We are sensitive eaters.  Every time we lift a fork we are part of an agricultural act that began long before food got to our dinner table.  But we don't give eating much thought as it would ruin our appetites.  We don't consider where food comes from, how it is produced or how it came to be a part of our daily routines.  We don't want to know how animals are slaughtered for us, how families are being displaced to make room for large mechanized farms or how fragile ecosystems are being raped to provide us with simple foods.  These facts would make food difficult to digest and we are sensitive eaters.

We are over eaters.  So much high energy food is available to us that we eat it constantly.  We eat more calories of food than our bodies need.  Food is eaten while watching TV, or while driving in the car.  I see people eating while crossing the street or waiting in line at the grocery store.  We have convenience stores full of snacks, Big Gulps and sports energy drinks (even though we don't do anything more energetic than walk to the car).  We have drive-up fast food, food sold in theatres, at ball parks, events and by vending machines.  Food is so readily available we can't help but be over eaters. 

We are eaters of crap.  Food has become so industrialized, commoditized, marketed, processed and reprocessed we often don't recognize the ingredients on the package.  We recognize a bag of Dorritos, we know a candy bar, or a soft drink, but we don't know how those things were made or what those ingrediants are.  These are highly processed foods that are actually designed by chemists.  These are not necessary things for us to eat, they have no dietary value, yet are in the daily diet of most everyone.  This is not food, it is crap. 

We eat the world.  Food, is necessary and needs to be cheap and available for the long chain of grocers, truckers, chemists, food processors, and farm operators to be employed.  We get food from Chili, Mexico, Canada, Turkey, Viet Nam, China, Japan and the list goes on and on.  We eat without looking at the package, knowing where our food came from, or without knowledge of ingredients.  The story of the importation of Bananas, a daily food for most of us, represents one of the most reprehensible stories of exploitation of farm workers that has ever taken place.  For a morning drink we've supported the cutting of rain forests to grow coffee. By lifting our forks we've supported the act of uprooting small subsistence farmers to have their lands turned to factory farms to feed us.  Almost half the food on our plate is from someplace else.  We are eating the rest of the world out of a home.  We're eating the rain forest, the family subsistence farms, the precious fertile lowlands of South America and homes of small local farms in our own country as well.  It's all being plowed under so we can eat.  We're eating the world.