Readers both near and far, please take the opportunity to check this out. It may be the newest, best way to get organic, non-GMO food and groceries for 30-50% less than retail prices. Definitely worth looking into to get the good stuff for less $$.
Click on the link above or below for more information:
Okay, so now that you're in a '70's kind of mood, let's talk about Community Supported Agriculture or CSAs. Community Supported What?
According to Wikipedia, community-supported agriculture (in Canada Community Shared Agriculture) (CSA) is a socio-economic model of agriculture and food distribution. A CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farming operation where the growers and consumers share the risks and benefits of food production. CSAs usually consist of a system of weekly delivery or pick-up of vegetables and fruit, in a vegetable box scheme, and sometimes includes dairy products and meat.
Still feeling the 70's or even the 60's? Maybe even a little hippie-ish? Let's press on with a little history.
Community-supported agriculture began in the early 1960s in Germany, Switzerland and Japan as a response to concerns about food safety and the urbanization of agricultural land. That may sound like long, long ago and far, far away, but recent news has indicated otherwise.
Today is my third day of exploring GMO and world hunger, as part of Conducive Chronicle’s 21 days for Hunger. GMO food has been used as a solution for world hunger, but I will discuss some of the problems of this approach.
With such a high percentage of foods containing GMOs in some way, shape or form, you may be asking yourself how you can possibly avoid what I'll call the GMO Bad Nasties. And with over 70% of the food in grocery stores today containing some sort of GMO, admittedly this is a tough one. Luckily, there is a way. One of the best ways to avoid GMOs is to go organic.
Those of you who have been following my blog know that I am quite passionate about a few things--especially when it comes to our health, well-being and taking steps to do better, feel better, be healthier, etc. I recently came across this video and I think that most of the latest books about food and how we eat are really making the point that "Food Matters." What we eat matters. It matters to animals, to the air we breathe, to the soil our food is grown in, and ultimately to our own health and the survival of our species. Throw in a bunch of cliches or sayings like "You are what you eat," or "Let thy food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food," and you get the point. Take 3 minutes and check out this trailer. I hope it gets you thinking.
There needs to be a great turning in our society-- a turning away from drugs and "magic pills" that artificially "fix" our health woes. We need to be turning toward the root cause-- how we got to this point of sickness and disease in the first place, and start taking steps to reverse it. We need to stop just accepting the poisons and toxins that come in brightly colored boxes on our supermarket shelves and start taking action to get better!
For more information, you can find many resources here.
On that note, I will be exploring this topic further--perhaps in a new blog (still deciding on that). And to reiterate one of my most favorite sayings:
“Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”-- Margaret Mead
As mentioned in a previous post The Dirty Dozen, it is important to seek out pesticide-free fruits and veggies whenever possible. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has come up with a Shopper's Guide to Pesticides and Dr. Andrew Weil, renowned medical expert on natural health and wellness, tells us why and how he uses the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides.
For more information, go to: http://www.foodnews.org/.
Happy Eco-Stepping to cleaner food and better health!
It seems the more I read about food, the less inclined I am to be waving any sort of banner in anyone's face about what we should or should not be eating. Why? As hinted at in previous posts, I am coming around to the notion that what we choose to put in our bodies is a highly personal decision. And that what we eat varies greatly depending on geography, demographics, religious beliefs, nutritional beliefs, and perhaps above all, food availability (or scarcity).
That being said, I believe that we should educate ourselves with as much information (conflicting though it may seem) so that we can make the best possible decisions for our health and for the well-being of the plants and animals we share the planet with. It would be great if we could actually trust our food suppliers and believe that what is marketed to us as "healthy" or "good for us" actually is. Which brings me to the topic of veggie burgers. They are quite often offered up as a meat-free "healthier" alternative to conventional burgers. But are they really?
I recently had the opportunity to visit a locally-owned, coffee shop called Sacred Grounds in upstate New York. Sure, I could have stopped at that famously-named coffee shop along the way, but I didn't. I shopped locally. Why? For several reasons.
Firstly, it's new in our community and I thought I would check it out. I like to give new local businesses a try. As a society, we have lost our way in the "Big Box Mart" industrialization for more and more profits, while sacrificing people and our environment. Plus, shopping locally keeps more money in the local community. And, shouldn't we really be re-building our economy from the inside out vs. mortgaging our future with loans from overseas?
Let's face it, even smart people can get confused. And super busy smart people can get more confused just because they don't have time (or don't *think* they have the time) to "slow their roll" and get their proverbial stuff together. On a macro scale, I think this mass confusion has spilled over into our society's approach to food, nutrition and our severely broken American health care system. Yes, they are related and are deeply intertwined. Sure, a lot of "smart" people are trying to fix our health care system, but I would argue that most of them are probably very much in the confused category when it comes to knowing what's best.
Catching up on my movie viewing, I recently had the opportunity to watch Food, Inc. And wow, did it dig into the very core of what's wrong with our food supply! This is something that I could go on and on about, but instead, I'm going to let you read up on it for yourselves and draw your own conclusions. After all, what we eat is a personal choice. But... if we all start choosing differently and better, what a difference we could make and be healthier as a society! So, in the spirit of eco-steps, here are ten simple things you can do (borrowed directly from the website, links and all):
