44 Decisions You’ll Make
to accept as reasonable behavior. Governments do not lead, they follow.
The power to change does not reside with self-serving legislators and
profit-driven businesses. As he describes it, “the greatest power rests in
our ability to change the definition of reasonable behavior.”
Indeed, what we individually determine to be reasonable behavior
is the primary catalyst for collective change. A current example is the
consumption of sugary soft drinks. As people have realized that the
constant anxiety of battling weight gain from consuming too many
calories at every turn was too much, individual expectations of reasonable
behavior changed—as did soft drink consumption. Year by year, sales of
soda in the United States have been declining for over a decade.
As people link acute and chronic health and degradation of the en-
vironment to the forces driving the modern food system, an opportunity
presents itself to reset what are reasonable behaviors. The same holds
true for government policies that subsidize high levels of sugar, fat, and
salt; the morass of food labels and health claims that trade away personal
health for higher profits; or how politicians and businesses leverage the
hunger of the most vulnerable to skirt around structural and economic
inequities.
To lead begins with recognizing that food abundance, nutrition,
and nature do not operate in different universes, and that treating them
as such does not serve us well. To lead does not pretend that prime farm-
land, fresh water, and liquid fossil fuels are not closely tied to environ-
mental consequences; that opportunity and independence for farmers
are not coupled to competitive market conditions; or that science and
technology can perpetually outmaneuver microbial resistance in pests
and pathogens.
To lead is to challenge what the modern food system puts forward
as serving our best interests, and to refuse to succumb to what others
define as reasonable behavior on our behalf. By understanding the forces
that drive the modern food system, we can see through the pretense
that increasing meat-processing-line speeds, and handing over more
food-safety responsibility to the same companies, will somehow cause
foodborne disease outbreaks and acute illness to subside.
To lead is to not accept as unavoidable the multitude of pesticide
residues found on foods like apples, apple sauces, blueberries, grapes,
green beans, leafy greens, pears, peaches, potatoes, plums, spinach,