I'm not the kind of person who jumps on every rickety wagon that goes clattering by when it comes to my health and well-being. With all the "studies" that reveal conflicting information and "new research" that may either solidify or debunk old research, not to mention the "oh, we said this but now we realize something else is actually true" scenarios, I've really had to educate myself about what I should and should not do to be conscientious consumer.
Until about a year ago, I never thought much about things like where my food came from or what kind of impact my lifestyle had on the environment and on other people. Maybe the fact that I do think about such things now has to do with my generation. It seems to be a common goal among many of my friends and acquaintances to live more like people did a hundred years ago in terms of getting food from a farm instead of a corporate conglomerate, being active despite having a desk job, conserving natural resources, and trying to buy local products instead of those produced by exploited people in developing countries.
Of course, with this new awareness comes a great deal of responsibility--and that for me is the hardest part. I cannot feed myself or my family feed-lot-raised beef or eggs and meat from antibiotic-and hormone-filled chickens that never see the light of day. I just can't do it. This means paying more for grass-fed beef and free-range chicken and eggs from the farmer's market or co-op and eating less of it because it costs more. This also means very little fast food. Knowing where my meat comes from and not eating fast food are healthy decisions, but sometimes I want a McDonald's cheeseburger so much it hurts. Seriously.
When it comes to label reading, we tried the baby-step method. We started simply--no foods containing high fructose corn syrup or anything hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated were allowed in the shopping cart. It wasn't too much of a sacrifice, as there are usually alternatives. But then we started looking at food labels for anything modified, I knew my Little Debbie days were over, as were the days of pretty much anything packaged. I had to draw the line, though, when it came to refined sugar. Giving up Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines was not a problem, as I bake at home using raw sugar. It was the bread products that broke me. I tried making bread and buns in my bread machine, but I just couldn't get them to taste the same...not to mention the fact that it takes four hours.
And then there's the organic-or-not-organic debate. Frankly, I think buying organic has become much too trendy for the label to mean much of anything. Many organic brands are owned by large food-producing empires that also produce non-organic brands, so I don't really trust them. That's just me being skeptical. But there are some organic brands I know and trust, and while we get our produce from the farmer's market in the summer, we do try to get organic produce from the store in the winter.
Being socially conscious has even reached into my chocolate-eating habits. Several of my coworkers feel the same way about food as I do, so we share information. Around Halloween, someone e-mailed me a list of chocolate manufacturers that use child labor in developing countries to harvest the cocoa beans. And so the Hershey's chocolate went the way of the McDonald's cheeseburgers and the Little Debbies. Who'd have thought the choice of which chocolate I buy would matter? But even on the smallest level, it does. At least I keep believing that at some level the choices I've made and continue to make will make a positive difference in the grand scheme of things.
I still have so much to learn and many changes to make to be the best steward I can of the body and resources I've been given. Someday we'd like to have a few acres of land so we can have a big garden and some chickens, but until then I need to work on my canning skills and read up on how to actually get the eggs from the chickens. I sometimes think if I didn't have a job and if I actually liked to spend time in the kitchen, I could do a whole lot more to provide the absolute best for my family, like cook grains in a rice cooker and figure out creative ways to use tofu. But I do have a job and I don't like to cook, so that's that. Between Kev and me, we do what we can with what we have, and for now that will have to be good enough.
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