Author: Danielle Levy

–When it comes to the acai berry, are we being rapacious or just thoughtless?—We do our best to eat right. We also factor in the environment, and participate in the eat local movement, or slow food one whichever better suits our sensibilities. Accordingly, we try to limit the carbon footprint we leave upon the environment. But what thought do we give to the people involved? The question acquires a certain importance when it comes to the acai berry grown in the Brazilian jungle. It is the staple food for many living in the Amazon regions. It is a protein-rich nutrient they’ve long relied on, usually beaten, diluted in water and eaten with manioc or other foods. It has been so popular around the world, popularized by Oprah Winfrey, Nicholas Perricone and Mehmet Oz that there is now a diminished supply for those who depended on it for food, and given how it grows, on palm trees, the supply cannot be quickly replenished. Where it is available in Brazil, it is now much more expensive and out of the reach of many.
If we try to be ethical about how we eat, then we ought to factor in the consequences of what we consume upon the people and cultures where it is grown. Acai may be a super food, but for us, it is a supplement, something to make us younger, loose weight faster, age more slowly. For those in the Brazilian jungle it is a staple, often a necessity. While our abstaining from acai and the now many products that tout it, will not directly help those in the jungle, it will dampen the profits of those exploiting it and as it does, they may relent or reevaluate its uses. A decreased demand would in a round about way help those who have depended on it for generations. That is not only possible for us to do, it can be considered our responsibility.

–There is nothing noteworthy about receiving an honorary degree–It is the time of the year when just about everyone who gives a commencement address is honored with an honorary degree from the institution they are addressing. Why not? It is a nice gesture. But what does it mean? Surely it makes the recipient feel good. But it is not the same as having earned a degree, as having done something to specifically deserve it. It seems more based on one’s celebrity than on one’s merit. Why then does it make the news? Last week Oprah and Jimmie Fallon received honorary degrees. This week it will be someone else in the public eye just as next week it will still be someone else. People become honorary mayors, receive keys to a number of cities without making the news. If we can’t stop pseudo news, at least we can see through them and in the case of being awarded an honorary degree, realize there is nothing noteworthy about it both figuratively and literally.

–In New Delhi private garbage collection is squeezing out those living off what they collect from it–New Delhi is hosting the Commonwealth Games next year and is trying to modernize and clean up the city. In an effort to improve the cleanliness of streets strewn with garbage, private companies have been awarded waste collection contracts in 8 of its 12 zones. This is bad news for the people whose livelihood depends on what they can collect from the trash and try to sell or recycle it. The private companies have guards by the dumps to keep out the ragpickers, among the poorest of the poor, usually by manhandling them. Bharati Chaturvedi, who works for Chintan, a support group for the ragpickers, says, “privatizing garbage is a death knell for these people…The Delhi government wants to show it’s a world-class city; it’s much the same syndrome we saw in Beijing before the Olympics when they shut down factories to improve air quality. India cares about its image, not its poor. The ragpickers are being pushed out of their jobs and left with nothing and the government doesn’t care.”
Given the effort the Delhi government is going to in order to improve the city, it would seem that providing compensation for those being sacrificed isn’t too much to ask. As it is, Chaturvedi believes that “if these ragpickers are squeezed out, we’ll see them cutting back on what they eat, they’ll stop feeding their children milk, and we’ll see more women entering the sex trade. Is this progress? I don’t think it is.”

–It’s in to be a vegetarian for health and environmental reasons, but factoring in a spiritual dimension of harmlessness may add a reverence for life–It’s in to be a vegetarian. More and more people are becoming vegetarian or at least saying they are for both health and environmental reasons. Being a vegetarian avoids the animal fat that contains the bad cholesterol, for example. It’s generally healthier than meat eating, higher in fiber, more likely to have recommended dosage of vitamins and minerals. It’s certainly more environmental friendly. Growing vegetables, grains and fruits leaves less of a carbon footprint than raising cattle. And such staples tend to be consumed closer to home, thus indeed being greener.
And yet there may be another reason to be a vegetarian, a spiritual one, one based on at least a degree of harmlessness. If one were to take a wide view of what’s harmless it may be one wouldn’t eat at all, so it has to be a harmlessness that is somewhat suited to our needs, our understanding, our possibilities, sometimes our bodies, and in these days of belt tightening for many also our pocketbooks. It means it’s OK to eat milk and eggs because they do not take life. It makes a distinction between the life of a fish, which is more at the sensory than the awareness level and that of a pig which studies have shown can be so aware that they can be traumatized on their way to slaughter. Factoring in a spiritual dimension helps us make better choices. But most of all it forms a layer of gratitude for the smaller forms of life being sacrificed to sustain our own, and in the process makes us more reverent toward this mysterious thing we call life.