a comment box just don’t do it for me!
I do not feel guilty about eating junk food per se but I do feel guilty when I submit to the power of advertising.
I do agree with you wholeheartedly about baby formula becoming a money-making exercise. My first two children are adopted and therefore bottle feeding was a necessity. My third child was breastfed and what a joy to participate in this very natural form of nutrition. Having said this breast feeding was not easy for my partner at first but it is thanks to a good midwife and perseverance that she succeeded. I fear many women may take the easier option at times, but as a male this is probably a very unfair comment.
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You did well for a restricted comment box! I am sorry I did not reply sooner. I was on a Greyhound bus going to Las Vegas, which is two iconic things in one sentence. Thank you for your thoughtful and heartfelt comment. I sometimes wonder whether breastfeeding can be hard because we have so few models, and it is hidden away. And has been thus for centuries? Rich people had wet nurses….Maybe we have to reclaim breastfeeding – the original Real Food – to its rightful, natural (and financially unexploited) place.
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What a relief to hear of a US real food movement.. with co-operative, worker supplys systems.. while I never doubted it exists.. hearing about it gives me a sense of hope for the future. May they continue to grow
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