What is the food movement? It isn’t an easy question to answer, because it’s made up of many different tribes and constituencies. The very attempt to say that all these disparate culinary, political and environmental forces can be corralled into something called a food movement is probably controversial. But let’s give it a try. The attempt might bear useful fruit, not just by clarifying the terms of the debate, but by helping to realize useful partnerships.

So: what do I mean by the food movement? Well, for starters, here are a few key organizations and people who belong to it.

Slow Food. As the name suggests, this international NGO began with an outcry against fast food. In 1986, McDonald’s wanted to open a franchise near the Spanish steps in Rome, and this was regarded by many Italians (quite rightly) as an act of sacrilege and an abomination. “Slow food” became a national and then an international anti-fast-food movement. I don’t have any polling data, but at least among the folks I hang out with, Slow Food seems to enjoy the greatest brand recognition out of all the food movement affiliates.

Michael Pollan. I get the impression that among serious food peeps Michael P. is sometimes regarded as, well, old news. That’s the price of fame and influence. His books, Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food are undeniably part of the food movement canon, and as such, often taken as read. Which means, if you’re interested in food politics, and haven’t read them, you probably should. There are certainly many other excellent food writers, like Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), but Pollan has sold a lot of books lately and reached a lot of people.

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Hmm…why is that? The obvious explanation is that there are just too darned many products out there. Significant variations from region to region make things worse, and if you ever did manage to catalog everything, you’d have to start all over again because so much would have changed in the meantime. A web guide would need a staff of twenty full-timers to stay on top of it all. The best we can hope for, I believe, is the rise of some sort of crowd-sourced food wiki. There’s nothing out there yet I’m aware of that isn’t in a uselessly prototypical form. In the meantime, here are some suggestions for eaters who want to a do their own research.

• The Eat Well Guide is very easy to use and tries to point you towards local, sustainable, organic food resources in your area. I say “tries” because the search results for my area (Vancouver) were somewhat limited. Perhaps you’ll do better if you’re near a major American city. Local Harvest is a similar site that connects you with organic farms and farmers’ markets (again, mostly in the U.S.).

• Britain’s Ethical Consumer does actually have a food buyer’s guide with ratings for individual products, but naturally it isn’t all that helpful to us Norte Americanos.

• If you want to get your food politics consciousness-raising on, here are ten blogs worth watching. They provide the kind of background information that makes it much easier to make wise food choices.

• Many articles on food quote “non-profit” organizations and refer to studies to back up their claims, but not all non-profits and studies are created equal. To find out whether you’re dealing with a legitimate source or an industry front group, you need look no further than Sourcewatch.org.

• Phil Howard has created some handy charts, detailing corporate acquisitions of little mom-and-pop organic food companies. Not saying you should stop buying a particular brand just because it’s been acquired, but it’s good to know what’s going on in the market.

• Lastly, if you are a twitterer you will find many fine slow-food, real-food tweeps by searching #ProFood and #Slowfood and similar hashtags. Take advantage of the hivemind. Once you refine your ‘followed’ list, Twitter becomes a powerful information aggregator.

If all else fails, you can never go far wrong by just plugging the product or brand in question into Google and seeing what happens. And if even that fails, why not try avoiding processed mystery foods altogether? Rediscover the joy of cooking. Get to know your fruit and veg on a whole new level and frequent farmers markets where you can shake hands with the people who grew your food. It’s worth the trouble. Taking the time to learn more about your food and to cook more from scratch will make you healthier and happier. Guaranteed.

Update: This just popped up on Mashable. Worth checking out: 10 New Sites For Socially Responsible Shopping.

This diet, at least as I remember it in my household, consisted of canned everything, and instant everything. The first time I tasted frozen peas in early adulthood I remember thinking they didn’t taste very good. I had only ever known the pea in its dark, mushy, semi-fermented, straight-from-the-can incarnation. Other household standbys beside canned veggies included Shake’n'Bake chicken, Kraft Dinner, hot dogs on white Wonder Bread buns, and something we called rice and meat sauce.

"Wonder Bread Helps Catch Boys!" 1968

Here’s the recipe for rice and meat sauce: Fry up some ground beef, mix in some spaghetti sauce from a can or jar, dump this on top of a bed of white Minute Rice, and serve. It was my brother’s favorite dish.

Why were we eating this way? Had the evil geniuses in food industry marketing departments talked us into it?

Monty Python did a spoof on marketing back in the ’70s,  in which a salesman finds himself with a big box full of short bits of string, and must come up with clever ways to position them. “Simpson’s Individual Stringettes!” he cries. “A million household uses!” This soon gets upgraded to, “pre-sliced, rustproof, easy-to-handle, low-calorie Simpson’s Individual Emperor Stringettes, free from artificial coloring, as used in hospitals!” Marketing is like that. Sometimes the producers are trying to foist something on you. On the other hand, sometimes they’re just eagerly attempting to stay abreast of a burgeoning, consumer-driven demand.

The food movement, as represented by Michael Pollan, often speaks of the food industry as an entity that has sold us on highly profitable processed goods. No doubt there’s plenty of truth in that. But I can clearly remember the pre-modern grocery store. I remember that it had plenty of raw materials on offer, as well as legions of grannies who still knew how to keep the butcher and the produce department manager honest. My family bought the cheap, canned, boxed, processed goods mainly because they required extremely little preparation. And why was that important? Well, for the obvious reason that both my parents had to work.

So we demanded those cheap, convenient processed foods. It was all we were eating. The more processed foods the food industry came up with, the greater the variety at the dinner table. And yes, our family also swallowed all that debunked nutritionist propaganda about fat being the great killer. We believed that so long as we were popping multivitamins and so long as we weren’t eating eggs fried in bacon grease for breakfast every morning, the processed food would take care of our nutritional needs just fine.

It’s certainly convenient to refer to the “food industry” as though there has been one guy in a suit running the whole show for the past forty years, pushing the highly processed food on an unsuspecting public. But when I reflect on food culture and what’s wrong with it, I can’t help thinking of my upbringing, and wondering if maybe the foodies have glossed over first causes.

Consider this: My parents generation was the first in memory that didn’t stand a chance of prospering without two incomes. Almost at the same historical moment that having a career became an option for all women, it became necessary for both parents to work in order to get by. And the food has been mostly crap ever since. If there are dark forces at work here, it has to do with more than just the food industry. Somewhere along the line families saw their workload doubled—without a corresponding increase in wealth and happiness. Perhaps that’s a better explanation for the modern diet.