Let’s kick off the new year with some questions: Where does your food come from? And why should you care? 

“The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference”– Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, referred to as “the messenger of mankind”, wrote this in reference to the horrors he experienced in concentration camps during World War II.

Most of us are indifferent our food. Where it comes from, who grows it, who cooks it for us, who delivers it to our door- questions we don’t even bother to ask. We get what looks good at whole foods or trader joe’s or at the farmer’s market, with price being the main motivator.

But there is a hidden cost: In 2025, over 1,200 agricultural workers committed suicide.

1,200 farmers, ranchers, and agriculture workers, killing themselves at a staggering 3.5x the national average. This number has been on the rise for decades, and “experts” have failed to come up with a solution. What is going on? 

Our societal indifference to food plays a major role in this.
Mindful Consumption is the solution.

Every day we have a choice: we can live mindfully, or we can live mindlessly. 

“One single man who stops lying can bring down a tyranny” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author of the Gulag Archipelago, which has been called one of the most impactful pieces of literature of the 20th century. This book is credited with playing a major role in the dissolution of the tyrannical Soviet Union. We are far more powerful as individuals than we can ever know.

We must stop lying to ourselves. But this is easier said than done!

How much easier it would be to point the finger at someone else! It is not my fault that factory farms exist, you cry out in protest.  Tyson and Cargill and Monsanto spend millions on lobbying and marketing. There is government legislation making it harder and harder to support local and sustainable. A recent example is many multi-generational organic dairy farmers being forced off their land in Tomales Bay, in the name of “environmentalism”. The folks behind this are out of touch with both reality and the environment, and it makes my blood boil. But this essay isn’t about how delusional they are: this essay is about what to do about it.

It feels good to rage against the enemy and be mad at the people behind this. But how did this happen? How did we get us to the point where real farmers are being kicked off their land? How much of this burden do we bear? Would this have happened if you and I were more connected to real food? Would this have happened had you and I known about these dairy farmers beforehand? Would this have happened if the norm was to drink organic, local milk, instead of the mass produced cheap junk that fills most grocery stores, thus making the idea of removing organic, local dairies ludicrous?

One single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood.

We see floods everywhere, and we feel overwhelmed. We point our fingers at the flood, we cry out in protest, without seeing that we are the flood.

The power to change the world is in you. This is a tough battle. It FEELS as if what we say and do doesn’t matter. We feel bogged down, our singular voice drowned out by the noise of the masses. But this is nothing new! Carl Jung reflects on the battle between the individual and the world. 

“The bigger the crowd the more negligible the individual. But if the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of his own puniness and impotence, should feel that his life has lost its meaning, then he is already on the road to state slavery and become its proselyte. 

… The man who looks only outside and quails before the big battalions has no resource with which to combat the evidence of his sense and his reason. But that is just what is happening today: we are all fascinated and over-awed by statistical truths and large numbers and are daily apprised of the nullify and futility of the individual personality, since it is not represented and personified by any mass organization“ 

Jung wrote this in 1956. The world population in 1956 was 2.8 billion. Today, in 2026, the world population is 7.8 billion. There are 5 billion more population today than when he wrote it 64 years ago. And still, each person tries to find importance by looking outward. What if we look inward? What if we take responsibility for our lives? 

Solzenithsyn is proof that one single man who stops lying can bring down a tyranny. But stopping lying is no easy task. 

We know the status quo; we know what will happen if we continue to operate business as usual. But we have no idea what could happen if we changed just a little bit. We have no idea how much of an impact living true to what we believe could have.

The average burger from a fast food joint has parts from over 300 cows all blended together, a meat smoothie. Ignorance is not bliss, because we are not ignorant. We are all smart enough to know that our consumption has gotten out of hand. There’s no way all the food we consume is coming from a good spot. We all know it. We’ve seen the feedlots along the freeway. We’ve seen the videos of factory raised chickens and pigs. 

yet we are too busy, too distracted, too fearful of what it would mean to confront it. We choose indifference. We navigate the complexities of the modern world with the mantra “out of sight, out of mind”.

You are what you eat. To be indifferent to our food is to be indifferent to ourselves, to our friends and family, to the world and all the people in it. We are indifferent to our own existence.

This must change. 

What if we choose Mindful Consumption, buy direct from farmers more often than not, talked to them, showed appreciation, treated them with anything but indifference? What if we try to connect to our food and the people who made it for us? 

“Be the change you wish to see in the world”

 a beautiful statement, and a massive responsibility. Everything you say and do matters. What you say and do shapes the world around you. You bear the burden of creating a new world.

Who is going to grow your food? Who is raising these cows and chickens? Who is milking the cows? Who is growing the lettuce, picking your grapes, roasting your coffee beans? 

Here’s some good news: It does’t have to be you who does this! You don’t need to go live in the country, grow your own food, milk cows every morning. You can still live in a city, go out to bars and restaurants, and soak up all the glamour and delights of the city life. All you have to do is care just a little bit. Opt for buying products locally when you can. Go to a butcher shop and buy from a local rancher instead of Costco. Buy organic. Get to know the name of the farmer at the farmer’s market. A little bit goes a long way. 

Here’s something to lighten the mood before we dive back in to some stats that back up my call for mindful consumption. 

Suicide is the 15th leading cause of death worldwide. I researched the phenomena of rising suicide rates in college and found that there is no significant difference between the suicide rates of countries with different types of suicide prevention strategies. A country with well-funded and well-staffed mental health programs is as much a victim to the ever-rising suicide rates than a country with little to no mental health programs. This is a dark discovery, and a document like “Preventing Suicide: A Global Imperative” produced by the WHO, doesn’t give much hope. 

