Food Fight

"The consumer eats worse, and the producer farms worse. And, in their estrangement, waste is institutionalized ... We are eating thoughtlessly, as no other entire society ever has been able to do. We are eating - drawing our lives out of our land - thoughtlessly. If we study carefully the implications of that, we will see that the agricultural crisis is not merely a matter of supply and demand to be remedied by some change of government policy or some technological 'breakthrough.' It is a crisis of culture." - Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

Today I was handed the single most alarming piece of paper I have ever received in my life. More shocking than the doomsday-prophesy trash some hyper-anxious Christians litter cars with. More shocking than my first college exam – of which I knew far too few answers. Shoot, it is more shocking than any exam I ever dreamt I received and didn’t know a single answer to.

Before you look at the sheet for yourself, let me tell you what it amounts to: organized gluttony, nutritional pornography, a buffet line encompassing four city blocks. Now, if you’ve still got the stomach, take a look:



You can also check it out on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Nut_Club_Fall_Festival

Allow me to explain the layout of the sheet. The top 1/3 provides a map of booths distributing food at the 85th Annual West Side Nut Club Fall Festival in Evansville, IN (about 30 minutes from Owensboro). The bottom 2/3 lists in scholarly detail all the foods available at these booths.

Why do I have this sheet? You guessed it. I’m going to the 85th Annual West Side Nut Club Fall Festival tomorrow; I’ve been told to bring my own plastic fork so I can enjoy all the different servings. I’ve also been told there were 70,000 people at this fall festival today.

To help take the stress out of the event (and to keep myself from wandering aimlessly down the promenade of plenty), I’ve grouped the food options into three different categories: the good, the bad (for you) and the ugly. Since the ugly will probably have the least argument surrounding them, I will start with them: beefy joes, bug juice, burgoo (used to be made with squirrel), brain sandwiches (yup, that’s real cow brain, folks), chocolate covered crickets, German golf balls (who knows?!), puppy chow, road kill chili (I bet health inspector’s dig this name), scorpion suckers, turtles on a stick, and walking tacos.

The bad (for you) are also seemingly easily to identify, although these are also the items which make the fall festival such so noteworthy and such a hit. Generally, the bad (for you) foods have adjectives to warn you of their potency: words such as BBQ, Cajun, deep-fried or simply fried. These foods also include the ridiculous, the overkills of American cuisine: deep-fried Twinkies, fried donuts, BBQ nachos (now that’s what I call Tex-Mex).

The good – at least what I am imagining to be good and therefore worth a few of my bucks – include: African peanut chicken, baklava, caramel apples with nuts, portabella mushroom fajita.

I have been joking and writing this in good fun. You sense that, I hope. But, I also attached Wendell Berry’s thought at the beginning of this article for a reason. In reality, I am also deeply troubled by what this fall festival represents. I am troubled that so much of our communal life in America has become detached from the natural produce of the land and has become affiliated with highly processed and obscenely altered food.

Fall festivals use to represent the deep gladness particular communities enjoyed and shared from receiving the fruits of their labors and fields. Natural joy came from natural food and natural surroundings. Yes, they were often celebrated and marked with excess, but the excess arose out of memories of difficult seasons both behind and before.

Today, the excess is much different. Excess is the occasion, the expectation and the norm. We have become so productive and so concerned with grand ventures, we cannot begin to fathom a season without excess. Fall festivals have become carnivals – being stripped of their communal feasting and reduced to individual booths and personal pizzas.

We are able to produce more food and more calories than we could ever care or dare to enjoy. Meanwhile, we are creating just as many gluts of waste as we are pleasure.

This really is horrifying to me. It is horrifying to realize how thoughtless and systemic the whole matter is. The same thing occurs at county and state fairs. It occurs at professional sporting events complete with concessions. It occurs in food chains. “It is a crisis of culture,” as Berry says. And, he is also right to admit that we fail to recognize our excessive eating habits as a crisis, believing instead that it is a matter easily cured through medication or dieting or some impersonal corporate body who will give us true food. We remain oblivious to the blatantly deceitful advertising schemes of big food producers. We trust that if it is edible, smells good and looks good in a picture, it will not do us much harm. It is food after all, not alcohol or tobacco. All the while, we continue to consume and consume.

So, tomorrow, I’m going to try to be a bit more conscious about what I eat. Check out my “good” list again. You’ll notice they consist of whole, natural foods … well, at least I assume so. I’ll let you know after I take my trip to the 85h Annual West Side Nut Club Fall Festival.

By the way, as I look over the food options, I’m left to wonder what happened to all the real nuts. Oh, wait, they disappeared long ago beneath layers of cinnamon glaze. They’re at booth #16 if you want them.

Wes