We live in a time where there is a seemingly endless parade of information streaming across our brains.  And increasingly, this information is ecological in scope – green, eco, natural and sustainable.

This is especially true when it comes to food, where the increased eco-awareness in the past year has been dramatic.  Oprah is now promoting the humane treatment of animals, and Safeway and Wal-mart are rapidly increasing their sales of organic products.

But, do we really understand what all this information means?  Do we, as a society, have the background to separate the truly green from the green-washed?

In our primary schools, teachers are still hobbled by restrictive No Child Left Behind regulations, forcing them to cut “electives” like classes on ecology and the environment.

And a sobering new study of over 1000 colleges and universities conducted by the National Wildlife Federation indicates, “There is a widening gap between where education actually is on teaching sustainability versus where it should be.”  There are fewer environmental courses and programs in our nation’s college campuses now than there were in 2001, the study found.

So as a nation, we are arguably receiving less environmental education than before at a time when we have to understand more environmental facts and details.

What is the solution to this growing dichotomy? We need to include Ecology in our discussion of all things green.  We need to return Eco- and Green back to their roots.  “Eco” comes from the ancient Greek word “oikos” which means “house” – the place where we live.  What this means, fundamentally, is that our ecology is the place where we live; we are not separate from it.

When it comes to an understanding of food, an integrated ecological context has significant implications.

Currently, most thinking about food is linear.  That is, people buy food, transport it home, prepare it, eat it and throw away the waste.  That’s the extent of our common awareness.

Even if we extend that discussion to organic foods, this simply extends this linear model one notch – moving the “beginning” from the store back to the organic farm.  And if we include local food in the mix, it simply makes the distances traveled smaller, and the number of steps fewer.

An alternative to this would be to recognize that food comes from a cyclical system. A circle has no beginning and no end, and neither does the food cycle.  To be sustainable, the entire food system needs to be in balance.  Therefore, we can’t pay attention to certain parts of the cycle, say organic farming, and then ignore the rest and pretend we are acting sustainably.

I hasten to clarify that I am not diminishing the importance of organic farms, or of supporting local food networks. On the contrary, they are vitally important. But they are no more important than supporting efficient compost and waste procedures, or streamlining our wholesale and retail operations.

These ideas can give valuable context to foster understanding of unfamiliar ideas. For example, if someone brings up “Vineyard Irrigation”, as mentioned in the New York Times Magazine Food Issue, then even if you don’t understand the specifics, you already know what part of the food cycle you are addressing, and what sustainability issues are addressed. A quite different set of issues arises when the conversation moves on to “Biofortification.”

More superficially, an integration of true ecological ideas into common understanding will help prevent a consumer backlash. If we continue on in the direction we’ve been going, Eco and Green will become completely meaningless, and people will start to distrust such labeling.  This will lead to a widespread rejection of all Sustainable minded products and companies, which will be understandable but disastrous.  We need truth in labeling, and an understanding of the issues. We simply can’t afford not to.

So I urge you all to become Ecotarians, to pay attention to the entire ecological cycle as you garden, shop, cook, eat, and compost. With this broader context in mind, we can begin to pave a path toward true sustainability.

Interested? Want to hear more? For our readers that live in the Los Angeles area, Aaron French will present “Eating Greener: The Ecology of Food and Why It Matters” at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) on November 9. The presentation is a part of Sustainable Sundays, a new program at NHM, which allows visitors the opportunity to learn from museum scientists and guest researchers about international conservation issues. The presentation begins at 12:30 p.m. on November 9. Tickets can be purchased at the door; $9 for adults and $2 for kids. Conservation International’s Jen Morris will also be presenting information about investing in global pro-conservation, small- and medium-sized businesses at 2:30 p.m. For more information about Sustainable Sundays, please visit: http://www.nhm.org/calendar/ssundays.html

One of our own Slow Food Nation bloggers (and chef extraordinaire), Aaron French, wrote a piece for northern California’s public radio station, KQED. His piece, which was written for KQED’s Perspectives series, aired this morning and can be heard here.

