Simplicity Made Easy by Jennifer Kavanagh

Author:Jennifer Kavanagh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-84694-543-4
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Food

We live in an age when almost any foodstuff is available at any time of year – if we have enough money to pay for it. Eating fresh fruit and vegetables in their natural season does not only reduce the cost of transport and forced growing conditions, but brings us back into connection with the cycles of the year. The limited availability of a vegetable during the winter enhances the delight we take in it as it comes into season. A harvest festival begins to recover some meaning.

Many people, particularly as they get older, are eating less meat and, after a number of health scares, are taking more care about the provenance of the meat they do eat. Others feel moved to give up meat altogether, and maybe fish; some become vegans, giving up dairy products too. A few, preferring not to kill anything, will become fruitarians, eating neither animal products nor vegetables nor grains. Some, wishing to avoid the energy consumption of cooking and the possible negative impact on the food of cooking it, prefer only to eat raw and unprocessed food. A balanced diet, which contains all the nutrients necessary for a healthy life, is difficult to obtain from a severely restricted diet, but millions of vegetarians and vegans all over the world live healthy lives.

Individual reasons for a change of diet might range from a wish not to eat dead animals to concern for the treatment of animals to more general concerns about the environment. Producing animal-based food, it seems, is less efficient in its use of land and water than the direct harvesting of grains, vegetables, seeds and fruit for human consumption. There is also evidence that “modern practices of raising animals for food contributes [sic]…to deforestation, air and water pollution, land degradation, loss of topsoil, climate change, the overuse of resources including oil and water, and loss of biodiversity.” (See Wikipedia on environmental vegetarianism.)

We have come a long way since the domination of humans over the animal kingdom was generally accepted. There is now more general concern about the welfare of animals: both the conditions in which they are kept and killed and their use for experimentation. More of us eat free range eggs and chickens, and we are beginning to take some care to avoid endangered varieties of fish.

But our consumption doesn’t end with food. There are choices to be made about avoiding the use of endangered hardwoods in our furniture, about using carpets that have not been made in exploitative conditions. And clothes. Interest in ethical fashion is growing; more designers are interested in using organic materials and ethical production methods. Increasingly, attention is being paid to the provenance of our clothing, the “journey” of a garment. What happened with food is now happening with the clothes that we wear.

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