When I started down this path of healthier eating, the first changes I made seem substantial. I was able to make some pretty big changes to my purchasing and eating habits, while still not completely giving up a lot of the usual things I loved. I switched to locally-delivered organic fruits and veggies, switched to butter from margarine, stopped buying low-fat products and trans-fat loaded snack foods. I started reading ingredient lists. I discovered quinoa and learned how to cook brown rice, and ate less refined white rice and pasta as a result. Great progress, right? And I did see improvements in my health. But if I was honest with myself, I still bought a lot of the “old” stuff I had always bought. I still do. I figured I was doing enough by making those changes.

 

Now, a couple of years later, it’s really starting to sink in: a great majority of the “food” available in the supermarket isn’t something you want to put in your body. Those ingredient lists are all the same. No matter what the packaged product is, the same chemicals are there. Corn, soy, HFCS, preservatives, stabilizers, enhancers, take out this naturally-occurring component, replace it with something else. It’s all pretty much the same stuff repackaged in different ways. I have always loved the old George Carlin skit where he talked about how everything that comes out of McDonald’s comes from one large vat, including the cardboard boxes. I’m starting to see our supermarket the same way.

 

Today, after reading a few ingredient lists I actually felt a wave of physical revulsion. It’s not easy to make the harder changes that I now feel I must make. It’s time to give up commercial meats and cheeses, because I can’t stand they way they treat the animals and because I want more real food and fewer chemicals. That means going to the organic butcher and the organic market in town, which means an extra trip, higher expenses and no parking in that area. I want to enjoy more fruits and vegetables. That means finding the time to try new recipes that will appeal to the whole family – something easier said than done, with one fruit lover who’s not so big on veggies, and one veggie lover who’s not so big on fruits, and a baby absorbing all our free time. And like most people, we are on a limited budget. We come up with so many reasons we “can’t” make these changes. How important to us is what our families and we ourselves eat?

 

To cheer myself up, I came home and made myself a healthy sandwich based on a one-line blog entry a friend of mine posted a few days ago:

 

avocado + apple slices + cashews + pita = OMGNOMNOMNOMNOM! 

 

It was indeed delicious, and healthy. And easy!

 

I feel revived. Maybe it can be done after all....