Keeping Food Fresh

Here’s an experiment: walk through just one supermarket aisle and count the number of times you see the word “fresh.” While the idea of freshness conjures up eggs just plucked from the nest or fish flopping in nets, the truth is that freshness is produced, engineered and marketed in ways that are far from natural.

What the fresh label conceals is many miles of travel and many hours of labor and toil that are far from wholesome. Susanne Freidberg, professor of geography at Dartmouth College, is author of Fresh: A Perishable History. The book looks at how the concept of freshness has been shipped and sold to consumers.

And when Michelle Obama rolled up her sleeves and started digging a garden on the White House lawn, advocates for healthy local food cheered. The First Lady showed it can be done, and she invited Washington, DC schoolchildren to garden along with her. In some parts of Washington, D.C., liquor stores outnumber corner grocers, and affordable, healthy food is hard to come by.

The First Lady’s example is meaningful now, when government figures estimate that some 36 million people live in households that have trouble putting food on the table. Living on Earth’s Jessica Elyse Smith tells us about efforts to bring high quality foods to struggling neighborhoods, like those in New York City.

(Photo by Charlton Clemens via Flickr/Creative Commons)