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| Side Wall Mural - Silver City Food Co-op |
I try not to spend too much time in the valley of regret.
And the older I get, the bigger and deeper that valley seems to grow. How I
could have been a better parent, sister, daughter, friend, spouse. Or managed my finances. Or
gotten out sooner from a soul stripping corporate career.
I bring this up because I attended the Silver City Food
Co-op annual member meeting a few weeks ago. My friend Carm is a new board
member and they couldn’t be better served. This co-op has been in place for 39
years and has more than 2000 members.
Not bad for a town of 10,000 and surrounding area of 29,000. The Co-op
does an amazing job of stocking local, organic and bulk foods and other
products. It’s my new happy place.
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| Welcome to my new happy place |
The regret comes in that it took me decades to figure out
the trueness of the statement “You are
what you eat.” Put
differently, if you eat crappy food, prepare to feel crappy. When I read
articles now, I could kick myself for the garbage I fed my daughter. Kraft Mac
and Cheese. Hot dogs. Pancakes and fake syrup. Any other wheat based product. Fruits and vegetables sprayed
with god knows what pesticide. Damn, damn, damn. One recent article by Yoni
Freedhoff brings up a painful point. The name of the article is: “We’d all die
for our kids—so why are we still feeding them processed junk?” Here’s the link.
It’s worth the read.
This article struck a very special nerve, as it talks about
links to Parkinson’s and other diseases as a result of pesticide and herbicide
spraying of crops. My mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in her sixties. She
was already compromised physically as a result of a life threatening case of
polio in 1958. I discovered a few years after her death in 2007 that my folks
had their lush green rolling lawn sprayed several times a year with pesticides
and weed killers through a company like ChemLawn. This went on for over 35+ years. I was helping organize some
of my dad’s stuff, and canceled the service. After reading this article, I
wonder if there is any link. I can’t prove a damn thing. And Monsanto, et al
has a practice of crushing any
opposition.
And let me pile some more shit on you. If you are what you
eat, you are what you put on your skin. Think about it. If you can deliver
estrogen or nicotine to your body with a skin patch, what else can you deliver?
How about Axiron, a testosterone treatment that men apply to their armpits?
Here’s a warning right from their website:
AXIRON
can transfer from your body to others. This can happen if other people come
into contact with the area where the AXIRON was applied. Signs of puberty that
are not expected (for example, pubic hair) have happened in young children who
were accidentally exposed to testosterone through skin to skin contact with men
using topical testosterone products like AXIRON. Women and children should
avoid contact with the unwashed or unclothed area where AXIRON has been
applied. If a woman or child makes contact with the application area, the
contact area on the woman or child should be washed well with soap and water
right away.
I don’t have any answers. But I am
trying to be more thoughtful about the food I eat and the products I use on my
body. And I am trying to not be a doomsaying paranoid. I am just trying to say
– be conscious.
Let me
end on a hopeful happy note. My dog is dying. I've mentioned this before. No, I'm not happy about this. But through him and his process, I've been blessed with an important insight. Indy is a great dog, and I am having a hard time getting him to eat
anything. I bought a cheap roasting chicken at Albertsons to cook and feed to
him because he loves chicken. I wasn’t planning to eat it myself, just feed it
to him. Which I did. But I felt bad about it. Not so much that it was a factory
chicken, overbred and cruelly raised, and it was good enough for my dog and not
for me. I mean, that’s bad enough. But what I really felt bad about is that I
spent my money supporting the wrong thing. I didn’t support the
farmer/rancher/grower that was thoughtfully raising food in a sustainable and
humane way. Because it’s not just about what I eat or what my dog eats, it’s
about what I do to support the people who work so hard to feed us the right
way. As I said in an earlier post – it costs a lot more (unfortunately) to do
the right thing. But I am going to
do better at spending on the right thing.
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| New Meat Market on S. Bullard |
Wait,
now I really mean I’m ending on a happy note! Let me
continue to sing the praises of Silver City. Along with the wonderful Food
Co-op, a new meat market just opened with a fabulous array of grass-fed local
and organic products. And the Farmers Market opens tomorrow morning just a
block from my house. I can’t wait. And Carmon and I are going to share CSA
boxes of fresh produce for this growing season.
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| Produce section at Co-op |
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| Say NO to GMO |
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| Bulk items at Co-op |
If you’ve managed to read this whole
post without your eyes glazing over and rolling to the back of your head, I
have a little request. Please take a moment to think if you might want to
consider making a little (or big) change about what you eat, what you feed your
friends and family, and who you really want to support. That’s all. Now go have
a wonderful day.
