Home vegetable gardening, heritage food preservation and traditional food preparation -- our path to food independence
Each season offers fresh, nourishing locally-grown vegetables here in the Piedmont of North Carolina, and August is the time to plan and plant a fall and winter garden.
Beets, carrots, lettuce and the dark greens are amazingly crisp and sweet when they mature in cool weather, so give yourself a treat this year. They are easily grown from seed in good light, indoors or in a sunny window.
Coming soon -- Food Is The Key's fall garden class schedule. To receive an emailed announcement, write foodisthekey@earthlink.net
Our right to choose the foods we eat
Does it exist?
A recent USDA pronouncement seems to deny that Americans have the right to choose and purchase the foods of their choice. "There is No Right to Consume or Feed Children Any Particular Food; There is No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health; There is No Fundamental Right to Freedom of Contract." ~ US Dept of Health & Human Services and US Food & Drug Administration, 2010.
The US Constitution takes a different position
The 9th Amendment to the US Constitution seems to provide firm legal ground for us to eat by our best understandings, asserting "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Thomas Jefferson certainly advised us to claim and exercise the right of food choice when he wrote, “If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”
Well spoken!
