180 the rice diet renewal
experienced a radical reawakening to the connection between what
we put into our mouths and how we live our lives.
In 2008, my two colleagues — a fellow dietitian and an intern —
and I had the enormous pleasure of attending a conference with
about 750 farmers from the Carolinas. The conference was orga-
nized by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, a nonprofi t
organization committed to promoting sustainable agriculture in the
Carolinas by inspiring, educating, and organizing farmers, as well
as consumers. Although all three of us were semivegetarians and
quite interested in the locally grown, organic food movement, we
wanted to extend our embrace beyond the raised - bed herb garden
that we had created a year earlier at the Rice Diet Program.
The profundity of that weekend ’ s effect on us may be hard for
you to fully imagine, given the fact that I have been eating a whole
foods diet for thirty - fi ve years and have often eaten organic foods
during this time, but the conference provided me with a new lens
through which to view my food and the food of my fellow Ricers.
To share food, community, and our mutual commitment to grow
and provide the highest - quality food, for health and environmental
reasons, to consumers who were geographically nearby truly engen-
dered a head - and heart - opening epiphany. These 750 - plus farmers
were the most committed community I had ever encountered. Their
common denominators were that they cared about producing high -
quality food, enhancing the health of their land, and promoting
one another ’ s success. They came with open minds and hearts to
learn and share with others.
Together, bonded by our mutual priorities and vision, we all lis-
tened attentively to our keynote speaker, organic watchdog leader
Mark Kastel, the cofounder of the Cornucopia Institute. Then we
bonded further with the farmers who were selling their heirloom
seeds in the hall, as they proudly shared stories of whose grand-
mother or friend had bequeathed them the treasured seeds. When
I handled these precious seeds, while knowing how agribusiness
has limited our seed varieties so radically, I had a multisensory
fl ashback to my childhood, when seed varieties actually produced
foods with unique and special fl avors, smells, and textures. These