When in Trout...

The Magician might be a northwest boy after all. Yesterday he and his dad went fishing with a friend. The Artist's day can be summed up thusly: got sunburned, got injured, got attacked by rodents, no fish. The Magician, on the other hand, is "a natural" according to our friend Michael. He spent the day casting and casting and casting. Didn't catch fish, but apparently has a great arm and just needs more practice and more luck.

Fortunately, Michael did catch fish. Four fat German brown trout that became the our family's dinner last night. Mmm...trout.

I've been reading a lot lately about food. Not just cookbooks, but books about where our food comes from and what that means for our planet and our health. It's not a pretty picture.

According to Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma ), most of what we eat is/was corn. Having spent four years attending school in a corn field, that doesn't seem so bad, except that corn is not really just a benign plant waiting for a picnic. Instead, corn is the poster child for the military-industrial complex, a way for The Man to turn petroleum products into protein: synthetic fertilizers + genetically modified corn + factory farmed beef = steak for dinner every night.

I'm not much of a ranter. Not much for loud-mouth politics. But I am getting more and more concerned about food. America is fat. I am fat. And much of it is because processed food products are cheap and easy--and tasty. And the USDA claims to be concerned, but is really a major part of the problem. Subsidies to farmers to grow corn have resulted in such a glut of cheap corn that we've had to invent ways to use it all. Hence high-fructose corn syrup has replaced sugar and beef cattle (ruminants) are forced to eat grain--with a huge dose of antibiotics to keep them from getting too sick from the unnatural diet.

So I'd like to feel superior about eating those fish last night. After all we (well, Michael) caught them and killed them ourselves. But I'm sure that the lake is stocked with baby trout each spring--and troutlings are grown in hatcheries. While not exactly the CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) that creates our burgers, it's also not quite as nature intended.

What's a thinking, health-conscious person to do? My good friend Bruce, who's a big-wig at PETA, would tell me that the answer is outstandingly simple: don't eat, wear or otherwise exploit animals. That means obvious things like no pork chops and no sport fishing. It also means no fiber arts using silk or wool. No leather. No honey.

As much as I admire Bruce's commitment, I'm not about to give up my favorite hobby: hunting for old silk clothes at the Goodwill Outlet. And I'm not going to give up a steamy bowl of ham and beans on a rainy northwest winter's day.

But I will continue to think about what my family eats. I will join Vancouver's emergent Food Coop. And I will continue to express doubt about industrialized foodways.

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PREVIOUS COMMENTS

One of the reasons I was buying venison from local hunters out in the Hill Country. I know all the arguments about hunting... we created the overpopulated herds etc., but hunting keeps them thinned and it's meat that is not yet tainted by the agro/pharmo complexes.
orion Homepage 08.13.07 - 4:40 pm
I'm going to send you a copy of the '100 mile diet'
fiona mackey 08.18.07 - 3:59 pm