Trust, Food, and Developing Countries

I was talking to an Albanian friend about food (which is like half of what I talk about these days, long story) and we ended up chatting about where to get meat. “This is the butcher to go to,” she tells me, “he is the best butcher, everyone goes to him, the meat is the best. Except for chicken: for chicken, go to this shop, they sell chicken that is fed only corn and is all organic.”

Neither of these shops advertises itself as organic or natural or anything at all. Both are small places I’ve passed a hundred times. Nothing in either shop signals to the American eye that these are places that will sell good, reliable food. But they are trusted implicitly by my very intelligent Albanian friend. Because that is the foundation of all food safety here: trust. Not in a system, but in particular shops and suppliers. An old kind of trust, the kind that barely exists in the U.S. these days.

And it’s a necessary trust. I did a thing earlier this year where I was looking for restaurants and shops that would have totally “safe” food—no preservatives, pesticides, etc. And I got told by a lot of people that all the food in Albania is safe in this way. That every shop is getting fresh fruits and veggies, that everything is better than in America (which, to be fair, Americans do not understand how fucked up there food is as a result of industrial agriculture).

This isn’t true. Albania’s agricultural sector has a huge problem: despite being on the doorstep of the EU, they can’t export much there. Albanian food is seized at the border all the time. Because here’s the things: all farmers live on the edge, trying to inch the margin a bit. Poor farmers live even closer to it. Of course they use whatever tools they can to avoid falling off that edge. The food may be more “natural” than in the States, but it’s nowhere near being truly “clean.”

And so we come back to my friend, the shops she buys meat from, and why. The fabric of Albanian life remains trust, and that applies to food as much as anything. The luxury of blind trust isn’t here yet, may never get here.

I’m not sure I have a conclusion here, some great insight. Human connection that underlies everything is too easy to forget, but literally determines the composition of your body chemistry, your gut brain? Systems that actually make food safe are really nice and people should be grateful for them? My friend has done her homework, and we should all do the same?

If nothing else, I’ll say this: it’s too easy in the modern world to get disconnected from the earth, from what the chickens eat and what soil the vegetables sprout in. After living in Albania, I hope I’ll never be that disconnected again.

And what do you think, gentle reader? Is there some kind of clever conclusion I’ve missed? Have you ever had to investigate food origins, had an experience that made you see the system and the humans who make it up? Leave a comment and let’s chat!