If You Are What You Eat, I Guess That Makes Me Some Kind of Happy Vegetable

I remember hearing in college that many kids, particularly in urban areas, had no clue where their food came from. Tomatoes were from cans, peas from the frozen aisle, and other fruits and veggies were from the produce section. Who knows where they thought their hamburgers came from? The point is that they had a total disconnect because they never had the opportunity to actually see where their food was sourced from, and I guess they never watched Mister Rogers. Luckily, there is now a growing trend of urban gardening in schools and throughout communities around the nation and beyond.

There is something truly amazing about seeing your food alive - from summers as a kid collecting buckets full of plums in our backyard for my mom to turn into jam to hikes on which I munch on the edible miner's lettuce that grows on trails all around California.

A couple of weeks ago I visited the Lake Merritt Garden Center and saw that the winter wasteland had transformed into a garden of eating. Blossoming artichokes on the ends of thistle stalks, bunches of kale and chard of various colors, herbs that required a gentle rub to release their identifying odors - their beauty and energy filled me with a calm as I mentally cataloged all that I saw. I went back a few days later and the feeling of inner peace came again, leaving that airy feel that comes from meditation, massage, or yoga.

I'm not quite sure why being around growing foods zenned me out. I mean, I definitely use the cooking of dead food as meditation time too. As I have thought about it more, a passage from The Celestine Prophecy keeps popping into mind. It involves the main character arriving at a center in the Andes where people are studying spiritual and scientific connections, among other things. One of the discoveries at the center is that food grown in the pure mountain air with thoughts of love and affection directed toward it contains a vibrancy that gives the consumer an incredible energy. And walks through those gardens seem to leave the characters blissed out as well.

Okay, so here I sound new-agey again, but there may be something too it. Just think of all the studies that show how much more vitamins and minerals you get from food that's grown organically versus that with pesticides and other chemicals. Those nutrients must have some impact on your mental, not just physical state. But that's focusing on once they are dead and in your body.

Beyond organic, there is a form of farming from Japan called shizen nouhou, or natural agriculture, in which the farmer acts more as an observer than a manipulator of nature. Described as a spiritual practice, through observations the farmer helps optimize growing conditions for the plants without the aid of chemicals or natural composts and the like. As a result, the plants are thought to be more robust and produce the most optimal foods since they matured and developed out of their own power, and the grower gets his zen fix throughout the process.

I guess the lesson here is that, alive or dead, food has that way of putting me in a state of content.