To start, the ingredients and circumstance of my meal: Skippy crunchy PB which was astoundingly similar to each of the other selections avalible at my local rainbow foods, The Huber Family's rasberry and rhubarb spread with- "Made in our home in central wisconsin. We use only those ingredients you would use to make it in your own kitchen. no artificial preservatives flavors or colors," printed on the label, and Roundy's Stone Ground, the cheapest wheat bread on the shelf. The bread had by far the longest list of ingredients, most unrecognized or misunderstood.
Choice and the freedom of is such a trivial topic to argue in a broad sense. of course wimsical and unrealistic options are often fabricated by the imagination, but normally more relevant is to recognize opportunities and act on decisions which may effect the future in some desired way. choice is governed by experience; thus, it is guided by culture. an environment of ignorance does not prepare individuals to question the validity of what choices are presented.
once interpretation of freedom has been limited by my choice to eat a PBnJ, what remains to be 'decided' regarding that meal certainly is finite and readily analyzed.
As stated I shop regularly at rainbow foods. Though my choice is not exactly forced, I do not own a car so it would be quite difficult for me to shop anywhere other than what store my roomates do. Furthermore, as a twenty year old college student, clearly I am poor and not ashamed to buy cheap subsodized food at my urban supermarket. The system I live in supports a lifestyle of voluminous consumption of all sorts. Ethical agricultural desicions might not be within my relm of freedom.
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I think you hit on the important point that college does not allow for the luxury of eating foods that were naturally grown and organic,etc, etc. Those foods are always in a separate section in the grocery store and they are always way too expensive for my college budget. Much like you, I can't resist a cheap meal. Finding things like 'bowl apetite' and 'lean cuisine' on sale for a buck fifty is much more appealing then buying fresh ingredients to recreate those meals, even if it sacrifices a bit of quality.
ReplyDeleteI think that you are right when you talk about the fact that many people do not want to pay for the overly priced organic foods that we cannot afford. As I am debating this topic on Tuesday, I have learned a great deal about the pros and cons to organic and local. One of the major cons to local and organic is, indeed the monetary aspect. The counterargument to this is saying, "the demand is not high enough. If their were a high demand, the price would drop." These are two great arguments, but you will have to wait until Tuesday to here my stance or the rest of the arguments. I like the diversity of your food selection though. Commercial Skippy Peanut butter, local jam, and "the cheapest whole wheat bread." It seems as though a number of political and personal choices went into your simple PB and J, although the combination of local and commercial is interesting, which would suggest that the combo was not intentional.
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