Food.

Yesterday was Cranksgiving In June... A new version from friend Thomas (http://www.ypsivelo.org/) to compliment the traditional Cranksgiving I usually organize near the Thanksgiving time. Always a fun sort of event to spend one's money and time and effort for a good cause...

But this time, since I was riding instead of organizing, and it wasn't so much a timed race as it was a weight-hauling competition, it allowed for a certain amount of time for thought. From past Cranksgivings, and food donation sorting a Foodgatherers, I've come to an opinion on food donation, and I decided to compete for the pounds-per-dollar category... Basically, I want my donation dollar to go as far as possible, to provide as much food as possible.

And it really got me thinking. About what we are paying for when we buy food in this country. About how our food dollars are spent.

Not in the trendy Urban Agriculture/Locavore/Organic silliness that has taken over these days (something that advertising marketeers have co-opted to sell you more Tide and Twinkies and Toothpaste), but about basic sustenance. We're in this recession, and hundreds of thousands of people are losing jobs and houses and retirement savings and college funds and whole urban economies (Flint, MI anyone? Detroit?).

And so I'm in the Chinese Grocery store yesterday, calculating that this 20lb bag of rice at $10 is more food/dollar than the 20lb-er at $13, but at the same time, how many meals 20lbs of rice will provide. But then today, not 24 hours later I bought 4 bagels and a cup of coffee for $5 and change, and that's not even a meal, and it kind of made me a little bit sick to think about. And then I'm sitting here in Meijer waiting for a friend to finish shopping, watching a lot of Well-Fed Americans do things like buy 24-packs of bottled water and Mountain Dew. I'm kind of unsettled by this.

There's not exactly anything I can do about it to affect the opinions and habits of My Fellow Americans (aside from the usual blog post and such), but it's one of those things that just gets me thinking. About what we do, and how we spend money, and why we eat some of the crap that we eat, and the daylight between these moments of clarity (or best intention), and what seems to just happen.