Know What You are Eating! by Shireen Pishdadi
The food industry has undergone a tremendous change in a small amount of time, leaving the majority of the world’s population completely unaware of this global movement towards a monopolization of an industrialized food industry and the manifold repercussions.
These repercussions include ecological destruction, economic corruption, unimaginable cruelty and denaturing of animals, atrociously substandard and hazardous working conditions, health risks, and increasingly unwholesome (if not unlawful) food.
Thankfully, there is a growing awareness that corporate food has in fact replaced fresh nutritious food with a hazardous mixture of pharmaceuticals and chemicals; more people now understand that the food  is causing everything from allergies to cancer and even antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And so we must begin to ask questions and seek out quality food. I will attempt in this small amount of space to introduce the first steps we can take, band aid steps, as individuals.
The important goal to strive for is to work with local family farmers that are able to farm sustainably, provide fresh food, and work with a community’s needs. Local farms and farmers’ markets can easily be found at www.localharvest.com.
Form a buyers club by getting with a few friends and family. Buyers clubs have many advantages including the buying power to save on bulk purchases. You will also be able to split the work, for example, you can take turns going to a farm or farmers market or perform the slaughter on a large meat order. There is also a company called United Natural Foods where buying clubs can purchase organic foods in bulk at very good prices.
If you are going to spend extra money on quality foods then beware of marketing tricks and do a little research before you splurge.
I have personally been in a Muslim grocery store that believed they were selling organic meat. When I asked them for certification they did not even know what I was speaking of. I finally got them to give me the numbers of their providers who tried to convince me their meat was organic, but with the right questions they changed their tune quickly from organic to ‘like organic’. But even that was a claim they could not support since they did not even know what farms their meat came from, instead dealing with large scale auctions. So do not pay more for food unless you are certain of what you are buying.
Never trust labels, but rather deal with businesses you trust. I will give a few examples: Horizon organic milk was bought out by Dean, an atrocious mega-corporation. On the other hand, Farmers creamery is a good organic company for milk, that I would purchase even if they ceased getting the organic certification. Chicken is often labeled as hormone-free as a marketing trick since all chicken has to be hormone free by federal law. Free range is another label that means nothing for a farmer can open his barn door for 5 minutes a day and even if not one chicken steps outside he can claim free range.
So do some research into the companies or farms until you find ones that you can trust. Do not fret and start with one step at a time to change your lifestyle while slowly but consistently doing the research to learn more.
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