Free Choice, Food and Ignorance

My mother is a terrible cook. The reason she is terrible is because she doesn't give a hoot about how her cooking looks, smells and tastes. The only exception is this braised fish dish she makes. I'm still trying to master the sauce to braise the fish in. Food to her is just something she does three times a day. She never eats snacks but she will buy them for the grandchildren and she will eat them when they are going bad. In a way, I envy my mother. Food is simple to her and so is life. She is 84 years old and I haven't met anyone who is more content and healthier than her.

It seems paradoxically for someone who just offered cooking classes to be talking about the blessing of eating simply, not choosy. Well, not really, there will be no good fictional writers around if paradox is not a human condition. What inspired me to write today is the word "choice".  Recently my friend DC posted a talk on TED (http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.html). Ms. iyengar started by talking about her experience in Japan when she asked for sugar for her green tea. She brilliantly and humorously used this example to open her talk on how our individual and cultural background influence our choices and how having too many choices or rather foolishly believing we do got us into trouble. Free choice is not free. One of my favorite scene in the movie "Borat" was the grocery(was it Walmart?) scene - when Borat went through the rows of hundreds of cheese packets and asked the help staff, "What is this?" The help staff answered, "Cheese." He went on to the next one and asked "What is this?" The help staff answered, "Cheese?" This went on for a few minutes! The help staff was as patient and expressionless as a robot . It was really painful and hilarious to watch and I understood why the movie company deleted the scene from the theater version. But this scene pointed out the ridiculousness of the so-called "free choices" in America. It is free choice but only in packaging! The better-informed consumers know that the cheese was all made by one or two big corporations.

I think most of us are ignorant about free choice, including myself. Let me tell you a story. This happened to me at the American history class when I took the Bard College's Clemente Course in the Humanities at WSU two years ago, an outstanding free (you do have to study and do the homework) college credited course for the low-income. The class was on United States Declaration of Independence. I read it for the first time after living in the U.S. for 15 years and I was moved to tears. At the class we are encouraged to speak up so I did and I got all emotional and all. After I finished I noticed the teacher looked funny and uncomfortable. He tried to put it to me gently that the men in "all men are created equal" meant men literally; it did not include women or blacks! I wish there was a hole in the floor. All the melodramatic remarks I made a few minutes ago about escaping a patriarch society to the land of the free to pursuit Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Believe me I had many more embarrassing moments like that during the six-month course. It made me realize that I thought I simulated into the American society seamlessly; I know how to talk and act like an American but I had not a clue about the fundamentals of what made America America. All these big words like freedom, independence, choice, rights we so fond of using are like the cheese in "Borat"; we are mistaken the packaging for the content. People asked me whether I am an American citizen. I am not but I am legal. I think I will become an American citizen when I figure out what it really means.

When it comes to the free choice about food the first step is to get informed - know where your food is from and how it is grown and transported. (1/4 of carbon emission in the U.S. is food related and majority of it is from transportation, that includes your drive to and from where you get food.) Read the ingredients: less is more. As far as my Chinese cooking classes go, I will use ingredients made in the U.S. or Taiwan where the food regulations are bettered enforced than China. By the way, I just found out recently that the standard for certified organic food in Taiwan is much more strict than the U.S. Here goes another of my ignorant assumptions!