Raw Food Detox Journal – Day 8
What follows is day 8 of the journey I am continuing today.
July 8, 2006 12:23 pm
I want to be a moral consumer, ecologically responsible, and to practice dietary ethics.
To me, being a moral consumer means that I must do the work to find out how the money I give to companies and other entities is spent. It means I have to put what I know to be true, fair and right above the usual zombie-like shopping habits I’ve had all my life. It also means that I have to stay educated on factors that affect the global production of food, such as globalization and peak oil, the agricultural policies of our government, and the sneaky power plays of the World Bank and the WTC. Moral consumption is being aware of every dollar I spend. It is not the easy way — it’s the right way.
Ecological responsibility in relation to how I eat is also about how I spend my money, but it’s more. It means being aware of how everything I do affects the environment. I may not have the ease of buying as much stuff in chain grocery stores as I used to, but it’ll be worth it. I’ll feel proud of myself and be healthier. I am striving to leave no trace, as the boy scouts say. I have to do more than recycle stuff and figure out how to properly dispose of batteries and old paint. I’ve got to stop putting convenience above the health of my family, stop buying fruit and veggies needlessly packed in plastic, stop buying non-food made by companies that pollute.
I’m also learning about ecological, organic farming and experimenting with growing food (bought my very first tomato plant today).
Dietary ethics encompasses my new lifestyle of putting holy life inside my body, instead of dead crap. It’s about acting out my long-held principles about not eating animals, and my new decisions to get off dairy and sugar. Author Gabriel Cousins titled his hefty, encyclopedic, groundbreaking book on raw life energy, “Conscious Eating.” That’s what I want to embody. Taste will no longer be my primary goal of eating! Life energy is my goal. It’s eating sunlight, basically. That is what I eat when I put a juicy, ripe melon into my mouth, or a peach, or nuts.
And the term “organic” does not equal “healthy.” Some “organic” foods are simply the quickly manufactured and marketed products of greedy, polluting food manufacturing companies trying to cash in on the current demand for health foods. (If you want organic, you have to look for the little green and white circle. If it ain’t there, it ain’t organic!)
What’s funny to me is that I am considered weird because I want to eat pure, live, organic vegetables and fruit, while those who over stuff themselves with fried animal flesh, bleached bread, neon orange cheese, and processed chemicals glossed over with a generous sprinkling of fake sugar (and sicken and die early as a consequence) are deemed normal!
