'The Pleasures of Eating' Response

Here are some revised tips for 'dorm life' that target a more appropriate college audience, while still keeping with the main point Berry is trying to make to the reader:

1. Participate in food production to the extent that you can. Even if all you have in your room is a window, you can still utilize that small space to grow a small type of plant.  Try some sprouts or spices, like basil - something that can sit in the sun and doesn't need a whole lot of care. You will be fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life.

2. Try to prepare your own food at least once a week. This means cooking yourself, even if it's a simple meal. Utilize your stove or microwave and try to make it as healthy as possible, using just a few ingredients you bought.  Get other people in on it; everyone wants to have a 'normal' meal, and it'll make you realize that you are capable of providing for yourself. This should also enable you to eat more cheaply, and it will give you a measure of "quality control": you will have some reliable knowledge of what has been added to the food you eat.

3. Learn the origins of the food you buy, and try to buy the food that is produced closest to your home. The idea that every locality should be, as much as possible, the source of its own food makes several kinds of sense. The locally produced food supply is the most secure, freshest, and the easiest for local consumers to know about and to influence. In college, there are probably not many 'local' stands around- but you probably have a farmer's market somewhere near you. Try to walk there maybe once a week to pick up fresh fruits and vegetables to eat throughout the week.

4. Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist.  If you go to the grocery store, ask them where their meat or produce comes from, and only purchase what you deem 'safe'.  By such dealing you eliminate the whole pack of merchants, transporters, processors, packagers, and advertisers who thrive at the expense of both producers and consumers.

5. Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production. What is added to the food that is not food, and what do you pay for those additions?

6. Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening. In case you plan on eating more locally later in life, you might want to know how the best food is grown. For now, it could be helpful to know what is and is not good to eat.

7. Learn as much as you can, by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species.