Kudos to Chipotle

I tend to get pretty geeky about food politics. I know full well that most people don’t care about it as much as I do, and that plenty of people don’t even know what that means. So it’s exciting to me when I see someone – a private company, no less – trying to educate people about where their food comes from.

This week, that education came from Chipotle. I talk a lot about greenwashing on this blog, which is when a company talks about green issues so they can pretend to be greener than they are. But Chipotle is the real deal; they’re the good guys. They actually make a serious effort to get their ingredients from responsible sources.  The cool thing is, that’s not why I have to wait in line every time I go there. People flock there because their food is really good.

But don’t let me tell you that. You can learn about it from the bag that my last burrito came in:

It’s pretty crazy how much influence a single burrito can have, not in a literal sense. I mean, it’s pretty obvious a burrito would have a hard time winning an election (not all, but most). And I’ve never seen a burrito as a lead singer in a band or anything like that (except for maybe that one band in Sweden). But, the burrito you choose to buy & eat, and what it’s made out of, and where the ingredients come from can be pretty powerful. If a restaurant uses responsibly raised pork in their burritos, that means when you eat one, you’re helping to keep a farmer who produces naturally raised meat in business and by doing that you’re influencing the rancher down the road to start changing their practices to be more sustainable & responsible, so they can get a piece of the action, and then maybe that will lead to changes in legislation to make sure that more of the meat in the world is raised responsibly & sustainably. And all of a sudden, that little cylinder of tortilla-wrapped goodness is making policy changes!!!!!!!! See????? Burritos have a lot of pull. So never underestimate the power of a burrito.

Cool, huh? Hardly an exhaustive list of the reasons to buy sustainable food, but a pretty nice quick introduction. And the fact that they practice what they preach makes it even nicer.