The transcript is below:

Over lunch, during a break in the Slow Food Nation festival in San Francisco, I experienced one of those moments of clarity. I started up a conversation with the owners of a vineyard in Santa Barbara County. In passing, they mentioned the endangered California Condors that are increasingly seen soaring above the ridge-line.

The largest birds in North America, Condor populations plummeted in the first part of the twentieth century. In 1987 the remaining 22 condors were brought into a captive breeding program. Now, there are more than three hundred condors, half of which have been reintroduced into the wild.

But during their 20-year recovery in captivity the condors had forgotten how to feed their young. The wild Condors were killing their chicks by feeding them bottle caps, plastic bags, and pieces of wire. They had lost their native understanding of what good and healthy food was.

And that was when I realized – we’ve done exactly the same thing.

Just like the condors, we have lost our cultural “food compass” that naturally orients us to what is most healthy. Instead, we are drawn to foods that are too sweet, too salty, or too fattening, and we’ve created a new food culture of haste and convenience.

This, in a nutshell, is what the Slow Food Nation festival was all about – repairing that “food compass” and reconnecting to the land and people involved in food production.

The question is how do we regain that knowledge we’ve lost?

In his 1989 essay. ‘The Pleasures of Eating’, farmer and writer Wendell Berry addressed the question. “What can city people do?” to reverse the decline of traditional American approaches to food and eating. Berry simply responded: learn.

“Learn the origins of the food you buy,” Berry writes, and “Learn as much as you can of the life histories of the food species.”

We need to keep our food knowledge alive, and rekindle what we have forgotten, or risk sharing the fate of the endangered condors who have lost the wisdom of what food means.

Chef / Ecologist Aaron French is passionate about the connection that food forms between humans and our environment. He has a Masters in Ecology, is the chef of The Sunny Side Cafe, and is the EcoChef columnist for ten Bay Area News Group newspapers. You can contact him at www.eco-chef.com.

Image: captpiper

The array of information available to us about our food is rapidly expanding, and even for a food professional like myself it can be hard to keep up. Our buying habits are increasingly complex and often riddled with contradiction. It’s natural to wonder, do I buy what is healthiest for me, or what is best for the planet?

The good news is that the choice between human or ecological health is an easy one. A growing body of research shows that they are one and the same – what is good for us is often also good for the earth.

A great example is the low carbon diet—an eating plan designed with global warming in mind. Our food system is responsible for over 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so a diet that minimizes these emissions is much more earth friendly. Since a low carbon diet contains high amounts of fruits, vegetables, some fish, and low amounts of meats and dairy, it also mirrors the recommendations of many doctors and nutritionists for optimum health. It’s a win-win.

With seafood, the connection between physical and planetary health goes a step further. Some of the most sustainable types of fish are small anchovies and sardines, which grow in large numbers and currently have extremely robust populations. They are also some of the healthiest fish to eat with their high omega-3 fatty acid content and very low levels of mercury and other accumulated toxins. Choosing these types of fish protects endangered species from overfishing and keeps heavy metal pollution out of our own bodies.

A third example relates to farming efficiency. Both in terms of harvest yield and energy used per acre, medium sized farms tend to be the most efficient. These medium sized farms are predominately family owned, which keeps more money in local communities. They also generally grow a more diverse crop assemblage than their larger cousins, which increases the healthy local food options for consumers. As a secondary benefit, these medium farms tend to have more natural vegetation around their edges that provide habitat for native pollinators and wildlife. Again, health and ecology go hand in hand.

Urban gardening is also central to this issue. Studies have shown that people eat a more balanced diet and benefit from increased “secondary health benefits” from being around green plants. Urban food gardens, such as the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden in San Francisco, bring fresh vegetables directly to urban communities while serving as focal points for education. Urban gardens also help to recycle and purify the air, which is especially important in dense urban areas.

Finally, connecting these two issues has significant policy implications. We don’t have to make compromises in policy by deciding between advocating for human versus environmental health. A united front will allow a diverse collection of advocacy groups to work together for a safe, healthy food system that is equally good for us, our grandchildren, and the planet.