Belgium.
Who would have thought the green beans I was eating came from…..Belgium?! Over
the last year I, like many others, have become aware of where my food actually
is grown and the fossil fuels it takes to get it to my table. This realization
began for me as I was listening to Bill McKibben on the radio while eating by
usual lunch of salad. It was March or April, I can’t remember, but certainly
not lettuce growing season in Minnesota.I don’t remember the exact statistics but it went something like “for every
calorie your body takes in from the lettuce you eat, 30 calories of carbon fuel
brought it to you.” Frankly, I don’t have any idea about the measurement of
fossil fuels…..all I know is that it seems like a pretty large trade off in the
grand scheme of things.

 So this summer when I started reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I began to
think seriously about where my food comes from and how I can be more responsive
to the environmental impact of how I eat. It can be a fascinating and
compulsive practice. It also seems to me that, in the often overwhelming and
powerless pursuit of halting…or at least slowing global warming, this is
something concrete I, a regular person living a regular life, can do. I can be
aware of where my food comes from, trying to buy as local or regional as
possible, trying to lessen my carbon footprint. It seems a reasonable thing to
do.

 Which brings me to the green beans. All last year my family
came to love some steam-in-the-bag green beans I buy at Target. They are
lovely, thin, sweet green beans, ready in 6 minutes. The implication is that
they were plucked from the vine, bathed in cold water, frozen and so retain
most of their nutrients….just like fresh picked.

 Fresh picked is what
we had been eating all summer but their season is ended. So I went to the frig
on Monday and grabbed the freezer to microwave package, threw them in and
punched in six minutes. As I bustled around the kitchen putting the rest of
dinner on the table, I could see the bag expanding, steaming those luscious
beans. The bell rang….finished….steamed. I plucked the bag from the microwave,
carefully cutting the bag open with scissors so as not to be burned from the
escaping hot air….Belgian air. That’s when my eyes fell on the words: Product
of Belgium. I felt sick. For all the nutrients, all the sweetness, all the
greenness, was it worth it? I think not. As for our family, we will have to
find a different source for our green beans this winter.

“At its heart, a genuine food culture is an affinity between people and
the land that feeds them."  Barbara
Kingsolver