Beat Variance Meets Beet Variance

One of my favorite things to do on my bus commute to and from work is to catch up on the news by listening to NPR.  Unsurprisingly, a lot of the segments lately have focused on the economy.  The recession is certainly not an uplifting topic, but one segment looked at the problem from the unexpected new angle of popular music and got me thinking...about food.  Let me explain.

A professor from NYU came out with a study linking "beat variance" in music to the state of the economy.  He theorizes that songs with a steady beat start topping the charts during times of economic volatility because they somehow lend people a subconscious sense of stability, whereas songs that more liberally experiment with a higher "beat variance" are more popular when the market is stable.  I'm not an expert on music or economics so I can't really tell how watertight this theory actually is, but I do agree that instability--whether economic, political, cultural, or personal--can definitely have an effect on how we feel.

So I started thinking about what I do to calm myself down when I'm stressed out and overwhelmed.  Knitting, reading, and cooking topped the list, all three of which have their own special kind of "beat."  There is the click, click, click of knitting needles, and the steady turning of crisp book pages.  And when it comes to cooking, each phase of the process seems to have its own special cadence for me.  For starters, there's the tempo of my steps as I walk to the farmers' market to buy ingredients.  Add to that the multi-part harmony of peeling, slicing, dicing, and stirring.  Then top it off with the grand finale--eating!  And you've got yourself a regular symphony.

Maybe I'm going overboard with the musical analogies here, but I really have found that the process of preparing and eating my own food somehow helps me rediscover the calming rhythm in my life during stressful times.  We often overlook the importance of food in our daily routines, sometimes even viewing it as a bothersome necessity to get out of the way before we can attend to the more pressing things demanding our attention.  But respecting the very physicality of eating can be a very soothing exercise and a wonderful way to take care of the environment.  Making a few minor lifestyle changes could have a significant effect on your peace of mind; call it "beet variance," if you can stand the pun.  Researching farmers' markets in your area and buying organic produce there even just part of the time will help you become a part of the local food movement, eliminating thousands of "food miles" and all the associated pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and pesticides.  NRDC's Green Living Guide on local food is a great resource, allowing you to search for seasonal ingredients by month and geographic region.

Shopping locally also plays into an argument that has enjoyed lots of attention lately (including air time on NPR, to bring this whole post back around); many experts are now saying that increasing the number of vegetarian dishes you eat each week can make a significant difference in your carbon footprint, so it's worth thinking about whether you'd be willing to take that step.  Or maybe you're already a card-carrying vegetarian and are looking for the next challenge.  With all this talk of soothing natural rhythms, why not start your own garden?  My colleague and fellow Eco Committee member Margaret Oakley expounds on all the great reasons for doing so on her own blog.  And once you've done your shopping (or harvested your garden crop), prepping your food at home will help save you money, too.  I recently took a closer look at my own budget and was pretty shocked to see what a large slice of my monthly income went toward eating out at restaurants.  Funny how doing something to treat one of the side effects of a sick economy, like using the kitchen to calm our nerves, could actually help us deal with one of the most frustrating symptoms--a tighter pocketbook.