While waiting for a lovely dinner at Eden Alley (www.edenalley.com) last Saturday night, I couldn’t resist taking a peek at the brightly colored, glossy and prominently displayed Vegetarian Start Kit from PeTA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (http://www.peta.org.) PeTA devotes six of 22 pages, with graphic pictures and descriptions to its main premise: animals have feelings just like humans do, yet the animals we eat are raised and killed in horrifying ways; thus the average meat eater is responsible for the abuse and death of about 90 animals per year.
Whew! That’s heavy one right before dinner! Of course this information is not new to me. But, to eat or not to eat meat, that is not the question!
One of the greatest human dilemmas is that we must eat to live. Another is that we can’t live on this planet alone. Our lives depend on all the other beings on this planet, animals, plants and minerals. For the most part, the food industry deals with the first while denying the second. Otherwise they couldn’t justify what they do the great gift of life we call food. For the most part, the way the earth offers it to us is perfect. Sure, a little cooking, grinding or seasoning is often helpful as is some fermenting, drying or canning to make it last through the winter. The food industry has gone too far. Today, most grains are refined to produce fluffy white flour. It looks pretty and tastes sweet, yet it has only a milli-fraction of the nutrition of the whole grain. Pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, genetic manipulation, flavor enhancers and other additives are a way to get more food to market faster, but they make us sick and poison the planet. It’s hard to call what the food industry produces food according to my definition: Food is anything that nourishes.
So everyday I work with this question: given that I must eat the earth’s beings to live, how do I consume in a way that respects and honors their life and my own? I encourage you to contemplate this question. Give it some time and work with it. You may come up with a different answer than I did, but in the end, I suspect you will begin to reduce your consumption of conventionally raised food. I eat animals, eggs and butter mostly. But the hens and cows are raised on their natural diet, live pasture, and are treated with a great deal of respect and care. Nearly all of the plants I eat are raised organically and locally during our growing season. Refined food rarely passes my lips. Before I eat, I always pause to offer my gratitude to these beings for nourishing my life with theirs.
This month I offer you these words to contemplate as you shop, cook, garden and eat.
The Three Awarenesses of Food
Aware that this food is a gift, the work of many hands past and present and the wisdom and experience of the earth over billions of years, I aspire to eat this food with awareness, so I may deeply touch the miracle of it.
Aware that this food shapes my body substance and the way I relate to myself and the world, I aspire to eat only foods that nourish me in the amounts I need, no more, no less.
Aware that food can be raised in ways that minimize harm to the planet and its inhabitants, I aspire to choose my food carefully so that everyone and everything may experience the health and wholeness I seek for myself.
This article originally appeared in the September 2006 issue of the Kansas City Wellness Magazine.
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