Food

Why is our choice of food a spiritual, ethical Issue?

All the world’s religions recognize a link between food and the sacred.

• Most religions recognize the existence of a Great Provider who, among other gifts, offers food to sustain human life.
• Religiously, the proper human response to this gift is gratitude to the Provider and respect for the animal and plant life that nourishes the human body.
• Food-based rituals serve as a primary way that religions connect humanity with God. The Passover Seder meal and Holy Communion are two examples of ways in which food makes real our relationship with the Holy.
• All religions recognize a human responsibility to respect beyond-human life. Our choice of food and eating habits are our primary means of offering this respect.
  

What are the problems with how we eat in the US today?

Current American eating habits harm the environment and cause needless suffering to other sentient creatures.

• American agriculture pollutes the soil and water through toxic pesticides and fertilizers. Huge, single crop corporate farms destroy habitat for many forms of life, decrease biodiversity and perpetuate a destructive relationship with the earth.
• Domestic livestock are raised in unspeakably cruel conditions, deprived of the ability to exercise their most basic repertoire of instinctual behaviors.
• US per capita meat consumption is the highest in the world, with large hog and cattle farms threatening the health of their communities through the accumulation of toxic concentrations of animal waste.
• Earth’s oceans are overfished, with a clear scientific consensus that many species of fish are endangered. Recent studies show a population decline of over 70% for most species of large ocean fish.
  

What Can We Do?

People of faith can develop a more spiritually, ethically healthy relationship with food by taking several steps.

• Eat meat at one less meal per week. Eating more vegetables and fruits (also known as eating lower on the food chain) lessens the amount of environmental harm and needless suffering our eating habits cause. This is also a habit that enhances our own health.
• Purchase food that is grown locally. The average piece of food travels over 1,200 miles to get to a supermarket, often consuming more energy in transportation than it provides in nutrition. Much environmental harm is caused by air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the transportation of our food. By eating locally-grown food, we reduce our eating habits’ environmental harm and support small farms which usually treat the earth with greater respect than agribusinesses.
• Purchase organic food. Produce grown organically eliminates the introduction of toxic pesticides and fertilizers into the environment. Organic food, which does cost more, usually tastes better and has superior nutritional content than its non-organic equivalent.
• Learn about where your food comes from. Developing a greater awareness of where our food comes from, how it is produced, and how the workers that grow or process it are treated, helps motivate us to support more socially, environmentally sustainable and decent patterns of food production.
• Pray in thanks for your food at every meal. When you say grace, reflect on the life – animal or plant – that was given up so that you can eat. Pray for the farmers and laborers who grew and processed your food. Offer thanks for the blessing of abundant food which we enjoy, and the sensual pleasures food provides. Pray for those around the world who hunger. Reflect on the mysterious, wonderful ways in which God makes it possible for food to grow. Have the courage to engage these challenging dimensions of food on a daily basis.

What Resources Exist in New Jersey?
Organic, Fair-Trade Coffee and Tea

(This resource was created for GreenFaith by Maria Quincy, a member of the Episcopal Church of the Atonement, Tenafly , NJ and a vegetarian. Many thanks!)

<< Back to Stewardship

 
Upcoming Events:
 
Meeting the Sacred in Creation Retreats Offered in Hudson Valley, Pacific Northwest, Southeast in April, May, October 2007.
 
New Brunswick Environmental Health and Justice Tour, April 18, 2007.
 
Prof. Larry Rasmussen to Keynote April 23, 2007 Interfaith Environmental Conference with Drew Theological School.