Get Mad, Get Prepared, Occupy our Food Supply

Get Mad, Get Prepared, Occupy our Food Supply

                    To honor Occupy Our Food, Anthony and I would like everyone to take a moment to think about food. Not, oooh what scrumptuousness can I get my hands on right at this moment—but food, the essential building block of life. If you don’t refuel your body with food you will die. It’s as simple as that; we all know that.

But, what would you do if your food was no longer under your control? Soylent Green is People, people—and that’s the mentality overriding our freedom to choose what to eat and what to stock our pantries with.

Anthony and I started this blog with two rants on food spurned by the so-called “Food Safety Acts” of the past 2 to 3 years, “Food Fascism, Monsanto, and Hillary Clinton= the Death of Organic Farming,” and “Get Angry, Get Informed and then get yourself cooking...” But, 3 years after they were first posted, we’re no further ahead. If anything, we, as a nation are worse.

America is about freedom, but we’re no longer free. Our election process is a sham. Our representatives do not represent We The People, and unless you have 7-figures-or-more behind your name, you are not the voice of our nation. This isn’t a political argument either, because both sides of our outdated two-party-system have stances about our lack of freedom. One thing that is often ignored by our political process and our politically-driven society is the simple topic of food.

Food is no longer our choice, not when we’re facing the worst consolidation of food-processing and food-selling power in our nation’s history. When less than half a dozen companies (Cargill, Monsanto, ADM and Dupont) are responsible for the animal and vegetable products hitting our tables, it’s time to wake up. Teddy Roosevelt is doing cartwheels in his grave at the idea of the monopolies controlling our food supply—monopolies we’ve been duped into ignoring.

Because of our need to marginalize the whistle-blowers, most people would think that GMO is some new branch of the Russian secret police and that Monsanto is Starbuck’s new flavor of cappuccino. But Monsanto is one of the leading problems facing our nation-- and no one in the government is doing a blessed thing about it. Why? Because the current administration-- picking up where the previous administrations (going back to Bush Sr) left off-- has surrounded itself with ex-Monsanto execs like Tom Vilsack heading the USDA and Michael Taylor, head of the FDA. 

What do you do? Pound the pavement? Wear a Guy Fawkes mask when shopping at the local MegaMart? Stock up on Freeze-Dried meals and crawl into your Doomsday bunker? You can if you want—but be warned, thanks to the Current Administration’s National Defense Authorization Act you’ll be branded as a potential terror threat—either because you have more than seven days worth of food in your pantry, or because you know Anonymous has nothing to do with conspiracy theories about who really wrote Hamlet.

But—what do you do? Stop and think. Think about what you and your family eat. Think about why you eat it. Think about what’s in what you eat, why it’s there, who put it there—and think again WHY? Research what’s on the label and start eating the way your great-grandmother did.

Will this mean you have to change? Yes. But, this kind of change, is good. It’s liberating. It’s hard—but we were never meant to eat all our meals out of a deep fryer and no, High Fructose Corn Syrup, ahem, Corn Sugar, IS NOT the same as honey or cane sugar.

If you’re a bit right of center, I’m not telling you to become a tree-hugging-hippy-liberal who hugs cows and wears Berkenstocks. If you’re left of center, I’m not telling you to teabag yourself or stock up on more guns, more ammo, more fried butter on a stick. But, I am telling you that unless you prepare your own meals—and do your best to get fresh, locally grown produced food—you are doomed because the Zombie Apocalypse is here my friends and you are it.

If you’re willing to change then you are your own best hope. Reconsider your life in relation to food. Understand that much of what you’ve been accustomed to eat—and much of how you prepare what you eat, even how you shop—has been programmed into you. I remember my mother always telling me that when she was a girl, things she bought-- like Hershey's candy bars and Heinz ketchup-- were bigger. We see that happening now. You pay more money and get less: which is part of the programming, and for a fair number of us, we have to step outside our comfort zone, move beyond the lemmings that are okay with Big Box Store tycoons telling you that your pound of butter is now 12 ounces. It means we have to deprogram and get back to our nature as Human Beings: grow your own, make your own, preserve your own, and stock up on whatever you can't grow yourself.

As much as I love a good rant, there is a point here—and it’s a sandwich of the latest television fad Doomsday Preppers, our nation’s policies on domestic terror, and current trends toward so-called ‘Food Safety.’ About two weeks ago, I caught the last half of an episode of Doomsday Preppers. Immediately thinking hubby would enjoy, I hit record and searched for more episodes of the show. After watching the full episode with him, and a subsequent one airing the same night, we spent the next few days discussing the ideas presented in the show. I know many “Preppers”—who cringe at the term—call the show “Hoarders with Guns”—and it is, minus the cat-skeletons and feces sculptures. But, I started thinking about how we, as humans, have been conditioned in terms of food, preparedness, and terror threats.

As far as the NatGeo show goes, half are nutters, and the other half are presented as nutters, but that’s not the point. What the show does delve—without expressly stating it, and much to the chagrin of the Producers—is the idea of preparedness and food. Discussions about food preparedness and food sustainability aren’t new, but the program may have accelerated existing discussions, joined facets of the discussion, and simply brought the discussion into the mainstream eye.

When my husband and I were kids, a good portion of our lives—independent of each other—were devoted to preparedness. That doesn’t mean we were raised in bunkers, or taught how to handle weapons—much to our chagrin. But, being raised just shy of poverty, we were taught to always be prepared for that rainy day—particularly in terms of food. Anthony’s parents were gardeners. They were big believers in the works and philosophies of Helen and Scott Nearing. Anthony was raised to value sustainability, canning, home preserving, and being able to go into the pantry and enjoy last year’s rhubarb jam at any given moment.

