Food Revolution

Have you seen the new show on ABC? It is about Jamie Oliver's quest to help a town change the way they eat at home, in their schools and in their restaurants. He wants it to spark a revolution in our country and he's already done a lot of work in his home country of England. Of course, it is a TV show and there is editing and they want to get good ratings, but overall I'm glad to see the discussion happening even on prime time TV.

It really feels like so many things in our society are out of control right now and one of the best things we can do is to take back control of what we eat, how it is grown and where it came from. When you think about it the food we eat is what fuels our bodies, helps us fight disease, heals us when we are sick or hurt and is the basis of how we live our lives. It is hard to believe that any mega-corporation is going to take that responsibility as seriously as we should. However, to make that happen we have to be awake, aware and willing to ask hard questions and make hard choices.

I'm not one to claim perfection or even claim to be in the same ballpark as perfection, seriously not even the same town as the ballpark. We love chocolate, we eat a lot of desserts, we like A&W root beer (OK, Mike loves it!), and our pantry is far from free of all white flour, white rice, or even the occasional processed item. In fact, we are still finished up the conventional meat in our freezer. See, soooo not perfect!

I am a mom who is committed to continuing her baby steps in trying to do better. I am making better nutritional choices overall. I did a lot of canning and am going to do my best to do that again this summer, even with a new baby. I am researching other meat options and we will only be buying meat I feel good about feeding my babies and my husband and myself. I am working on getting better and better, but we'll never be perfect. My husband will always prefer my homemade white bread to my homemade wheat bread. (Or maybe not if I get my own grain mill...they say fresh ground tastes more like white bread! Here's hoping.) We will go out to eat once in a great while and we will probably eat conventional meat there and at other people's homes. I'm not worried about perfection, but I am working to make many, many changes over time. One baby step at a time!

I really hope that more and more families start to demand better of those who grow our food, those who process it, those that prepare it. Hopefully more people will be doing all three themselves at least in part! I think that as we demand more information and hold ourselves and those that help us feed our families to a higher level that we'll see changes. We should be able to know about genetic modification of our food, irradiated items, conditions that animals are kept in, byproducts, hormones and antibiotics fed to them and just be able to make our own choices based on knowledge. It shouldn't be so hard to become educated, it should be on the labeling. The food lobbies shouldn't be more important than the families who eat the food that is produced.

I'm rambling and ranting, but I just feel like we are at a point where more people are waking up to the reality that just because the chicken looks like it did 50 years ago, doesn't mean that it is the same. The carrots raised organically and conventionally may look identical (other than the prices) but there are real chemical differences. We are all doing the best we can and I hope we keep making baby steps that will end up causing changes in a big, big way. To paraphrase Food, Inc. we all vote on this issue three times a day.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Anyone else struggling to balance their love of great deals and low budgets with better, more sound choices? Anyone else feel like change may be in the air?

Happy Weekend!
Heather