Consumer Staples: Wholeness

Consumer Staples as a sector is mostly associated with non-cyclical essentials for life such as food and other products that are considered essential or are consumed on a regular basis without too much variation. It is what is acquired on the regular shopping trips as opposed to what is acquired when furnishing a home or getting prepared to return to school after summer vacation.  Nor does this sector include splurges or vacation spending. It is closely related to who we are day in and day out.  The phrase, “we are what we eat” comes to mind.

So what is important in this sector is that it defines who we are in the most basic sense. As human “becomings” we can choose to invest in consumer staples that enhance human lives daily.  Food that is grown in a mechanical way with synthetic inputs and outputs that appear to control production but avoid interaction with the micro flora of topsoil is likely to nourish in a way that is unsatisfying.  In the developed world, obesity may be linked to the consumption of food that leaves the consumer unsatisfied and longing for more. Just as the chemicals pass directly into the plant, by-passing the need for developing deep and broad root systems, the resulting food is not filled with the rich nutrients of the earth. Oddly we are in a situation where malnutrition and obesity seem to go hand in hand.

The answer to this situation is to invest in natural, organic, whole systems thinking that will support healthy food that truly nourishes and other consumer staples like paper products and detergents that consider the whole. Humans need to be taken care of on the level of subsistence, but there is something also nourishing when we consciously participate in the whole processes of agriculture and nature behind the food and other products which wind up in our homes every day. Once chemists took over the agriculture schools, it was no longer possible to follow what went into our food.  The archetypal activities of animal husbandry, composting, companion planting and the like (see the chapter on “all I needed to know”) provide beautiful nourishing pictures that can be part of the healthy digestion process as we give thanks before a meal. The researcher can seek companies that not only use holistic systems for producing healthy staples, but reach out to consumers to help educate them in the archetypes of agricultural and natural life…so that in the end there is a sense of wholeness in the home.