A shot of lemons from my uncle Boli's farm in the Panamanian highlands
I have been saying it for some time now, as awkward as it sounds, "where you spend your money is your political views". The food you choose to buy asserts you as a nutritional sovereign, or it supports the environmentally disastrous, commidified food chain. Importantly, how you source what you eat can be an act of rebellion.
There is something that I found liberating when I made my first batch of homemade yogurt. We become conditioned to believe the only source of food is the grocery store. It signals to us food safety, sterility (via pasteurization), long shelf lives, and of course, cheap prices. Let's come back to what "value" means when it comes to food, another time.
After all these years, thinking yogurt required some special milk, with a special bacterial starter, and some secret proprietary process, I was able to now provide a steady supply for our home. No, I don't have a dairy cow. But, baby steps. Eventually I will :)
Why don't you just buy it? Well, is it worth it to produce all that plastic waste from the plastic containers? Is it worth all of the energy to transport it from where it is produced? Environmentalist?
Is it safe? Producing homemade yogurt, and other fermented foods are human traditions that go back tens of thousands of years. That is enough to me to indicate it is patently safe.
I don't have a particular grudge with large corporations. But why pay Chobani, when learning these cooking and food prep traditions can provide so much value?
Go through the following mental exercise everytime you drop money on something from the local large chain grocery store. "How much waste does this produce?". "Do I need all these ingredients to make the same thing at home?" "Does this provide the same nutritional value as the fresh version?" Surely you didn't need that egg boiled and peeled for you.
A shot of lemons from my uncle Boli's farm in the Panamanian highlands