Search for the (Sustainable?) Source

Never before did I question the journey of my food. Consider pizza, for example, a favorite late-night delight of college students like myself; I knew superficially where it came from: the vegetables, dough, sauce, and cheese—it all came from a supermarket, and presumably before that, from a farm. But I did not actually know where it originated, nor did I think much about it. Pizza was a quick, easy, and tasty solution to the midnight munchies, but it was not a cause for philosophical thought.

Apparently I am not alone. It is a more recent and common occurrence for consumers to want to know the path of their food. Through the influx of books, films, and Internet blogs, we have come to realize that it is not the easy or pleasant answer we were all expecting. We realize that we have very little knowledge or even access to information concerning the path of our food.

While experts such as Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and Robert Kenner have gone to great lengths to investigate this subject, even they found roadblocks along the way. I began to wonder how difficult it really is to discover the birthplace of these common ingredients. We hear about the universal right to nutritious food and I argue that part of that right is having the immediate access to the information behind those items.

So I set to investigate whether an average consumer, such as myself, could learn the source of my food, without it turning into a treasure hunt. Along the way, I discovered the difficulties of such a task stem from the lack of transparency and traceability of our food. If the people selling the food to us do not have the answers, how can a consumer lacking time or resources discover the path of their food?

The only real back-story I was able to find while shopping for my ingredients was the general location of origin. Though it was difficult to find the information, it was even more daunting to consider the travel time, distance and money involved with our food from seed to fork. After calculating the cost of my meal at face value, I began to consider and calculate the external costs of my non-local meal.

My conclusion to this project is that the division between the consumer and their food is wider and more opaque than I imagined. The average consumer cannot discover the origin of their food items, beyond the general location of the state or country in which it was produced. Even in the “local” farmers’ market setting of Eastern Market, the vendors have little knowledge of their products. While winter months certainly have an affect on the market’s atmosphere and farms represented, the fact of the matter is we all still need to eat regardless of season and conscious eating should not be limited to bathing suit season.