Community and Food
By Regan Kohlhardt
Fellow at Re-Vision Labs
When I’m not busy blogging for RVL, I like to fill up my spare time with Work, and this week, Work has had me island hopping off the coast of British Columbia!
So here it is, the short and sweet version.
And speaking of sweet, that’s precisely what I wanted to talk about this week: Community and tasty, sweet stuff…err…Food!
We just had our biggest food holiday of the year, so I thought it would be appropriate to point out how integral a role food plays in creating community in our lives. Food is obviously the #1, top-ranking priority in the lives of all Nature’s beasts including ourselves (It might be #2 if you’re counting water). It makes sense, therefore, that food has become a focal point for community gathering and celebration. If humans have evolved to be ‘groupish’ (see last week’s post), then what better way to solidify our dedication to the community than by sharing our most 
important resource with our fellow group members!
Take Thanksgiving for example, or rather, let’s take the fairy-tale version of our good ‘ol Turkey Day, the version we were all taught in grade school: When the Mayflower’s travel weary pilgrims finally set foot on North American soil and befriended the Indians they encountered upon arrival, they ultimately celebrated their luck and new friends with a big, tasty feast. It was a feast that brought two completely different cultures together and fused them into one community of supportive, selfless individuals. Thus the tradition began. Ever since that day (let’s pretend the grade school version of T-day really did happen), our society goes through the same rigorous process of bringing many camps of people together on that 4th Thursday of November to form one, happy and perhaps short-lived community.
In fact, food has forged community bonds in all parts of the world. Harvest time has historically always been a cause for celebration. If you put food on the table, you’ll make friends. If you keep putting food on the table, convince other people to bring dishes as well, and then maybe ask a couple people to play some sort of music, you’ll have a vibrant community going in no time! It’s common sense really. That’s my advice for the day: If you’re building community, get some food and get cookin’!
Here’s some food for thought to wrap up: If food really plays such an important role in our lives, in forming our traditions, our culture, and our community, why do we not take a more active role in understanding where our food comes from and how it is made?
