Food for thought

Reading Mark Bittman's most recent op-ed on the prevalence of processed food in the typical American grocery store and, consequently, diet, I was struck by what now seems like a very obvious fact about my life in Cajabamba: I eat almost zero processed food. Judging by the fact that I failed to consciously realize this until now, it's clear that I do this without much active effort on my part.

Once I started thinking about it, it wasn't hard to explain. Instead of shopping at a U.S. grocery store, I buy almost all my food at an open-air market where local producers bring their fruit/veggies/legumes/meat to sell every day.

The peas I eat are sold fresh, not in frozen plastic bags. The meat I buy is never packaged or processed in any way; it's simply butchered and placed for sale on the meat counter's slab of stone. I don't have to open a can in order to cook beans; here they come out of big brown sacks and I usually have to pick out some pebbles and wood chips before I throw them in the pot. Our honey doesn't have any additives, my host dad takes it out of the hives and brings it home in a plastic tupperware. The flour we use at my house is made from wheat brought in from the farm and ground at the mill a few blocks away. All the bread is fresh-baked, and the milk goes straight from the udder into the bucket that the milk lady then brings by our house - both of these are thus bought on a daily basis. Of course I'll buy the occasional bag of pasta or bar of corporate chocolate, but in truth Cajabamba's norm is just local, fresh food. Now that I think about it, that's pretty cool.