46 Decisions You’ll Make
of decency. We learned how to work toward shared interests. And as a
result, we discovered that collective well-being provides optimal ways
to satisfy individual needs.
Food was our teacher in understanding the world around us. From
what we learned we developed powers of observation as well as abilities
to acquire more knowledge by separating personal beliefs and biases
from bona fide evidence. From food we learned how to unlock the
mysteries of nature, thereby making more food possible.
From our relationship with food came America’s vision of prosperity.
Food opened a new way of life and an economy built on opportunity
that left behind a long global history of subsistence. From food came the
ethics of work, perseverance, and personal responsibility. The meteoric
rise in the human population since the nineteenth century, and the
standards of living we’ve come to take for granted, all trace back to food.
Looking ahead, our well-being—as individuals, as a nation, and as
a world—depends far less on the newest and greatest novel technology
and far more on whether we can recapture this relationship to food. The
most important question we can ask ourselves is: Are we still willing to
learn from food—and to lead accordingly?