Peace, Love, and a Sustainable Tomato

Hippies of the late sixties shouldn't only be known for their "make love not war" slogan, protests against conformity to social norms, peace signs, drugs and rock and roll. According to an article in The News & Observer, it looks like they should also stake a claim in changing the way America ate early on.

The introduction of vegetarian menu choices, organic and natural food stores and even earth-friendly growing practices can be attributed to some degree to hippies. Fed up with mass-produced processed supermarket fare and TV dinners, they took matters into their own hands and re-thought how food should be supplied to a nation. Some went as far as becoming farmers themselves and made a point in introducing others to the virtues of sustainably grown food and knowing where their food actually came from.

The organic food die was cast as consumers looked to chefs to provide them with solid vegetarian meal options and shoppers influenced what was being sold to them in the market. Today, the hippie's legacy of making conscious food choices has been refueled as more and more of us seek out organic, sustainable, and locally produced fare while positively perpetuating another counterculture offshoot from the Summer of Love.

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