Why Fresh Food?

Tabloid TV has possibly - in one instance anyway - done something good. A couple of nights ago on Today Tonight we were introduced to Sally Davies, a New York-based artisit who decided to take a photograph of a McDonalds Happy Meal every day, for 180 days, after she purchased it. Known as the McDonalds Photography Project, the photograph of the hamburger, bun and chips on the 180th day shows virtually no change, decomposition, mould or any of the other changes that would normally be seen on "old food".

Contrast this to my kitchen table, where I am fortunate enough to be looking out my back door onto our small kitchen garden - planted with an assortment of herbs, greens and flowers. Most of our meals are supplemented with at least one ingredient from this garden that I threw together with a few rocks and a bit of soil. Getting away from the TV is not a problem here: my one-year old daughter loves this part of the garden and eagerly stands at the back door each morning, waiting for us to take her outside where she promptly sets about exploring the garden with all her senses.

I wonder when we became tricked into believe "fast food" is more convenient? Is it really more convenient to spend the money, petrol and time that it takes to get all this fast food, or simply to step outside our back doors (or reach over our neighbour's fence) to delight in real produce on our kitchen tables?

I have always loved food - food is (after my wife and daughter) my life's passion. Michael Polan (In Defence of Food) writes: "...historically, people have eaten for a great many reasons other than biological necessity. Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, about expressing our identity".

In this blog, and through my work, I can't wait to share this journey of re-claiming our pleasure, our community, our relationships, our children and our identity back for ourselves. I believe we can do this through rediscovering our relationship with real food, in our own backyards.

Please join me.