The New York Times Magazine 2009 Food Issue is out today. Yum! What a wonderful treat to read over breakfast this morning. Loaded with lots of current thinking about stuff like locavorism, Slow Food, and Michael Pollan’s rules for eating. All great reads.

Something occurred to me as I read the piece on Jamie Oliver. I think the shift has been happening over the last five or so years, but it really seems that food choices are becoming less about simple tastes and more about activism. For Slow Food, it’s about maintaining genetic diversity, supporting local farmers (as opposed to agribusiness), and reducing your carbon footprint. For vegetarians and free-rangeterians it’s about animal rights. When you see the work that Oliver is doing with healthy eating and a foundation that helps low-income kids go to cooking school, Oliver is not longer just a fun and feisty cook on the Food Network – he is a fun and feisty food activist.

For too long, too many of us have simply inhaled barely edible processed “food” while working, in the car, in front of the TV, or even while surfing the web. As a result, we barely taste the food, much less think about the implications of eating that food. However, it’s so encouraging to see the new wave of food activists who think a LOT about food on all levels.

The great thing about food activism is that you literally get to enjoy the fruits of your labors. This is a point really brought home by Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:

“Doing the right thing, in this case, is not about abstinence-only, throwing out bread, tightening your belt, wearing a fake leather belt, or dragging around feeling righteous and gloomy. Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure. Why resist that?”

Indeed.