Gratitude, Real Food, and the Power of Choice: A Thanksgiving Note from Tom

While there is a lot of talk these days about food quality, the dangers of highly processed foods and “artificial” foods, this issue is not news to the DCG family. The question I want to touch on in this piece is what the best way is to promote or encourage people eating healthy food. This also brings up the issue of healthy food. For me, the issue of healthy food is relatively simple and straightforward. I attempt to have all my food grown or raised from people I know or in my own garden. While I can’t say this is true with 100% of my food, it certainly is the bulk of the foods that I eat. My second principle is that when buying “processed” foods, the processing should be a technique that is an old, traditional way of preserving foods. This includes fermented food, dried food, smoked foods and a few other old food preservation techniques. The rest of my food choices are generally guided by what’s available, what I like and how various foods make me feel. I tend to feel the best when I eat two meals per day, nothing in between meals, and each meal consisting of some type of animal product (meat, broth, butter, cream, lard, etc.), some sort of grain (usually homemade, sourdough einkorn bread), vegetables (raw, cooked and fermented) and either fresh or dried fruit.  I eat this twice per day, pretty much every day. 

     But the issue swirling around us these days is how to get more people to exit their processed foods diet and convert to a diet like I outlined above. The current talk is that we should somehow make it illegal for people to eat “junk” food. We should pass laws or make regulations that forbid the nasty corporations from addicting us and our children to their disease-causing foods. I would submit that the “DCG way” is a different path. For once you start giving the power to regulate the food choices to the “state”, that path quickly leads to more central control and more tyranny. Who’s to say that the next administration that yields this regulatory authority won’t ban the sale of butter based on some bogus scientific thinking that butter consumption causes heart disease. For me, the only solution to the food choice problem is simply more freedom for people to choose. Let companies like Dr. Cowan’s Garden offer their products, explain why our naturally grown and processed foods are the best foods for your health. Let us sell our wonderful grass-fed ghee, naturally fermented vegetables and hot sauce, and our soaked and sprouted flavorful granolas. What we have learned these past years is that when you let people choose what to eat, enough of the people will choose the best quality food possible. That is what we offer, complete transparency and sourcing and processing only the best quality foods. And that is what you, our loyal and wonderful customers are choosing, day after day, month after month. 

    This choice, the choice that each of you make with your hard-earned money is the reason we can have a business and support our wonderful farmers and food producers. We don’t need any regulations or laws to make this happen; it is the natural outcome of people deciding what is best for them. In this Thanksgiving season, all of us at DCG want to express our sincere thank you to all our wonderful customers for choosing us for another year. We never take your trust for granted and together we will revolutionize the food system, one simple choice at a time. 

All the best, Tom