In such contention times, sometimes it’s difficult to find a topic upon which all agree. But I think this is one: every human being needs to eat. Needs food. Needs nourishment.
I think nourishment is the key, here. Every civilization, from the beginning, had to find a way to feed themselves. In the beginning were the hunters and gatherers. The men hunted. The women gathered. Women, at this time, were often carriers of the flames, the embers of the fires which cooked the food gathered. Not all food is edible raw. I always find that rather neat. Easy to identify with women carrying this sacred, in many societies, element.
Cooking is strongly associated with women. Men were often enlisted by women to protect them from moochers. An old old saying, “The fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” and we can picture women perfecting this art, surrounded by men, and becoming more sexually attractive to exploit the need for protection and I can imagine them thinking of ways to make ‘their’ men the strongest of all. Feed them good. Make them last.
Okay, we can give birth and nurse a baby, but we have to keep them alive so we can feed them when they grow up. So they can protect us and hunt and gather the food to feed them with. Seems to me this all got kind of bolloxed up with the advent of fast food chains. Filling the belly with food is easy. Drive in. Pick up. Stuff in mouth. Swallow.
But, there’s the rub. Does it nourish? “To provide with food or the substances necessary for life and growth?” And, as a man, must you think of protecting the girl who hands you a package of something to fill your belly. Anyhow, she hasn’t cooked the food so who cares what she looks like?
So, it seems, food got at least four times removed from nourishment. Women nourish. Men and children eat. And, I think, far too many of them care what as long as it doesn’t incite the gag reflex. It should smell good. It should taste good. It certainly should fit in your hands so you can carry it to your mouth. If you have time to look at it, it should look good. If you don’t have time to look at it, who cares? If someone could find a way to make your hamburger on a bun sing, or at least hum, it would appeal to all your senses. Perfect.
But does it nourish? I think women still think to nourish. I think men don’t give it a thought and whoever heard a kid say, “Mom I need some more zucchini ’cause it’s good for me ” But here’s another rub: zucchini only contains these vital elements if they are in the soil the zucchini has been grown in.
Then there’s another rub. There are powerful and rich high-tech companies who have fond ways to genetically modify foods. zucchini is one of them. zucchini, according to some sources, are among the ten worst vegetables to eat because of this modification.
With little regulation and safety tests performed by the GMO companies themselves, we have no way of knowing what risks these lab-created foods pose to us.
This is where it gets sticky. But one thing, I think, we can agree on, women, homemakers, seem to be more concerned than men. After all, we are they who nourish. Feed.
Here’s another factor. Today so many women have to work outside the home to keep food n the table. They gather money to buy food. They must often eat on the run, feed their family on the run. They have bellies to fill, too. Not all of them have the time to research. To study. To keep up with all the extraordinary changes going on in the world about them.
But they can observe. They can ask questions. Often they don’t need protection. They are professionals. Doctors and nurses and teachers. They are judges and lawyers and politicians. They are gardeners and farmers. Small gardeners and farmers. They keep bees. They milk goats. They’ve got their fingers in all the pies. Their voices will be heard.
Food and nourishment go together. Food and nourishment and women, like salt and pepper and spices in a soup, go even better together. Listen to us, please.
On Kauai we are often noisy.
bettejo 