Member-only story
Food is Fundamental
What did you eat today? Was it enough? Was it healthy? Was it fairly priced? Can you rely on it always being available when you want or need it?
October 16 is World Food Day.
Food is one of our basic needs, along with water (which food needs) and shelter (which some plants need). Most people can last a couple of months with water but no food, but there are a few extreme cases where people have lasted much longer. Insufficient food or poor nutrition can cause stunted growth in children, and diseases such as rickets or scurvy in children and adults.
“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
- Henry A. Kissinger
When I was a child, we ate well without a supermarket in sight. Even the local shop was a fair cycle away. The meat and vegetables came to us every week or two. We bought a chicken once a year from a local farmer, ordering next year’s when this year’s was delivered. Mum made her own pies and cakes. We also grew some of our own fruit and vegetables. Meat and two veg might sound boring to people raised on the enormous variety offered at supermarkets and takeaways, but mum was a good cook and I don’t recall ever feeling deprived. We also occasionally went foraging, looking for blackberries or wild…