Food Connection By David Suzuki Summary

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Summary of David Suzuki’s “Food Connections”

In his essay “Food Connections,” David Suzuki states that food is not just something we eat, but something that connects us to our earth and different places all around it. Fruits and vegetables come into our earth, straight from the soil, already fresh and healthy and we poison it with pesticides, antibiotics, etc. The way we live now, how we eat and treat our earth is unnatural. Our markets which are now turned into large supermarkets, not only carry fresh food but almost anything else you could possibly think of. From clothing to office supplies to electronics, you name it. Our food markets have officially turned into ‘everything markets’. Feeling connected to our earth
is what makes living important. There are so many people, places and things that this beautiful world has to offer and so many times we turn that offer down. Suzuki states that especially in richer countries, such as America and Canada, we seem to forget where most of our food comes from.
People don 't have to go pick their fruits and vegetables from the dirt weekly.
They can just go to the local supermarket and buy them already packaged and ready to go. In third world countries, going to the market to get some daily fresh foods is not the only reason people go there. They go there to socialize with their friends, listen to people play their music, see artists paint and watch little children run around. It sounds like such a fun and lively place to be, but people in richer countries would never know that, they do not have those activities at supermarkets. When Suzuki writes, “Food grown naturally without chemicals is marked
“organic,” while food that has been treated with pesticides requires no special label” (8), shows us that the way we look at our foods, is a little different than how people do in other parts of the world (mostly third world countries). We now have a special name for completely regular and

!2 normal growing foods and the foods that we pour tons of chemicals onto, are considered to be normal at our local supermarkets. Our society cares so much about what our foods look
like when we are purchasing them, we are always trying to pick out the fruits that are the cleanest or with the least amount of blemishes on them. We do not stop and think to ourselves where they came from or that they were laying in a bunch of dirt and who knows, even animal waste possibly. We are willing to infect our water, air and soil just so that we can have cleaner foods without marks or little insect bites on them. Humans have disconnected themselves from nature.
Society is always looking for an easier and faster way to do things and get things done. Maybe going to the local supermarket is more time efficient but small markets have character and meaning, its not just about the food.

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Work Cited

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Suzuki, David. “Food Connections.”
Essay Writing for Canadian Students. 7th edition.
Ed. Roger Davis, Laura K. Davis, Kay L. Stewart, Chris J. Bullock.
Toronto: Pearson, 2013. 307-309

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