Food Choice and COVID-19
Reflections on food and pandemics.
These are crazy days, right? Schools closing, kids home from college, businesses shuttered, retirement communities in crisis, store shelves stripped of basics. It is the stuff of dystopian science fiction. COVID-19 seems to be wreaking havoc on the world as I write. My heart goes out to any and all suffering in the midst of this pandemic.
However, like all crises, there are lessons to learn, conclusions to draw that can help us in the future. Times like this test our beliefs, our systems, our assumptions. While our governments, rightly so, are focused on containing, testing, and quarantining, I find myself reflecting on what big-picture lessons we can glean.
Lesson #1: Animal Consumption is Problematic
It is likely that COVID-19 was an animal-based influenza that jumped to humans in what are called “wet markets” in Wuhan, China. According to the United Nations, these poorly regulated markets mix the sale of both legal and illegal species. Disease and animal cruelty tend to thrive there. Experts see them as perfect breeding grounds for outbreaks of this sort.
