A couple years ago, a friend of a friend (and fellow Box of Good recipient!) was moving her small business to Snohomish, and she contracted me to set up all the technology for her new retail store. Before the computers, printers, Wi-Fi, POS station, credit card readers, and receipt printer worked, we needed to get a new internet router. So I went where everyone else goes, and headed to our local family-owned shop around the corner called Amazon. I picked out the right router that covered the appropriate square footage of her store and purchased it on a Thursday afternoon, around 1pm. I only needed it to arrive at her store by Monday to start setting up shop. But later that afternoon, she texted me to say that the router arrived at the new store! I was flabbergasted.
While this complex system of distribution works great for consuming more and more cheaper items, it’s not such a great system for food that we actually consume. A router is not bothered by sitting on a shelf for a year, or in a container for 6 months, or a ship for 3 weeks. Nor do cell phone chargers, tires, a broom, a book or a rowing machine! My 94-year-old grandpa just bought himself a rowing machine from Amazon on his cell phone, delivered to his nursing-home “studio” in 3 days, because it’s still not too late to start something new! How long was that rowing machine waiting on a shelf for him? Who knows.
Unfortunately, we’ve made our food system more like our non-food system, rather than the other way around. We’ve pushed too hard on the “convenience” button and tried to make every food item available all the time in whatever quantity we can dream up. Prioritizing food for storage and transport has come at the cost of the very nutrients we should be consuming. Too often, the same nutrients that our bodies desire also make food expire, but those are replaced with items that enhance their shipping and storage lives. If we were blindfolded and released into a grocery store and told to grab a handful of items, it’s more likely that your shopping cart would be full of items designed for the shelf, not for yourself. The main intention behind the shape, color, texture, presentation, density, price, and ingredients of each product is that it needs to be in a truck, freezer, cooler, warehouse, or storage for an unknown amount of time. It’s made to sustain the temperature changes, shaking, and squishing, rather than sustain our stomachs.
But fresh local produce and grocery items flip the tradeoffs in our favor, so the nutrients we crave are left in the food, and the costs of a complex storage system are removed. The single-use plastic is eliminated, the gas and electricity are minimal from storing and moving items around between distribution centers. The fresh bread in your Box of Goodis baked by Rachael the morning that you receive it. The raw milk in your delivery comes from Tilly the day before you receive it. The bar of chocolate is made by Kevin the same week you receive it. The kale and carrots are grown by Ray and John, picked a day or two before you get it. The blueberries from Karen are picked a day or two before you eat them. That’s why I can’t eat just one pint!
A famous person once said, just because it’s possible, doesn’t mean it’s beneficial.