Let's talk about food.

I've always known, theoretically, that better food made for better health. I had read all the articles about how our food supply in this country is questionable at best, and the various concerns about it. I also know how bad factory farming is, and completely disagree with these practices.

Because of all this stuff, I tried to get organic produce when possible, usually ate free-range or grass-fed meats, and tried to avoid GMO's by using GMO-free sunflower oil, organic flour, and avoiding soy. Then Thak got out of the Army, and we became poor. We could no longer afford even the gas to drive across town to the good grocery store that carries all the organic foods and free-range meats that we had become accustomed to. Even if we could have afforded the gas, we couldn't have afforded the food there. Our only sources of food, for several months, were our gardens, and what we could get from WIC (which is quite a bit when you're breastfeeding a baby, and have a toddler as well). Occasionally, I would manage to get to a farmers' market an hour away in New Mexico when Thak had drill at a nearby Reserve center (he was going anyway, so me and the kids would just ride along). At the farmers' market, I could get cheap organic produce, and that was great. Mostly, though, we had to eat factory farmed crap, because it was cheap, and it was eat that, or starve, so we ate it. This went on for several months.

A few things surprised me about this, but most of all, I was surprised by how much we got sick. Orren got many colds and viruses. His immune system obviously suffered. For a while, I was feeding him breastmilk just to try to boost his immune system any possible way I could. Erin was sick sometimes, too. I got sick several times, and that's very unusual for me. Thak even missed a couple days of work due to sickness. Even Chai got a cold once, and that's pretty rare for a breastfed baby. I know it was the food. The food we bought was dead and empty. It was just something to chew up and digest so we weren't as hungry. The only things that were anywhere near good were the things we were able to grow, and the things we got from the farmers' market. This stuff didn't feel dead, and even the squashes that grew too big and were tough in consistency, were a pleasure to eat compared to the stuff that came from the store. Don't even get me going on the meats. On the rare occasion we could afford meat, we had to buy cheaply, so it was factory-farmed. As if knowingly supporting the worst agricultural practices in history wasn't enough, the stuff doesn't taste all that good compared to the better kinds, and it's hard to eat when you know it's full of synthetic hormones and antibiotics.

I cannot tell you how hard it is to continuously eat that type of food, day in and day out, knowing that it is making you unhealthy, but also that you have no choice, because that is all you can afford.

When Thak started working for the firm he works for now, one of the first things I did was buy good foods for me and the kids. Since I cook everything from scratch, with even $100, I can feed us for a long time on organic, GMO-free foods, and even get a little bit of meat (the good kind!) If you're not picky about what kind of produce you get, you can usually find some of it on sale for really cheap. I got organic apples for $1 a pound a couple weeks ago, for example. Last week, I got organic pears for $1.25 a pound. The non-organic variety goes for more than that at Walmart, so that's quite the deal. You can find deals like that if you look for them. Anyway, between doing that, and cooking from scratch, I was able to get me and the kids back on a diet of good foods before long. Our health has improved drastically, just as one would expect. Erin did get sick earlier this week, but she fought it off in record time, and so far, nobody else has gotten what she had (knock on wood).

The other thing that really gets me is how different the foods are, just in general. Take sweet potatoes, for example. We go through sweet potatoes like crazy because all three kids just love them. The non-organic sweet potatoes that we were buying from Walmart, were more of a mushy consistency when baked than the organic sweet potatoes we get from Sprouts or from our CSA. The organic ones have more texture, and take a little longer to bake. They don't have as long a shelf life either (which is a good thing in my opinion. Produce that lasts indefinitely on the shelf creeps me out.) Since 72% of our nation's food supply is GMO, I can only assume the non-organic sweet potatoes we were getting, were GMO. Broccoli is another one. We go through tons of broccoli, because it's currently Chai's favorite food in the entire world. The conventional broccoli has so much less texture than the organic broccoli, and once again, is a little *too* shelf-stable.

Now, my main thing is, you can't change form without changing function. Everyone with any background at all in engineering knows that. So basically, these foods that are mass marketed to people, and that most people eat (many times, because that is what they can afford) have been modified to make them shelf stable forever. What is that doing to their nutritional value? There could well be some adverse side effects to eating them. They are not plants we have evolved to be able to eat, like the non-GMO varieties are. What are these things doing to our systems? After eating conventional foods for a few months, my entire family's immune systems were shot. That SHOULD NOT be the case. Why is it that only those who are either fairly well off, or fairly resourceful, can afford to be healthy? That's crap. I honestly believe the conventional agriculture industry is killing the average American citizen, slowly but surely.

What I want to know is how most of Europe can have way higher food standards, and still manage to make it, but here in the US, we have such low food standards. Why is that? Why can't we demand that this GMO stuff be put to a halt, that organic produce be available everywhere, that synthetic hormones see their way out of farming? That's not asking much, and it would make a huge difference.