Session 5: Understand- Louise Fresco

A story told in bread.

Louise starts with taking a poll on who wants Wonderbread "I did not know this name before this week?" versus whole grain bread.... "Ah I see two tentative male hands."

We have a mythical past. It is picturesque. The industrial revolution brought much progress, however made mass production of foods that come from all around the world. Don't despise the white bread. It is symbolic of the changes in the world and the availability of a variety of things.

Our food consumption per person has sky rocketed. As food became plentiful, we were able to decrease the number of people working to make food. The responsibility of feeding the world has fallen to few people. As this has happened, bread has garnered more and more unnecessary things, migrating from wheat as a main source of health to something associated with obesity.

We need to go back to understanding what our food is about. How many people can make bread from scratch? Do you know how much it costs or what time it takes?

Bread wasn't European, but from Iraq & Syria.

Now there's a movement to go back to "traditionally" made breads, but we mistake the past history of bread as being from a farm in Tuscany, go back to places like Africa. Taking this another step is to say we could ONLY eat local, ie "Hans couldn't have an orange in his home country". She dismisses off-hand the idea of

She's making a plea: to feed the world, we can't do it through small farmers markets. But we can think differently. As your govt for a integrated food policy. We can put small pockets of many kinds of food sources in many places: "fish ponds in parking lots and gardens on the roof".

Talk about food. Ask people about foods. Food is about respect. Honesty, responsibility, identity. Gandhi said "To those who have to go without two meals a day, God can only appear as bread." She then shared a loaf of bread she made and encouraged everyone to eat it and feel privileged.