My mother, on the other hand, developed near allergic reactions to herbs, raw veggies, and gourmet anything. She now detests the culinary arts—though she’s an addict of the Food Network. But before I was 10, mom was a gardener and actually enjoyed making happy, delicious “accidents” in the kitchen. She taught me what she learned as a girl, growing up during and after World War II—cook it yourself if you can, and stock up when you can’t. Mom would get anything if it was on sale, and get lots of it. When I was a kid, before she became programmed into buying prepared food, she made her own tomato sauce, her own soup, even her own pizza. She wasn’t a canner and didn’t know how to preserve food, but she used the freezer religiously, and we made sure our pantry was full of pasta, pre-bought canned food, flour, sugar, and rice. Because money was so tight, when we could afford to go shopping, she bought enough to last us until the following month. We never shopped for a few days—we’d get things that would last us: dried milk, ramen noodles, tins of beans, oatmeal, bottled juices, and so on. At any given time, we would have at least a 30-day supply of food on hand. But, then somewhere around high school, when mom started working, we weren’t as prepared as we had been. Maybe it was the second income, which brought the freedom to shop more often. It also brought the ability to buy luxury items—like junk food, soda, and snacks—things we didn’t have when I was younger. If we had wanted a sweet treat, mom would make it herself. Sometimes we used to grab a piece of fruit or a fresh, garden-picked sweet pepper, or, only on the rarest occasions, we’d collect our allowance and raid the corner store. I remember going apple picking in the fall and having a barrel of farm-fresh apples on the porch until well past winter. If any apples survived until spring, mom made them into pies.

I could say as she got older, my mother got more programmed, but that would be doing her a disservice. Today, as a retiree, she no longer makes her own sauce, soup, or pizza. She still stocks up though—but now it’s on frozen breakfast sausages and Gordon’s fishsticks.

I think a lot of people, long ago, made the switch from stocking up for the necessity of feeding your family through rough times, to the luxury of shopping in supermarkets stocked to the rafters at any given moment. After watching those first episodes of Preppers, Anthony and I decided that we’d make more of an effort to get back to the natural state of things—to be prepared.

I’m not saying I believe this is The End Of The World As We Know It. Honestly, I thought when I first saw it, TEOTWAWKI was some Native American term; though now whenever I do see it, REM goes through my head. (Hey, it was my theme own personal theme song in High School.) But, the shit is hitting the fan—it has been for several years now.

While researching things like water storage, pressure canning, and putting together a list of herbs I needed to restock on anyway, I came across several “Prepper” sites, Preparedness and Survivalist Blogs, and started more YouTube videos on the subjects than I finished.

One video stood ("NeverEnuffAmmo") out not because the videographer agreed that most of the folks on the NatGeo show are nutters—but because he mentioned something my husband and I firmly believe: we as human beings are meant to prepare. Not for the end of the world—but for life.

It is in our DNA to know where our next meal is coming from, and when we don’t, to prepare for the lack of fresh meals. Since Lucy, our ancestors have hunted, gathered, and stored food. If they didn’t, we never would have crawled down from the trees, and we, as a species, would have died out long ago.

But now, thanks to disposable incomes, a corporate-driven economy, and the need to keep us docile, our drive to prepare has been erased. And, for those of us who still believe preparedness is key to survival—shows like Doomsday Preppers marginalize, categorize, and chastise. The government doesn’t want us prepared. If you and your family were to stock up on food, then it means you're not out there shopping. It means, according to our corporate-driven society that you aren't participating in "active consumerism" and, in their eyes, you aren't a viable entity. For them, having us aware, awake, and prepared for the worst—even if that worst IS our government—isn’t a good thing. So, we get bills that erase our Constitutional rights to free speech, to stock up, and to defend ourselves. Even writing this has put the target on my back and that’s not paranoia talking. Because of NDAA, if you have more than a week’s worth of food in your home—or in your shopping cart—you can be considered a terror threat.

Don’t think of the idea of preparedness as bunkers and MREs. Think of being prepared for hard times as natural as breathing. What happens if your second income evaporates—as it has for millions of Americans, and millions of people worldwide? What happens when you can’t afford your Gordon’s fishsticks and Hormel Chili—does that mean you starve? Or, does it mean you need to buy freeze-dried, prepared, Ready To Eat fishsticks and chili? The harsh truth is the hard times are now. If you’re not prepared for them to get worse, then you’re the nutter.

It means that you start learning old tricks like cooking, canning, drying, storing. It means you read the labels before you buy—and question each and every item on that label. If you can’t pronounce it, don’t buy it. It means that you watch documentaries like FoodInc, King Corn, and Fastfood Nation. It means that you start looking at alternate ways of feeding your family and maybe that means starting a garden or joining a Community Shared Agriculture Program (CSA), or shopping at family run farmstands if you have them near you. It means asking the grocer why the garlic in the produce aisle is grown in China instead of New Jersey, and demanding they carry produce local to you. It means start eliminating overly processed food from your diet and shouting from the rooftops that instead of holding you accountable for feeding your family poor-quality food (as Michelle Obama is doing), that our government holds the Corporations responsible. Instead of call us a nation of lazy, diabetic fatsos, maybe the Obamas need to ask the USDA and the FDA why our food is inundated with rGHB, BPH, and GMOs. They need to demand that our farmers are unfettered from the chains enslaving them to Juggernauts like Monsanto, Perdue, and Tyson. It means they need to demand that local, organically grown, pesticide free, non-GMO food is available to Americans at reasonable cost. 

If you don’t prepare yourself, then it will only get worse. If you don’t prepare, no one will do it for you. If you don’t take control of what you eat, then line up, check out, and don’t say we didn’t warn you.


"We must occupy the food system to create food democracy." —Dr. Vandana Shiva, Physicist & Seed Activist