Abstract
A profound double meaning waits in the short title of this book. People do hunger for food that is gustatorily, aesthetically, and (perhaps) nutritionally good. The current glut of cook books, cooking shows, and cooking blogs, not to mention the vast number of places to buy food, ranging from fast food franchises to “fine dining” restaurants, apparently feeds that hunger. But such feasts only satisfy superficially (that superficiality perhaps evokes the derisive tone in the label “foodie”). Ayres’s fine book describes the hunger for a deeper kind of good in food: the goodness by which we are connected not simply to our appetites, but to other people, to other creatures, to the gift of creation, and ultimately to the goodness of the self-giving Creator God.
Unfortunately, that deeper goodness is sadly absent from the global food system. In the first half of her book, Ayres (who is Assistant Professor of Religious Education at Candler School of Theology, Emory University) lucidly gives the reader a brief but thorough “primer” on that system. She begins with people: farmers (fewer and fewer), workers (underpaid, undernourished, often vulnerable migrants in fear of deportation), corporations and their shareholders (whose main concern is profit), and finally we consumers (whose main concern is—usually—cheapness).
Then Ayres surveys places: the effect of the food system on communities. She passes (perhaps too quickly) over the problems of dwindling US farm communities and focuses instead on food availability in the urban communities where most people live. She vividly portrays the reality of food deserts in the inner city, where no local foods are available, and where the urban poor have easy access only to highly processed (and calorie-rich) food sold in convenience and liquor stores. The situation is only marginally better in the suburbs, where supermarkets, with their global supply networks, make it very difficult for smaller, more locally based food suppliers to flourish. And tragically, the North American system, which treats food as a commodity whose chief value is cheapness, has spread worldwide. Because increasingly food is regarded mainly as a trade item, indigenous agriculture is suffering worldwide, diminishing the health and vitality of both urban and rural communities everywhere. Ultimately, such a system—requiring high inputs of chemicals and fuels—degrades the health of the place where we are all native, the planet itself.
In the second part of Ayres’s “primer” on the ailing world food system she summarizes with equal clarity the policies which exacerbate the problems. She singles out several. One is the “Farm Bill,” an unwieldy tangle of well-intentioned legislation which originated in the depression to help farms survive economically, but which has increasingly allowed only very large farms to survive. Another is the Free Trade agreements which often have the unwanted side effect of lowering food prices so much that cheap imported foods put local farmers out of business.
Ayres concludes this survey of the world food system with a chapter called “Making Room at the Table,” in which she describes the many ways in which these food issues touch deep ethical and theological themes. She sums these up eloquently: “At the center of the Christian tradition sits a table.” That table is the one which God’s hospitality spreads for us; it is the one where we are asked to share our own food with the hungry. Most centrally, it is the Eucharistic table where, in the central act of Christian worship, receiving bread and wine becomes our most direct participation in the self-giving love of God, both as givers and receivers. Recognizing thus the centrality of food in God’s economy should cause us to rethink all the food-related issues Ayres has surveyed thus far in her book.
Most of the things Ayres writes about in this first half of her book have been covered before by writers like Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Ellen Davis, and Norman Wirzba—but she weaves together many different sources in an unsurpassed summary of a vast problem. But this excellent overview of a complex and crucial topic is only a preface to the second and most original part of the book: the “Grounded Practical Theology” of several specific churches, communities, and programs where the reality of the abundance of God is being lived out in ways which help solve the problems she has so eloquently summarized. I will not try to summarize these more narrative chapters. One describes the way particular churches have encouraged the production of food on their own land and that of its members—and made that food available both in and outside the church community itself. Another describes the way urban gardens are helping a younger generation to connect their lives to the earth in the “food desert” of Chicago; another describes a liberal arts college whose curriculum is centered on the growing of food; yet another describes a Mexican village which gives North Americans the humbling and salutary experience of receiving the hospitality of struggling but generous farmers much poorer than themselves.
These stories answer the potential despair of the book’s first half with many reasons for hope, inspired by belief in the one who says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps. 34.8).” Good Food is a very good book, one of the very best introductions both to the problems of our current food system and to the deep Christian sources of some of the solutions to those problems.
A minor but important quibble—partly, perhaps, the publisher’s fault, not Ayres’s— is that the nearly 40 pages of notes are hidden at the end of the book. This is unfortunate for two reasons. The first is that much of the strength of the book is here, and would have enriched the main text (especially when the footnote contains the exact biblical source, or the name of the author). The second ironically mirrors one of the problems in the food system which Ayres stresses repeatedly: the barriers which inhibit community between consumers and producers. This way of handling sources similarly inhibits the community which should exist between reader, writer, and the sources which nourish both. More accessible footnoting would provide a more hospitable welcome to the feast which this book is.