The World Health Organization’s “Preventing Suicide: A Global Imperative” discusses the sources and solutions for rising global suicide rates. This document encourages the leaders of nations to develop their own  national suicide prevention strategy. Unfortunately, this is something many developed countries have done for decades, and the results aren’t promising. But yet here we are- pushing for more of what has been found to be ineffective. 

The current mainstream thinking around the Suicide Situation reminds me of Carl Jung’s advice to his students and fellow clinicians: 

“If, for instance, I determine the weight of each stone in a bed of pebbles and get an average weight of 145 grams, this tells me very little about the real nature of the pebbles. Anyone who thought, on the basis of these findings, that he could pick up a pebbles of 145 grams at the first try would be in for a serious disappointment. Indeed, it might well happen that however long he searched he would not find a single pebble weighing exactly 145 grams. The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories which are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality…one could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the characteristic of *irregularity* ”

This flawed process seems to be the norm for understanding and solving many global issues. We create an organization to address depression, we have a state-funded suicide hotline, we set up mental health clinics. We avoid personal responsibility, and push it to someone else, somewhere else. The problem persists, and suicide  rates continue to rise. Why? 

“Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love”– Nassim Taleb

We ignore the elephant in the room: you. Yes, you. And me. And all of us. How you and I live our lives shapes the fabric of our shared reality. How you and I live our lives builds, or destroys, community. We can build people up, or we can ignore them. 

As it stands, there is no clear path forward to preventing suicide rates. so what do we do? 

Long before he wrote 1984, George Orwell went from his home in London to live with coal miners and research their plight, working as a journalist for a socialist newspaper in London. 

What he found was that their lives were terrible. And- he also found that the fruits of their labor were enjoyed by the same people who commissioned him to write about their plight- The people who sympathized with the plight of the coal miners were the cause of their plight! The magazine editors and the activists fighting for the rights of workers were the same folks who mindlessly consumed the fruits of their labors, leading to their plight in the first place. 

Solzhenitsyn’s critique of Marx sheds light on the nature of the problem. In reflecting on the distribution of essential resources, Solzhenitsyn says of Marx:

“He himself had never taken a pick in hand. To the end of his days he never pushed a wheelbarrow, mined coal, felled timber, and we don’t even know how his firewood was split—but he wrote that down on paper, and the paper did not resist.”

The power is not in how our state allocates mental health resources. The Power is in us. The power is in in how you and I choose to live our life. The power lives in how we consume. 

Mindful acts of consumption have a snowball effect. A little bit is a lot. Bringing your own coffee cup and straw to the coffee shop might feel futile, not worth the effort. They serve hundreds, thousands of people a day. All in paper or plastic cups.

What I do won’t change anything, right? Maybe not. What you say and do matters.

I’ve felt this in my own life: Having my chest freezer filled with a quarter of a cow from a local ranch. cooking for friends or for potlucks at my swim club, and sourcing local, organic ingredients. I hosted a big barbecue at the dolphin club this past summer, using beef from Stemple Creek. Did it change the lives of the 70 people I fed? No. But a few people reached out to me about buying local foods- that’s a huge win! 

Sometimes it feels futile. I spend hours editing a video project, and for what? Or I put a lot of energy and thought into an essay like this, and then Resistance comes and whispers in my ear that it isn’t worth it. Bringing my own coffee cup to the cafe, spending a bit more money on local + organic ingredients, preaching to people about the beauty of my chest freezer and how we should all be eating locally and sustainably- it is exhausting sometimes, and can feel futile, but it is worth it.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, who am I?

We aren’t going to change the world overnight. But we can choose to change- we can wake up and choose to consume mindfully. We can wake up and choose to care just a little bit more than we did yesterday. We can make an internal change, and our external reality will soon follow. 

“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his ultimate goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep’. ” – Leo Tolstoy

Now before I wrap this up, I have a confession to make: Last night I had a delightful evening, drinking some beers with some friends, and I have no idea who grew the wheat, no idea who brewed those beers. And then at midnight I tanked a steak quesadilla from a random taco shop. It was delicious. That definitely not my best form. But then this morning, I am sipping a single-origin espresso sourced and roasted by HEDGE, brewed by Iryna at Better Half Coffee. And I’ve got Stemple Creek ground beef and organic pasta by Patagonia Provisions for dinner. .

Life is hard. Many of you reading this lead busy lives. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to cook and feed a family of four. But the goal is not perfection.

The goal is for us to resist indifference. Do the best you can. Be mindful. Think about your food just a bit more than you did last year.

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake. Not by artificial means, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact of man than the unquestionable ability to elevate his life with conscious endeavor. It is wonderful to be able to paint a particular painting or carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful. But it is far more glorious to be able to paint and to carve the atmosphere and the medium through which we look and through which we live: to Affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts” – Henry David Thoreau

Affect the quality of the Day. Day by day. Moment by moment.

Resist indifference. Embrace Awareness. You will be happier and healthier, and the rest of the world will follow suit.

“No trumpets sound when the important decisions  of our lives are made. Destiny is made known silently.”

Thanks for reading, y’all. This one was hard to write and I’m sure it wasn’t an easy read. As you can tell, this is and will continue to be a work in progress. Thanks for bearing with me.

I made this map in haste. I plan to update it more soon. These places support real farmers and ranchers.

Here’s a link to my other post about finding and sourcing real food. You can do it! We can do it!

A few book recs for those who want more information: Start with Folks this ain’t normal by Joel Salatin, then go to Fast Food Nation. After that, you can’t go wrong with Greening of America or One Straw Revolution. If you get through those and/or want to chat more about them, reach out!

Lots more coming soon. Planning to do more videos, interviews, essays, all of it.

Holler at me with thoughts, feelings, recommendations, etc-
ryanhedum@gmail.com
or give me a call at (916)690-2638

Lots of love, Ryan Walter Hedum