The 10 Powers of Food :: Holistic Healing :: Functional Foods/Nutraceuticals

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The 10 Powers of Food
by author Wayne Roberts, PhD, Rod MacRae, PhD, and Lori Stahlbrand

Food is too humble and modest for its own good. Yet it’s such a routine part of our day that its extraordinary qualities as a catalyst for personal, health and social transformation are hidden in plain sight. Here are 10 powers of food.

1. Food is powerful because small, easy changes count.
Food comes in bite-sized pieces. So do positive food changes. The menu of opportunities for small but significant improvements is almost endless. Starting to make changes to your diet is as easy as crumbling some tofu into a spaghetti sauce, or adding an extra clove of garlic to your salad dressing. You don’t need to go for retraining, get a licence, form a support group, get on the Internet, buy equipment or give anything up. It’s not easy to give up your car or quit your job. But changes in food choices can take place easily and quickly, on your say so.

2. Food is powerful because it unleashes the Power of One.
Food is more subject to individual choice than most decisions. There’s no way around the fact that changes in food practices will happen one person at a time. This is not cause for lament but for celebration of the power that food endows each of us with. Food gives individuals a taste of power and a rare chance to make a difference. Choosing ethical and fairly traded products breaks the biggest food habit of all--the habit of divorcing individual shopping decisions from their social and ethical consequences.

3. Food is powerful because it brings people together.
Most people enjoy meals more when they have company. The link between food and sociability is a distinctly human trait. A surprising number of food problems can be best solved through co-operation of small, informal and casual groups. The breakdown of our food system is in some ways a symptom of the breakdown of our ability to link food and sociability.

4. Food is powerful because it creates extra, unintended benefits from simple acts.
Food is so central to the operation of nature, society and economics that a tiny pebble of improvement sets off a ripple effect of elegant and positive changes. The popular term for these positive but unintended benefits is "serendipity." You might think that the inherent elegance of food would be evident and encouraged. Most of the time that doesn’t happen. To use the lingo of economists, "the market cannot capture side benefits." In other words, the market has no way of rewarding a homeowner who plants an apple tree that saves public money on water treatment, air cleaning and global warming–all side benefits of the apple tree.

5. Food is powerful because it can be used to increase the value of other things.
The value of food so far exceeds its cost that a number of opportunities present themselves to capture that value by increasing access to quality food. As soon as governments learned that business lunches oiled business deals, they made them tax deductible. But few companies and government tax policies build on the value of food much beyond the free lunch. Some companies subsidize healthy meal programs because they more than pay their way in reduced absenteeism and drug plan costs. Just as today’s life insurance plans offer discounts for non-smokers, tomorrow’s life, health, workplace disability and drug insurance will offer deep discounts for organic eaters.

6. Food is powerful because it creates employment.
Food takes work. The number of people who work the land has gone down dramatically since 1900, but not the number of people who work on food. Food production is recession-proof. No matter what, people have to eat, preferably a few times a day, every day.

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Wayne Roberts is the co-ordinator of the Toronto Food Policy Council. Rod MacRae is a food policy consultant. Lori Stahlbrand works on pesticide and agricultural issues for the World Wildlife Fund Canada.

Source: alive #235, May 2002

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