Becoming Food

Abstract

This paper takes a novel perspective on food studies by looking at the role humans play in being food. It encourages us to take a broader view of natural cycles by looking beyond life and death to imagine cycles of birth, life, death, decomposition and nourishment. Every life form feeds another life form; that is the way of Creation. This paper encourages people to think of food as sacrament, and of ourselves as part of a sacred ecology. What does it mean, then, to think of ourselves as food? What obligations does that impose on us to make sure that we are good eating? This essay suggests that eating organically grown food is important for many reasons, but not least because it respects this natural cycle. It does so through a discussion of Eve Balfour, otherwise known as the mother of organic farming. The importance of this topic is underlined by Balfour’s approach to saving the topsoil on which all civilizations depend. Balfour’s ideas on the crucial role of earthworms in soil preservation are examined, and it is suggested that we would do well to take these ideas to heart, and act.