'Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.'

So said the epicure Brillat-Savarin, and while an ontological argument based on that aphorism would be hard to sustain in many quarters (or so I pray, at any rate: the idea of my body decomposing into lardons of cured pork and boxes of Good-n-Plenty while the walls of my veins leaked Barolo and Amarone into the velvet walls of my coffin strikes far more terror in me than the normal image which -disturbingly, perhaps - doesn't disturb me in the least), and the more transcendent aspects of his musings on gastronomy and gourmandise are equally unsuited to the realities of our present world, the above quote, read entirely wrongly, of course, and viewed through an ethical rather than aesthetic lens, is what I want to get to here today.

(Update 06.12.08: That was really all one sentence. Someone, save me from myself.)

People like to think of globalism as a brand-new phenomenon. And I will admit that with the population of the world so much greater than ever before, every nation or region has a greater impact on others: I have more people producing more waste over here in country X, so there is a greater chance of some of it reaching you in country Y, for example. But the Chinese have been a global power for millennia, over land and by sea. The silver in Chinese coffers plundered by the British opium trade and subsequent wars and concessions was largely from South American mines, while the tea that the British came to love was, as we all know, an ancient part of Chinese gastronomic culture. Marco Polo brought pasta to Italy, and the cotton plantations of the southern United States arose to fill the growing gap between India's long history of production and current need, while the US is now poised in coming years to become the leader in 'hauling coals to Newcastle' quite literally -- not to mention the huge markets of China, India, Russia, as well as many smaller countries in the developing world.

So.

It may have been the case before, but now that the stakes are manifestly higher we admit it more readily: we are all in this together. Even George W. Bush has come to acknowledge that, at least as far as the ozone layer is concerned, human beings can have some kind of corporate and individual impact on the world as a whole. And I believe that food, our use of it, our approach to it, our taking it for granted or choosing to be deliberate in our choices, can be a significant aspect of living up to our values.

Every left-leaning, bunny-hugging simpleton will recite the evils of McDonalds anytime there is a perceptible lapse in conversation. And, in the Northwest at least, anyone desirous of impressing upon his audience the virtuousness of his life and lower intestine will not fail to (re-) state (the obvious:) his unswerving allegiance to the aisles of Whole Foods for all his home cooking and (natural) grooming products needs.

But in the same way that my sending a check every once in a while to Mercy Corps or the Red Cross does not confer something akin to proactive moral immunity, a lifetime's absolution, or mean I thus have carte blanche to perform human sacrifices or set the neighbor's house on fire because I did good elsewhere, trusting a preacher, or a friend, or - for heaven's sake! - a retailer, as gatekeeper for all our individual, specific ethical choices sells our own conscience and powers of rational contemplation short. There simply is no one guidebook containing every possible moral conundrum an individual can face in the moment. And I think that before we can get to 'we are what we eat' in its moral sense, we have first to accept that we are what we do, overall. We are the choices we make, the mistakes we regret, the issues we feel compelled to stand for, and the hand we do or do not offer a suffering soul.

How this all ties in to food, not to mention my enduring and recurrently proven faith in the human voice coming through miles of wires and anonymity and preconceptions, and not forgetting, as well, my own well-deserved humility and willingness to put crow in cream sauce on my own dinner menu when appropriate, will have to wait until next time, as this preamble to what I intended to say is already too long without even having a body yet!