Going Around the Bend

"The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison."

- Dr. Ann Wigmore, ND

It has been pointed out to us several times lately that we (meaning my husband and I)  have "gone round the bend" a little with regards to food.  Some come out and say it simply, "You guys are nuts!", others (like my mother) are more subtle, "Oh, it was nice to go visit your sister, we could talk about food....she even goes to Sam's Club" to which I give a small, involuntary shiver of horror and then smile and nod politely.

I don't deny that we have drastically changed how we live in the last 8 years and we actually are aware of how unusual we must come across to people.  We sometimes go out at night to the local bar and eat nachos and drink cheap beer and discuss how stilted we have become about our food while playing a few games of pool, but here's the hard part....once you know the truth about food and what you eat, how do you put the blinders back on and go back? 

Our progression into "craziness" went something like this:

• Watching one of your children become sicker and sicker wondering what was going on!
• Child diagnosed with a genetic disease that causes her body to react to gluten.
• Realizing that gluten is in just about everything.
• Freaking out in grocery store over what to feed your two -year-old that won't end up poisoning her.
• Learning to read labels.
• Wondering what exactly carrageenan, carnauba wax, and soy lecithin actually are.
• Finding out what they are.
• Applying Occam's razor to the food concept and realizing that, in general, the simpler foods are the better they tend to be for you.
• Finding a source of these "simple" foods.
• Realizing that it is cheaper and a ton more fun to raise/grow/process/store them ourselves.
• Raising/growing/processing said food.
• Watching as your friends, neighbors and relatives all think that we have slipped off the deep end.

The luxury, (and I do realize what a luxury it is) is that we have time.  We have had a lot of time.  Time to read, to research, to analyze, to try stuff out, to grow food, to process food.....it uses a lot of time.  We have, by some small miracle that I haven't quite figured out yet, set ourselves up to get by on only one income from one outside job.  In today's society, that is no easy feat.  To some extent it is because we really don't want anything - no cable TV, no high tech gadgets, no brand new cars, no foreign holidays, no new clothes, nada.  We do without and, personally, I am totally cool with that.  Less overhead equals less income needed to support it.  "Simplify, simplify, simplify"....Thoreau was on to something there.  So our entire source of entertainment comes strictly from living and raising our kids in the best way that we can.  One way to look at it is that I have learned to garden, can food, raise chickens, spin thread and knit due to sheer boredom, but the irony is that I am not bored....ever.  Maybe it is a mindset that we have fallen into that we actually love what we are doing all the time, instead of constantly working at a job that we hate so that we can go out and have fun later.

In my mind it comes down to the fact that every man, woman, and child on this planet has 24 hours in each day in which to do something.  For the great majority of us, what we do during those 24 hours is not likely to be earth shattering or life changing to the population at large, but what we can do for ourselves and our family can have a very large and lasting impact.  Thinking back to the jobs that I have held - waitress, food service worker, lab technician, animal caretaker, veterinarian - none of those.....none.....have meant as much to me as taking care of my kids and family.  I am never happier then when I am home, either working in the garden with the kids raising food, or cleaning a barn taking care of animals that I know will help to feed us. There is a very direct relationship between these activities and the lives we lead.  Working at a job, for me, is an indirect relationship - still very helpful and necessary, but not nearly as fulfilling.  It is a very basic desire - to provide for oneself and family. 

 

Another reason we have jumped off the deep end with regard to food....it's political.  Eating a meal, feeding your family, buying groceries - those things are political statements whether you want them to be or not.  Where your fork goes, so goes your money.  Buy your food locally and your money goes locally.  Local money, creates local jobs.  Local jobs help to maintain local infrastructure.  If you understand the food market - from how the food is grown, picked, processed, inspected, shipped, stacked and purchased - then you have a pretty good handle on how messed up the system actually is. All too many of our kids (and adults) think that the food just magically appears in the grocery store without any thought to the deep and twisted roads that food must take to reach those shelves.  For instance, if you don't like big capitalistic businesses, then don't buy things containing high fructose corn syrup or soy because most of the corn and soy in the country is planted, grown and chemically sprayed by Monsanto and other big Ag corporations.  If you don't like illegal immigrants then don't buy produce that has been harvested by immigration workers.  If you don't like government agencies then don't buy meat that has been inspected by the USDA.  If you don't like pollution then don't buy groceries that have been shipped thousands of miles so that you can have a nice ripe strawberry in December.  Hard to know what to buy now isn't it?  All over the board there with political problems and no one party is to blame.  We have simply chosen to cut out the middle man entirely and just raise our own or buy it as locally as we can from people we know.

So yes, we have 'gone round the bend' and will probably continue to do so until such time as the population at large realizes what a screwed up mess the food system is and actually takes steps to change it.  My guess is that when the food system changes, so will the medical system because people will suddenly realize what they have been doing to themselves for so long.   In the meantime, fair warning for any friends and relatives that come to the door for dinner, you may be asked to eat such things as organic, homegrown potato soup with onions grown in the garden outside and cheese that was produced in my kitchen.  I know it is a hardship when you really crave Sam's Club frozen fish sticks, but we do what we can to please, and I promise you won't leave hungry.

"A bend in the road is not the end of the road...

unless you fail to make the turn." ~ Unknown