Consider the humble brownie.
A brownie is a collection of fairly common household baking ingredients– flour, eggs, milk, cocoa powder, butter and chocolate, mixed together,and then baked. A brownie might be enjoyed over conversation in a coffee shop; or at your desk as a treat after lunch; or served warm, fresh and gooey straight from the oven. The best brownies are dense and sweet, with chunks of extra chocolate or crunchy nuts added for texture andflavour. But the brownie has a more profound story than we often realise, a story which includes the barista, the manufacturer, the supermarketworker, the home-baker. The story goes still further: from the soil, to plants, to animals, and to people.Yet eating food, even a delicious brownie, can often seem mundane or ordinary – aneveryday, unimportant activity.
But a pause for reflection and contemplation reveals more of the wonder of food and eating. It is a physical, corporeal necessity, yet it brings usjoy. Our mouths and senses do not just consume food, but savour it.To share food with others is a significantway to experience relational connection, through celebrations and hospitality, in fellowship and community. A brownie is a product of a set of processes by which raw ingredients are turned into something delicious. Those ingredients themselves all have their own stories – the flour milled from grain grown in soil, the sugar extracted from sugar beet, the eggs laid by chickens, the butter and milk from thecow. The cocoa beans were grown in countries faraway, by people we will neverknow, and were imported via global trade networks. Think of all the people involved in the process – those who have planted, farmed, harvested, processed, packaged, shipped, distributed and sold all the different ingredients. When we bite into a brownie, we enter a vast web of relationships between all these people involved in the supply chain. And beyond that, we enter into a relationship with the environment: we enjoy grains, vegetables, and dairy products, which are all results of incredibly complex natural processes.We rely every day on soil, air, water, seeds, insects, birds, animals, bacteria – whole ecosystems which sustain our life through food.Yet we often fail to eat thoughtfully: instead we rush, we hurry, we consume, we eat mindlessly and thoughtlessly.
Humanity has become increasingly aware of the damage inflicted onthe environment by our collective actions. This is particularly true of global food systems, which are often responsible for environmental degradation ona huge scale. As a result, there is increasing media and cultural interest in food systems’ environmental impact, with calls for large scale dietary changes anda transformation of food and eating. This book seeks to address some ofthese issues, and argues that the fundamental need is a change of mindset:from eating without thought for the context, relationships and impact of our food tothoughtfuleating.
The four authors are from the UK and Ireland, and we have particularly addressed the UK context, although we also examine the global nature of modern food systems.We write from a Christian perspective, and consequently throughout this book we draw on texts from the Bible for inspiration and guidance. In this process, two important and inter-related concepts have influenced our writing. The first of these is Relational Thinking...
