We are plagued by a plethora of options when it comes to improving our health. Choices range from weight loss programs, exercise regiments, boot camps, fruit and vegetable gummies, vitamins, powdered drinks, and dietary choices that range from high fat/low carb to raw vegan and everything in between. No wonder we’re all confused when it comes to health!
I happen to follow a common sense approach in that I focus on eating real foods, limiting my family’s intake of packaged foods, and moving my body in ways that bring me joy. I’ve taken this approach one step further in that I’ve been focusing more on eating locally grown foods and growing my own since these two actions can have some significant global impacts. For starters, I’m all about trying to support a local economy when I can. I’ve found this desire to be somewhat difficult to implement given the ease at which I can access most things I want online, including foods. However, food is by far my family’s (and likely your family’s) largest mode of consumption meaning that I can limit our consumption of material goods, but there’s no limiting our food intake. It is what it is. So in that sense, eating locally can be one of the most powerful choices we make as consumers.
There are also a number of environmental reasons to support local agriculture. The energy that it takes to fill a grocery store with all of those interesting (and mostly unhealthy) options is extraordinary when you consider that you can access grapes from Chili and plums from Spain. I also think about the excessive availability of packaged foods and how these manufacturers gather ingredients from all over the world, manufacture a product in their factories, and then distribute that product to a global market. Foods are being shipped and transferred from one facility to another starting with the farm and ending in your lunch bag. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of petroleum, plastic, and cardboard that’s consumed along the way. All of this waste and energy is drastically reduced when I head down to my local farmers market and purchase produce from my community members. (If you’re local to the Brevard/Hendersonville area, you can also find local produce at Rooster Head Plantation Farm Stand or Hendersonville Co-op).
The benefits to eating local are plentiful, but for time’s sake, I’ll limit the remainder of my discussion to the health benefits of local foods. Foods that are available at your farmers market are fresher and picked at ripeness, which guarantees you’re getting a nutritionally superior product. I’ve been buying apples that were picked just days or weeks before reaching my plate. Do you know how long apples in the grocery store are stored before they’re available for your consumption? NINE TO TWELVE MONTHS! Buying directly from the growers also allows you to ask questions such as “what do you feed your cows?” “Did you spray anything on this broccoli?”
Our society started to get sicker when we started moving further from local foods and started to embrace the convenience of packaged foods. You can watch our same pattern of western disease creep into global populations when they too start coveting the ease of convenience foods. The problem is that yes, these manufactured foods are often made with toxic ingredients, but the bigger problem is that they’re taking up calories that could be better spent on real, nutritionally-dense foods. And what I mean by “real foods” are foods that are unadulterated such as apples, beef, potatoes, broccoli, spinach, and even butter and other healthy fats (none of this processed vegetable and canola oil crap). But in order to eat real foods, we absolutely have to get back in the kitchen.
One of the most often used excuses when it comes to not preparing whole foods is “I don’t have time to cook”. I’ve delivered the same meal planning class to over a thousand individuals and I tell them all the same thing:
“Stop saying that you don’t have time to cook and start saying that you’re not prioritizing cooking. The truth is that we make time for what’s important.”
Unfortunately, we’ve found ourselves in a rather dire position in that we haven’t moderately relied upon packaged foods. We have instead whole heartedly poured ourselves into convenience thus failing to teach cooking to not one, but two generations of humans. The result is that we have an obesity and chronic disease crisis on our hands, which requires one to get back into the kitchen, but food preparation knowledge doesn’t actually exist… it’s being lost right along side our health.
I know that making time for real food isn’t easy, but it’s necessary and it’s just a part of being alive. Animals are hardwired to find the path of least resistance when it comes to resource acquisition and that’s exactly what the majority of our society has chosen to do. But unfortunately, this choice is detrimental to our health, the economy, and the environment. I didn’t discuss climate change issues (that’s for another post), but agriculture has the potential to remove huge amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in a natural process known as sequestration (storing nutrients, including carbon in the ground), thus reversing climate change. I’m so encouraged by the group of individuals that are rising above as problem solvers such as physician Zach Bush, rancher Gabe Brown, permaculturist Rob Avis, or even the clothing company, Patagonia who has now joined the agriculture conversation. Really, there are too many names to mention, but I’m so grateful to see their work being showcased again and again. But I have to be honest is that I’m not particularly impressed by our society’s unwillingness to cook.
I suppose I see cooking as the first step in changing so many things that are backwards about our society. If we can recognize the need to care for ourselves and make the proper steps to do so, then just maybe we’ll start to care more about the environment that we live in. I see human and environmental health as two entities that are separate, yet one in the same. If you place a bacteria into a toxic petri dish, you’ll see that bacteria wither away. Place it into a dish with a healthy environment and you’ll watch it survive, grow, and reproduce; you’ll watch it move through the order of life.
We’re at a pivotal time in history when we all have a choice to make regarding our health and the health of our environment. Fortunately, I’m seeing this amazing solution and it’s something that encourages family connection, community growth, healthier minds and bodies, and creativity in a structured world that doesn’t always welcome self-expression. I see cooking as this amazing and freeing opportunity that we can all access right in this very moment. Cooking is our opportunity to take back the power that has been stolen from us. For me, with my two kids with medical conditions, it’s a chance to transform pain and sorrow into something creative, beautiful, and nourishing. Sure, sometimes cooking feels more like a chore than a hobby, but it’s a habit that I’ve prioritized and it’s a lifestyle that I’m committed to. As I’ve stated time and again in my cookbook, learning to cook nearly 100% of your meals from scratch takes practice; you won’t get it all right at first. But never give up! I hold a massive amount of hope for our future and the future of my children, and I believe that we can all commit to small, impactful changes that will add up over time. And if nothing else, always remember that life is about progress, not perfection.
I look forward to continuing this conversation when I see you at the farmers market on Saturday.
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