One week in America
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| Kavita Mukhi |
After four years of hard slog to finance my son’s education in the US, he graduated this summer from Ithaca College, New York. Since I wanted to see where he had spent his university years, I travelled to the US for the convocation. Although my son is well aware of how university in America is big business for them, it was nevertheless an emotional time for both of us.
Ben Stein, a well-known lawyer and presidential speech writer, brought tears to everyone’s eyes with his moving address about gratitude to the Lord, to the people who fought for freedom, and to our parents. He recounted how his most precious possessions were letters of love and appreciation his parents wrote him just before they died. He recalled the precious hours he had spent with them as they grew older and how he had mounted their letters on his wall together with his degrees. Stein is an excellent speaker and said all this with much humour and had us in rapt attention between tears and smiles. Thanks to this talk my son, a boy of few words, thanked me for his education.
Not that I needed the thanks because there are so many ways one experiences the appreciation. On graduation day atop Danby Road where Ithaca College is located overlooking lake Cayuga, as students filed past to the podium many yards away, my son spotted little ole me amid hundreds of XL sized Americans. That was my reward and worth the time, expense and exhaustion of travelling half way across the world for just one week.
What is even more rewarding is that his academic learning has been supplemented by lifestyle education. Equipped for the first time with his own kitchen at university he has discovered the joys of cooking and natural nutrition and the value of balanced meals.
But enough of emotion. My most recent visit also enabled me to take stock of America — the material land of extremes. Everything comes in disposable material — paper and plastic cups, plates, spoons, etc — which are thrown into big black plastic bags that sit in large trash cans. I wondered how full their landfills must be. And they don’t have rag pickers as we do and to whom we should be very grateful. At the cost of their health rag pickers cut our land fill needs by half. But at the other extreme there are supermarkets and health food stores in the US where all the produce is organically grown.
I believe there really is no excuse for Americans not making the shift to organic and healthy nutrition since this alternative is readily available and quite palatable. For instance brown rice syrup as a sweetener is absolutely delicious and my favourite. Then there’s seaweed, umeboshi candy, so many forgotten millets, several varieties of whole grains and pulses, spirulina, all within easy reach if one decides to avail of them and develop a care for mother Earth.
Nor can one justifiably say health foods are boring anymore. On the other hand I can — and will — say that regular fare is boring. I find white rice and white bread quite insipid. And foods full of pesticides and preservatives — if you really taste them — are completely unpalatable. For example coffee. If you drink iron roasted, organic, filter coffee with palm jaggery you will know what I mean. The instant version tastes like a cupful of chemicals. The first sip of coffee I tasted at the motel I stayed in Ithaca, was the last because it was the most awful brew ever.
I wonder why in contemporary America, where purchasing power is high and supply is never an issue, more people aren’t going organic. The good earth needs this switch more than our bodies. We will perish one day but the earth has to feed our children and their children. We have borrowed this earth from our children and need to return it alive and regenerative.
But while the go-green organic movement hasn’t caught on to the extent it should have, it may well be getting there. A visit to the Green Star co-operative store revealed a treasure house of natural, healthy and organic foods. Since it is run as a co-op, shoppers feel very comfortable with the prices even if they were not low.
I cannot end this American note without mentioning the ubiquitous MacDonald’s which together with Coke and Pepsi are synonymous with American life. I remember seeing a documentary film on obesity — Super Size Me — produced by Morgan Spurlock which has won many awards. To be fair to MacDonald’s it was a bit overdone because no one would eat to the point where Spurlock is shown throwing up the stuff. Because, overdoing anything will make you sick and gain weight. Even eating refined vegetarian fare will cause imbalances which could lead to ill health and obesity. The film shows Spurlock ingesting Big Macs and Coke in super sizes at all meals for 30 days as a consequence of which his body showed high cholesterol and hardening of the liver. His heart also showed signs of stress and he was clearly addicted because at the end of the 30-day period his withdrawal symptoms were terrible. He gained 24.5 lbs in 30 days. True the film was an exaggeration, but it proved a point.
Advertising in the US works at subliminal levels and makes us act irrationally into absorbing messages delivered at high decibel levels. Corporations get richer, we get sicker! You can escape this by just not switching on the idiot box. Or taking the tough decision of giving children limited access. I sent my son away to boarding school because we lived in a joint family and keeping him away from television was impossible. It was a good decision because his mind has not been fed the 24-hour ‘entertainment’ that television socks to you.
At the cinema during my stay, I couldn’t get popcorn in the small size I would buy here. It came in a 15-inch container. It made me sick to just look at it. As I’ve often said, greed seems to be the root cause of problems of individuals, nations as well as Mother Earth.
(Kavita Mukhi is a Mumbai-based eco-nutritionist and director of Conscious Food)