Recently, Michael Pollan linked the reduction of medical costs to the even more controversial reformation of the food industry, what he calls the elephant in the national debate about the health care crisis. While Washington dukes out the legislative challenges to securing a healthier national environment, the country’s children have already returned to another school year and the Jewish New Year is upon us. Can we really wait for all this legislation to be enacted? Not me. I’m joining others who believe that change begins at the kitchen table. This year we are going to do a family food tashlich and symbolically cast away the elephants in our own refrigerators, the habitual bad food practices of everyday life.

1) Casting away disembodied eating

We’ll be taking more family expeditions to Farmer’s Markets or the local produce section of the grocery store. We’ll be talking to the kids about how food is grown and introducing them to more farmers who make cheese, grow food and milk cows or goats. Our most recent hero is the cheese guy from Olde Oak Farm in Orono Maine. Teaching children about food’s origins will help them respect eating it. It will also signal to our kids how much we care about them. Active concern about what goes into your kids’ bodies and foods sacred relationship to the earth, teaches them that their body really is a temple. A healthy regard for the physical self reflected by parental behavior helps children establish good personal boundaries. Good personal boundaries are the foundation of healthy eating and respect for limitations.

2) Casting away processed foods

When we journey to the river’s edge this Rosh HaShannah, we’ll take a pinch of processed food. This is to establish that sound eating is a spiritual goal as well as a health one. When healthy eating is only about rules it robs nutrition of its aesthetic merits. Eating healthy expresses a love for self, other, nature, pleasure, and, by extension, that which we know as God.  While banning processed foods, we’ll be emphasizing  sugar as a spare pleasure by home-baking with whole grains, unprocessed sugars, and sweetener substitutes like agave nectar.

3) Casting away disconnection

Not only are we going to eat together we are going to prepare meals together.   Shabbat dinner is a great opportunity for this but not the only one. Even school lunches can become a fun family activity.   Cooking with kids teaches responsibility, self-reliance and collaborative thinking. Dining together promotes relatedness and non-verbal emotional synergy. Eating healthy  food together is almost countercultural, a shared family brand that can help your children stand up to the pressure of consumerist messaging.

There is no reason to wait for Washington to do something about our country’s health and food crisis. As Michael Pollan says, changed consumer patterns brought on by transformed eating patterns will send a message to congress, not to mention the food industry. Yet, I wonder. When the year heats up with everyone’s dreams, goals, beloved passions, do you think we can keep up our taslich (think cold nights in February when the kids are exhausted, the parents have work piled high and even the family pets are dragging)?   Any other thoughts about how individuals and families can bring on Michael Pollan’s food revolution in the year to come? Maybe bread baking?