David Suzuki Food Connection - Essay Example

Here, Suzuki makes a contrast between cleanliness and dirt, and between the liveliness of the rural market of naturally grown food and the coldness of the experience of supermarket food items. The writer has given many examples to prove his point. First, he leads the reader to a market in a third world country which he calls a “collage of sounds” and where we see: Vendors hawking their products (and some of the live produce adding their own squawks) ; buyers haggling over price and old friends greeting and exchanging gossip; smells that range from the perfume of flowers and spices to non-refrigated meat and fish; and splashes of colours in clothing, fruits and flowers (Suzuki, 539).

After describing this vivid scene, Suzuki has explained the cultural as well as health-wise importance of this scene (539). He has said, “Markets give us a sense of the people. . He has also observed that, in poor countries, the market products are invariably 'indigenous' and grown locally” (Suzuki, 539). He has here, drawn attention to the fact that such produces “give us an idea of the kind of agriculture practiced in a locale and the variety of products grown or collected in the area” (Suzuki, 539).

In this essay, one interesting fact has been that the author has only indirectly and subtly suggested the health benefits of eating naturally grown food. It is only when the chemicals used for agriculture are mentioned that a more direct connection with human health is made. Instead the focal point of this essay has been a more philosophical question regarding the danger of severing one's ties with nature. This becomes evident when we explore the number of instances when an abstract statement is made by the author pointing to th severing of ties with mother nature brought about by the new system of artificial cultivation and keeping of food.

For example, Suzuki has discussed organic food not because he wanted to stress upon its health value but because he felt that by labelling some thing as organic, we are imparting a special value to something which is actually the real normal thing (540). Then he has moved on to show the contradiction in our notions about normalcy. He has revealed that the, “food that has been treated with pesticides, herbicides, hormones, preservatives and antibiotics requires no special label” which surprises him (Suzuki, 540).

Here, the question raised is whether is it not this kind of food that needs to be labelled as different from normal food. In the same vein, Suzuki has added, our overriding concern has been with the appearance, the looks, of the food product (540). To prove