Friday, March 9, 2012

The Purple Cousin you Never Knew (And why that matters))




DAY'S FOOD
BREAKFAST:  granola, 1/2 grapefruit, coffee coffee coffee
LUNCH: baby carrots, dates, pancake with lots of peanut butter on it. later....diet pop
DINNER: potato and cauliflower falafel sandwich. trail mix for dessert.

ORIGIN OF ONE FOOD: Baby Carrots.
So there is a Carrot Museum. This makes me feel justified in my obsession with this particular root. And baby carrots, eco-wise seem to be a mixed blessing. They
1. allow more carrots, and more of them, to be used in a given harvest. The waste from cutting them out of a big carrot goes to juice or animal fodder.
But...
2.  Baby carrots are bred to be more cylindrical so slicing them was more efficient. This means higher density in the field, and thus more pesticides sprayed. Carrots rank 21st out of 53 (just missed the dirty dozen!) on the Environmental Working Group's annual  produce pesticide use list. And with McDonalds selling,  they're makin' baby carrots like bunnies out on the farm.

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION: 

Another effect of  the baby-carrot boom was selectively breeding for uniformity in color because of the now-exposed core. But carrots come in a variety of colors (even white!). True, there is a certain almost geometric beauty in their unified baby-ness on your plate.  But uniformity not only lessens diversity, it simply makes us forget we had any to begin with.

And why bother with diversity? What does diversity provide? Biologically speaking, it provides resilience.  A physical weakness, oddity, or defect one day proves life-saving the next for plants, animals humans, and ecosystems. We cannot fully know where we are headed in our shared life on this Earth. But supporting diversity will likely save us in ways we can't think of yet. The natural world especially needs to maintain its genetic diversity if it is to cope with the adverse effects of climate change.

So where today could you foster diversity?You don't have to fully articulate why you do this other than it's interesting (my purple carrots are always a conversation piece). But diversity in all areas of life--social, cultural, theological--gives us a plasticity, a bendy-ness, so we are better equipped for those problems we didn't see coming.

How can you encourage diversity? Or if you can't find any to bolster, how can you add some to your plate (or work or church or whatever)? (HINT: ask for purple carrots at the store! The reaction alone will be worth it.)

Erika

1 comment:

  1. yeah carrots! I love eating carrots with peanut butter (i know it sounds weird but really anything with peanut butter is good to me) or hummus! Also, the one time I had falafel was with you...need to have it again! You have inspired my diversity in cookihg/trying new foods! :)

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