The Pleasures of Eating and Food Justice

Wendall Berry's first tip to eating more responsibly was to try and grow as much of your own food as you can. I completely agree with this and I think this is the best way to be more responsible about the food you eat. The only way you can know exactly what is in your food is if you grow it yourself. Berry also makes the point that growing your own food is a great way to learn how the energy cycle of food works. While I don't grow any of the food that I eat, I think Berry makes some great points that make we want to try growing my own food in the future.
Berry's second tip was to prepare your own food. Cooking your own meal is a great way to eat responsibly and just like Berry says, it allows you to eat more cheaply. Once last year, I decided that I was going to make chili. I went to the store and bought all the ingredients which added up to be about twenty five dollars (a little pricey) but the chili lasted me about a week. Another bonus was that I had control of how much of each ingredient I put in the chili. While I prepare some of my own food, In the future I would love to be able to prepare most of my own food. However, living in dorms on a college campus makes that a little hard.
Berry's third point was to learn about the origins of the food you buy and to buy local food. Eating locally grown food is pretty new to me, but so far I support it. I would love to one day be able to buy only fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables. My only critique of locally grown food is that buying it can sometimes be more expensive than the non-local option, which as a college student is usually the option I have go with.
His fourth tip was to buy food directly from a local farmer. I think that doing this leads to even more responsible eating than simply buying food from a store that is marked "locally grown". In class, I heard a statistic that fresh food loses 30% of its vitamins and minerals if it isn't eaten 3 days after it was picked. If you're buying food from the store, chances are it isn't going to be as fresh as if you buy it straight from the farmer who grew it. If I had the option, I would buy fresh fruits and vegetables from a farmer, however I don't know any local farmers. Also, living on a college campus makes cooking your own meals a bit hard.
Wendall Berry's fifth tip is the only one I don't agree with. It's one thing to be informed about what goes into the food that you eat, but I do not think that knowing about the economy and technology of industrial food production makes you any more of a responsible eater.
Berry's sixth and seventh tip can be discussed together. Learning about farming and gardening as well as the species of food that you eat can be very important if you want to be a more responsible eater. How can one strive to eat only the healthiest and freshest fruits and vegetables if they don't know anything about how they were grown? I don't know much about farming or species of foods, but I'm hoping that working in the Castanea garden on the UNCA campus will help me learn more.

I think that Food Justice was a great passage to compare to "The Pleasures of Eating". While both promote the idea of eating fresh, locally grown food to be more responsible about eating, one passage was much more realistic than the other. While Berry focuses on what people can do to eat more responsibly, he neglects the fact that everyone doesn't have access to fresh food and some people can't afford it. Gottlieb and Joshi focus on the reality of the economy of food. While there are many opportunities to eat locally and know your farmer in places like Asheville, in contrast people don't get the same options in big cities like Chicago and New York City. In Food Justice, Gottlieb and Joshi bring up great points about the struggle between responsible eating and the economy of food.