Our Nomadic Food

Interesting Sunday group meeting.

One our group that has been away for several years, and only comes back once or twice a year. 

She is a famous chef, part of the original local foods and slow foods movement.  She just wrote a beautiful little cookbook and she brought copies for all of us!! 

So, of course, we were talking about food.  

 It came up how geology and climate can direct how we act and what we eat. 

Rene Dubois noted that geology and climate often directs what kind of political system we will have.  For example, it seems like Russia will always have a Czar. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Dubos

Then I was thinking about how studying the Native American diets could give us an important example of the original interaction between the environment here in the US and possible diets. 

Then I was thinking how the Native Americans were often nomadic. 

They needed to move around in order to get the food they needed to survive these vastly different seasons in this big country.

Now we are no longer nomads. 

What came up for me is that instead of being nomads, we have made our foods nomadic. 

Our food now often travels great distances to get to us. 

Instead of us traveling to our food! 

Yes, this not so good for our carbon footprint. 

But, perhaps, this is what our country needs to do in order to live fully in this huge country with its many different geologies and climates. 

Not to say that we should not try to live with a smaller carbon footprint, and eat our foods as locally as possible. 

Still I find it interesting that we might see our food in a slightly different light. 

Nomadic foods. 

Something to think about.