Food Evolution – by hakim bellamy

In 2005, the New York Times published an article by the New England Journal of Medicine reporting that for the first time in two centuries, the current generation (my son’s generation) of children in America my have shorter life expectancies than their parents.

Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure & cancer are likely to strike people at younger and younger ages…

We have a “BIG” problem
Bigger than models, and smoke and mirrors
Bigger than our appetites
For self-destruction

And now
We are making our children
Pregnant with our problem
And just like every other
Draft,
War,
Or conflict…
The frontline is…college

College?

I will home school
If that is the only way for my child to get home cooked

The institution has an either or
Either feed me like I have a future
Feed me like I am a living, breathing organism
Feed me like I have a future to live for
Feed me like an individual or…

Feed me like an army
And I will disenroll
I will unenlist myself from your international trade war
Divest myself from your corporate manorialism
Conscientiously object to the Angus Beef Charting of my stomach like a colonial map of Africa
Expatriate myself from this extortion of calories, cancer and cash
Under the guise of education
We are classroom of zombies
Gut growled down to a low moan
Til we are chain ganged to our next fix of sugar and saturated fat
A substance that passes for food
That arrives in our hand
Jet-lagged and canned
At 4.7 Billion dollars a year
Our universities can do better than that

We can get REAL!

By stop putting food in trucks and cars like they can drive
And putting seeds in the communities we reside
Reduce our carbon footprint,
By leaving footprints in garden aisles
Put stuff that’s in season in shelves
At the new neighborhood market you can walk to now

We can get real about
Fast food being cheaper than whole food
Yet tuition is always on the rise

Even the fishermen are at the end of their line
Catch of the Day is a bucket of crude
And a Blue Fin Tuna that’s dying

Yet our health is always on the decline
While cows are getting brotheled

Death is always on the recline
While this lil piggy gets a blanket
Before it is slaughtered and sent to the market

We are always on the flatline
As we industrialize the miracle of life
And over-pen each egg-laying hen
After we burn the beak off it

And bottomline is…

We can get real about bottomelines
Cause Flaming Hot Cheetos don’t grow on trees
Since everything seems to be made out of corn and soy
We aughta subsidize a trip
every now and then
to a field

We can green every meal
To the tune of 1 billion dollars
By 2020 we want 20% of America’s college diet
To put some of that fat cash in local pockets

We put our economy where our mouth is
Eat fair trade by fair paid farmers
Who aren’t forced to harvest
What will harm their offspring

Eat food that had heart
And not heart disease
Food with culture
Not heartless double arches

Food from around the globe
And I’m not talkin’ bout BKFC or Arby’s

Food that reminds us where we come from
And not corporate profit

We survived just fine
Before Drive-thrus and Starbucks

Back when cooking was a celebration
Not a waste of time
And a kitchen meant community and potlucks

Now it seems like
The only thing we are teaching our children
Is to forget about us

And if we want to get real, real
We’re paying an arm and a leg
To send them away for an education
That should be worth more than a drumstick and wing

Surrender their nutritional needs to the lowest bidder
Stunt their options for optimal living
So they never grow up
Will they ever forgive us

This is the movement we’ve been hungry for
Every revolution began with guts
At the lunch counter or college cafeteria
And students are always at the front…

We are growing boys and girls…
And demand a food ecosystem that will help us keep up

Because a change is coming
And we are going to need every morsel of strength

So eat up.

© Hakim Bellamy October 2, 2013 for the Real Food Movement