Left Behind: How the South is being forgotten while the rest of us eat, drink, and live better than we have in a century

We're in the middle of a great revolution. When it comes to eating healthy, locally grown, organic foods, more and more people are aware of the impact that farming practices have on their health. We're demanding foods that are grown in harmony with nature, and that nurture us. Many cities have banned trans fats, including mine. More and more people are flocking to farmer's markets instead of supermarkets, and we're buying local produce, raw milk from the farm, grass fed organic meats, and traditional breads made from whole grains. We care what the animals ate and how they were treated because it's better for them, the environment, and our own health as well. We care that our vegetables were grown nearby in good soil, free of toxins, and free of GMO's. The people have spoken. We want real food. Real wine, too. Bio-dynamic wine and organically grown grapes are making a huge impact on the market. Consumers are becoming better educated about what goes into their bodies.

Not only are we caring about what we eat and drink, but we care about what impact that has on our world. "It doesn't take an Einstein," as my mother would say, to understand that shipping tomatoes from California to Maine requires a lot of fuel. The waste factor matters......if we want to have any soil around in fifty years to plant tomatoes in, that is.
And many of us do care. We're growing wiser, eating better, and becoming much healthier. For the first time in many years, cancer rates went down a little last year. Organic wine sales went up. New York City restaurants that serve local, sustainably grown foods are cropping up everywhere. The food revolution is healthy and tasty. It's a wonderful thing.

But, oh yeah.....wait a minute....it's a wonderful thing for most of us, but not everyone is getting a piece of the organic rhubarb pie. We are forgetting the South. And they are suffering, in a big way. Trust me, I grew up there so I know what I'm talking about.
If you were to drive down a highway in the South and exit into any town, ( or even a larger city, like Atlanta) you would see a line up of fast food chains, large grocery store chains, and casual dining chains. These make up the majority of places where southerners are able to obtain food. There are some exceptions, such as college towns, and of course there are a few health food stores and scattered curb side produce stands, but these are limited.

Sadly, a lot of southerners don't have access to fresh foods. Many people don't know what they're missing, either. When I visit family in Georgia, I can go to a small curb stand for vegetables in the summer, but for the most part I have one choice: a large grocery chain with a severe lack of nutritious food. There is a small selection of organic produce, but it's usually wilted and shipped from California, where it was most likely grown in mass quantities and then packaged in plastic. Even the conventional produce often looks old. I am amazed to watch as most of the shoppers don't even realize the difference. They're used to it. Adding to the bad quality is the lack of choices. The produce selections are sparse, so variety in the average southern diet is not on the agenda. I've spoken to countless southerners who don't even know what Swiss chard is, let alone how to cook it. Heart disease, obesity, and diabetes are widespread in the southeast. Good food is not. But it wasn't always this way.

My grandmother grew up when many people had their own milk cows and grew their own vegetables. People still bought meat from the farmer that raised it. They drank raw milk all the time, and, in my grandmother's words, "there wasn't a thing in the world wrong with it." People were thinner and cancer was rare.
I won't give you a history lesson here, but in the early 1900's things really started to change for the worse. Pasteurized milk had already replaced the family Jersey, and a little thing called Crisco was invented. ( FYI Crisco was the byproduct of candle making, not a food. It was dumped on consumers because it was waste that needed an outlet. To read more: http://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/fats_crisco.html )
Crisco, which is now known as one of the deadliest substances people have ever consumed, came on the market and targeted housewives. Agriculture became a quantity driven business, and small farmers started to suffer.

Today, we're realizing our mistakes, but the South isn't getting it. Many people, all over the country, don't know how to read food labels. There are still plenty of people who still look for fat grams instead of toxic ( and more fattening ) ingredients, like partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. They simply don't know any better. They haven't gotten the company e-mail.

In the south, the misinformation is magnified by a lack of choice. Even if I tell someone shopping at the local "Sam's Club" why the box of frozen chicken patties they're buying is bad for them, and that not only will it ruin their health but it's destroying our economy; even then, even if they understand and decide to change their ways, what choice do they have? Unless they live in one of a few locations, it's not like they can pop on over to the green market or a co-op and pick up some grass fed sirloin and local escarole. So, they buy the canned soup, frozen beef roast, the standard yellow squash and a few half hearted heads of lettuce. They make do, because there aren't bins filled with freshly picked tat soi, mustard greens, and twenty varieties of peppers. And no one is planning on opening a Whole Foods in Dalton, Georgia or Traveler's Rest, South Carolina as far as I know.
Maybe no one cares. Maybe it's about time we start caring, though, before the South gets too fat to rise again.

Above left: The War of Northern Aggression, detail
of oil painting by Richard Scott