The Food Desert

That's "desert" as in sparse, barren wasteland devoid of the necessities of life, and not the final tray in a seven-course meal.

And that's what I recently traveled through to and from my family reunion. Like a traditional Bedouin nomad, the only way I was able to survive (while sticking to the PCP diet, anyway) was to bring almost all of my provision with me in a very large cooler, and stop to replenish supplies at several "oases" on the way--i.e., progressive-minded communities, almost always in college towns, with organic grocery stores. Not that I couldn't have managed in many smaller towns at the local grocery store; it was simply orders of magnitude more inconvenient to do so.

Case in point: Saturday night I planned to hit the grocery store after hanging out on my aunt and uncle's one-horse ranch North of town:



(I asked if I could take the goat with me for a "snack," but alas, it's really more of a family pet at this point.)

However, the sole grocery store in town closes at 9 p.m. on Saturdays. I admit I could have done a little more advanced planning. But still, that left me with only convenience stores and fast-food restaurants to restock the night before my return trip. I tried two of the former (and none of the latter) in an effort to find what should have been a fairly standard, non-processed food purchase: eggs. No luck; one store didn't carry them, and the other had run out. (On a positive note, at least one place was carrying them, and they apparently were in demand).

My family tried to be helpful, but almost everything they had prepared for the reunion or had available in their refrigerators involved processed food. (In an interesting side note, which probably merits further discussion, the occupations of my aunts and uncles include: cake-mix factory worker; butcher; and grave-digger/cemetery custodian.)

So the Sunday trip back I had to "wing it" without eggs, by eating some jerky and the remainder of some smoked salmon that had survived the initial leg of the journey. Luckily, I still had enough broccoli, tortillas, and yogurt to meet quotas for veggies, carbs, and milk.

Basically, without these prepared meals, I was dead meat. Our current food market structure simply doesn't offer the traveler to the Midwest many healthy choices beyond the "salad" bar at Wendy's. The irony is that I had to drive to urban centers of significant size to find fresh veggies and fruits and lean meats--all of which could easily have been cultivated and offered from the hundreds of miles of incredibly fertile farmland in between. This is essentially the type of "fast food" offered to travelers in many developing countries. In Morocco, my ONLY option would have been a traditional meal with butcher's shop cuts of meat and farmer's-market-fresh veggies and fruits. In fact, because truck stops do so much business, their inventory turns over rapidly, and you always know you are getting nice, freshly-butchered, lean goat, beef, and lamb.

So thank-you, Bloomington, Indiana, Carbondale, Illinois (remember, East-Coasters, the "s" is silent!"), and Columbus, Ohio. You literally saved my ass--from becoming fatter.