Food, Incorporated, indeed.

For the first time, I thought about going into food policy.

With the whirlwind of activity going on with studying for the LSATs, worrying about law school applications and admissions, and accounting for that likely chance that I don't end up doing what I plan, I've been scourging my brain for an alternative that I actually would like to explore. Law school is the safe choice -- not to say it's not a good choice or a wrong choice, but it's safe because I've had years to think it through, have had plenty of academic exposure to it, and have taken my time to work in various legal environments to know that I do want to pursue it as a career. But I've always looked upon it with a rather... limited perspective, for a lack of better description. Transitioning my focus from criminal to constitutional to corporate to cyber/IP, I feel like those are all rather well-established fields and... "safe" fields. With the exception of the last, I would maybe even venture to say that they are all conventional.

There's no denying that I love food. My first blog entry was dedicated to food, but it was so incredibly difficult to communicate where this passion came from. I have a reputation of being a glutton, a foodie, a die-hard fan of gastronomy, because people often assume that the fervor I have for food comes largely from the sensory aspect of it. But all that is such an extraordinarily small part of what food means to me. I guess it boils down to this -- food is an essential means of survival, and access to an ample and healthy supply of food, I believe, is a basic right that needs to be fulfilled and provided by the government. Speaking strictly in terms of the US, I don't think the majority of people understand what food can mean, what the consequences can be, and how easy and necessary it can be to introduce a healthy and sustainable diet -- at the same time, people also don't realize how easy it is to literally poison themselves and their family by the same effect. We are so plagued by a culture of convenience, short-term satisfaction and competetive costs that the most basic need of maintaining a proper diet has largely been ignored.

The topic has recently received a lot more attention with the whole organics trend, the focus on obesity, cooking shows/competitions and celebrity coverage like Jamie Oliver's TED talk and show. I think people are becoming slightly more aware of what's going on, but we're still nowhere close to where we need to be. And there's no denying that there's a strong, strong correlation between socioeconomic status and obesity, which opens a whole other can of worms in terms of diseases -- and that is something that is just astounding. Heartbreaking. Children in these situations have no choice. Parents in these situations have few, if any. Nobody is educated enough to be able to make the right choices, and if they are, support is scarce.

I guess this all kind of came about when I watched Food, Inc over the weekend. I didn't know what to expect, nor was I expecting much, but I was crying within the first 20 minutes of the movie. It wasn't about slaughtered animals or the fact that children were dying from contaminated food supplies from factory farms. The facts from the documentary weren't all completely new. It simply cemented the fact that we, as a society, have so completely fucked up a promising potential to live well at the most basic level, and food has largely become what too many other things have become -- a massive, power-wielding, monolithic business with little to no human elements. It has become a consumer operation, where all the loss is being suffered by the consumers themselves, as well as the small number of farmers who try to tough it out. And the part that sucks the most is that it really isn't anyone's fault but those who are never held responsible, those who are making the most money.

So I'm not really sure what I'd like to do with food policy. A very brief moment of research has yielded results for food policy at law schools only in the Midwest. I figure, with a legal degree, it could go towards efforts such as helping non-profits, farmers, or class-action suits against egregious behavior on part of major food companies that produce defective/contaminated foods. It's an idea at a very immature stage, but I think it's something I'd like to seriously consider.

My roommate said to me -- "Chieh, if you don't go to law school, you should go into food policy. And if you do end up in law school, you should go into food policy."

I like the ring of it.