Being Grateful for All Who Provide Our Food

Episode 016

Ben Walters: [00:00:00] Oh, hey everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. This is one of my favorite days, food, football, family. I am busting out this really cool charcuterie board today, I'm working on the food and I actually started thinking about the food. I like food and I tend to just eat food with not a lot of thought going into the process.

Ben Walters: Behind me, I have my pantry and there's all kinds of different foods you prepare, foods that are ready to eat, and often I just grab 'em, start munching 'em down, or I roll through a drive through or I go to a restaurant. Don't give my food much thought.

Ben Walters: The thing that got me thinking was I was reading the bag of Costco mixed nuts. Do you know how many countries are represented in this little tiny thing of mixed nuts? According to the bag, 17. I was blown away by that. People from 17 countries, almost all of which I have never been to, went and did that work of planting and picking and sending off [00:01:00] to some kind of shipping container and getting them all the way to Costco and then all the way to my Costco and then onto my table.

Ben Walters: And I began to think about all the different parts of this and how that was really cool. But then I started thinking about the Vermont cheese and the reason I was thinking about that specifically is because my daughter was part of the University of Vermont's CREAM program, and this is the coolest thing.

Ben Walters: They let a bunch of undergrad students in animal science run a dairy herd and they take the dairy that they get from that herd and they make cheese out of it, they make butter outta it, they make ice cream, and it is spectacular. When I think of all those kids in CREAM up at Vermont about this time of year, it's getting super cold and they're getting up at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning to go milk the cows.

Ben Walters: I'm grateful, but they're not the only ones. They're just a small herd. There are dairy farmers across the world doing that every day so that we can have this chocolate, or we can have this [00:02:00] cheese, or we can have butter, or sour cream, or all the other dairy products. So thank you to them today. I'm really grateful for them.

Ben Walters: And you start thinking about these plantain chips, which are really good. Those are made in Puerto Rico. And what a great island that is. People working really hard. And then I'm thinking about these dates, and as soon as I think about dates, I think of Hadley's Fruit Farm just outside of Los Angeles.

Ben Walters: I grew up as a little desert rat out in Phoenix. We would drive across the hot desert and it just seemed like it went on forever and it was miserable. The carrot at the end of this, of the end of the drive, was a trip to Hadley's Fruit Farm for a date shake, and I can still taste that. That is one of the most spectacular treats known to me.

Ben Walters: My wife thought it sounded absolutely gross until she tried it. So if you happen to be in Los Angeles, stop at Hadley's Fruit Farm, try a date shake. All these things on here.

Ben Walters: The olives, normally I love olives, but I don't think a lot about olives until this summer. I was in Croatia and I happened to [00:03:00] walk through an olive grove, and the story was that the people really struggling with poverty and the priest in their local church said, hey, let's create an olive cooperative where we raise olive groves and we sell those olives to the world, and then with those proceeds, we can live at a sustainable level.

Ben Walters: They did that. It was almost 200 years ago. That olive grove that they planted is still producing olives today. So when I eat one of these olives today, I'm thinking thank you to those Croatian cooperative farmers who are doing that.

Ben Walters: All this, I also think of the people who get it to market. There are a lot of people who are not out with their family today because they're driving trucks and trains and barges and big old shipping containers, getting our products to market. . Particularly, I had a good friend in one of the churches I serve, Bill Hinton, and he worked for Ward Trucking in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and he would drive right into New York City and think of all the great restaurants in New York City, but without a driver like Bill, [00:04:00] braving the traffic and the middle fingers and all the stuff that goes on with New York City traffic, there wouldn't be food in those restaurants, food on those tables. And so To all the truckers out there, I say thank you today.

Ben Walters: So today, as you prepare to enjoy your feast with your friends and family and enjoy football, as you're just starting to munch down, think about all these awesome people that are putting it out there every day. Picking the cocoa beans, picking the date, harvesting the nuts, going to the plantain tree, and getting those olives, pickles, cucumbers, the wheat, the cheese, all of it. Thank you to those folks. And as you enjoy that meal, I want you to be SuperPumped that you are connected to all of them. That they have a place at your table. And I hope that as you eat together, you'll become more connected with the people you love. One final thing, I hope your teams win and go Bengals.

​

Ben Walters: Thanks for joining me today on the SuperPumped [00:05:00] Life podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, I have two really quick next steps for you. First, subscribe or follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube so you don't miss future shows. And second, jump on 

Ben Walters: over to superpumped.com where there are all kinds of great tips and tools for you to launch your SuperPumped Life.

Ben Walters: Keep well and I'll see you next time.