Jennie K. Kolter Elementary School

Kids Day At Bayou City Market April 1, 2007

Every Day is Kids' Day at the Bayou City Farmers' Market
by keefski Sunday, Apr. 01, 2007 at 3:52 PM

(Original article is at     http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2007/04/57358.php  )
 

It’s getting harder to see the food for the forest of non - food items at the big box food chains. Shoppers must weave their baskets around lawn furniture, seasonal displays, greeting cards, toys and DVDs.

Grocery store shelves are lined with rows and rows of boxes and boxes of bleached out, dead, dyed, depleted substances, that have been “fortified” with "nutrients" defined by The Food and Drug Administration. The same entity that approved Vioxx® and Sacharin®. Packaging and branding are the food industries equivalent to spin and propaganda. The last thing the Agriculture Industrial Complex wants a consumer to question is, what’s really in that colorful box, where did it come from, how was it grown and should my children be putting it in their mouths?

So where does food come from? For starters, food comes from soil. Healthy soil is very complex. There are fungi that interact with minerals that interact with bacteria that interact with enzymes that interact with birds, beasts and bugs in a way that cannot be duplicated by the FDA’s selective fortification and Big Ag’s chemical fertilizers. The best food comes with the least amount of time between it being in the ground and it landing on your table. Take the quickest trip away from Monsanto’s mutants, Chiquita’s death squad hirelings, Wal-mart’s version of “organic”, and gigantic Dean’s Foods buying up every once independent dairy farmer. Visit your local farmers’ market. You can put food on your family and have fun doing it. Vendors will gladly give you the dirt on their produce while the overhead PA plays live music. There is fresh coffee, cake and cookies as well as the freshest produce in town. There may even be a baby goat or two frolicking among the bokchoy.