Venice Harvest Xchange, a movement towards food sanity

The VHX is a movement, not merely an event. Last Sunday my friends and I held the first "official meeting" of our new food club, the Venice Harvest Xchange. Modeled after the San Francisco Underground Market, backyard gardeners, urban foragers, and food producers who cannot afford a commercial kitchen license, now have a venue at which to offer their goods. Sunday brought out 12 food producers and over 100 attendees, who tasted, traded for, and purchased whole foods like kale, rainbow chard, salad greens, lemon verbena, hummus, celery and apple cardamon soup, an assortment of dried mushrooms, spinach and feta quiche, raw chocolate raspberry bars, roasted peppers preserved in garlic infused oil, plum butter, chocolate flourless cake, cilantro pesto, cabbage wraps topped with cashew cream, fresh fruit smoothies, and the most delicious and healthy granola that I've ever had the pleasure spooning into my mouth (thank you, Andre!). The hit of the day was the wood-fired pizza, baked in a hand-built earth oven (designed by Andre and built by he, Nicolas, and yours truly), which was loaded with heaps of fresh vegetables, basil, and a hint of mozzarella. What a joy it was to see this event finally come to fruition, after living it out only in my mind for the past 2 years.

Consuming locally produced and sourced food (as opposed to food-like products) should not be a privilege, available only to those who can afford to stroll the farmers markets or the isles of upscale groceries that claim to offer "whole" or "conscious" foods. That said, I don't take my privileged food access lightly, especially here in the United States, where our food is literally killing us. The over-consumption of food is to blame for 3 of the 4 leading causes of death, making our water toxic, and contributing to serious changes in our climate, not to mention reeking havoc on our social and political reputation. Ironically, the problem with our current food system is a direct result of its success. In fact, we have been so successful at industrializing agriculture that we now produce about 3,800 calories per person per day, leaving nearly 70% of all Americans either overweight or obese and costing society billions of dollars in healthcare costs annually. Retired military officials recently claimed that food has become a threat to national security. In a report entitled “Too Fat to Fight,” it is claimed that “being overweight or obese turns out to be the leading medical reason why applicants fail to qualify for military service.” At the same time, many Americans live in “food deserts” and struggle to obtain food. Something has gone terribly wrong, and what can we do to fix it?

Return to VHX. I am not such an optimist, or perhaps such a fool, that I believe the VHX is the ultimate solution to our food crises. It is a start--giving freedom to those who want to speak to the chef, know where their food comes from, and support a local economy that promotes bartering over buying. I do hope that it continues to be educational, fun, community oriented, and most of all open to anyone who wants to participate. Other markets, including the San Francisco market that gave rise to my idea to form VHX, have been shut down for fears of "food safety." Did you know that the FDA inspects less than 1% of all food imports, down from 8% in 1992? Ask me how I made my hummus, now that's food safety.

On Being a Freegan

I don't like labels, but I'll take this one. For the past few months, I've been living off the waste of capitalism. Without a doubt, I eat better than most of wealthy American. I certainly eat better than I used to, even when I restricted myself to shopping only at the local farmers markets and the amazing Co-Opportunity in Santa Monica. These days, my diet consists of blueberries, strawberries, bananas, pears, apples, oranges, fancy salads and packaged greens, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, celery, artichokes, eggs, the occasional melon, and other surprise treats like coconut water, lychees, roasted pistachios, and apricot walnut tarts. Much of the food I haul out of dumpsters parked behind nearby grocery stores is organic and consists primarily of fresh produce, bread, meat, and eggs. lt must be sorted, bits of it composted, and typically comes wrapped in packaging that needs to be recycled. Dumpster diving is less convenient and a little more time consuming than shopping just for what I plan to consume over the course of a week, but the food is free and I can't stand by quietly knowing that so much quality food is going to waste, especially given how much energy it takes to produce what we put onto our plates.

In Los Angeles alone, there are 1.7 million food insecure people living with hunger and malnutrition. At the same time, millions of pounds of food are trashed each day, translating into 3,000 pounds per second! Put simply, the quantity of food waste and packaging that ultimately ends up in a landfill, taking hundreds of years to decompose and producing harmful greenhouse gases, is an atrocity on multiple levels.

My friends have taken to eating the food I bring home from dives. They look forward to their weekly deliveries, and I'm working on setting up a specified delivery point at a friends house where we've stashed a spare refrigerator to store our loot so that I can eliminate the work of delivering (as if it's work to visit with friends). Ultimately, what I'd prefer is to see this food going to people who need it, not that my friends, many of whom are artists and earn very little money, don't fall into that category. But with so many people living with hunger just in my city alone, there should be a better way of distributing what grocery chains deem waste. I know many organizations are working on trying to foster 0-waste food policies, so hopefully my days of freeganism are numbered. In the meantime, I'll happily perch myself on my front stoop devouring a baby spinach salad laced with goat cheese, cranberries, and candied pecans. One woman's waste is another woman's treasure. Yum!