The Food Awakening
You know how having a baby is supposed to put things into perspective? Like you look at their face and get so overwhelmed and humbled by the responsibility that suddenly everything makes sense? Life, the universe and everything? Politics, religion, activism, atoning for your own bad behavior and past mistakes and just that overall making-the-world-a-better-place-type crap?
That happened to me, but not technically until my second baby was born. Oops. I was so determined NOT to let having children change who I was — no way, man, I’m gonna stay cool and awesome and stuff! — that it took a long time for me to have that moment of SERIOUS BIZNESS IS SERIOUS clarity.
Our specific moment of clarity was mostly centered around…well, food. Going organic and sustainable and humane and local and all that, as much as possible. We’d always been super into food, particularly the “eating” part. But mostly at restaurants. And carry-out. And delivery.
When it came to stocking our own fridge we still mostly defaulted to convenience foods and unexamined labels and ingredient lists. Cooking was a chore and baby food came from a jar at the store because science, probably. I dunno. Using a food processor is hard. I had no idea if I regularly bought products that contained partially hydrogenated oils, HFCS or artificial food dyes. (SURPRISE: I did.) I had never sought out objective information about suspect foods and ingredients — or the expensive, “healthy” superfood-miracle stuff that’s mostly just good marketing. I had never really thought about preservatives and pesticides and genetically-modified-hormone-fueled-mucked-around-with foods and whether maybe — JUST MAYBE — there was a happy medium between the all-food-is-evil-except-acai-and-goji-berries conspiracy theorists and the soda-n-nugget-n-lunchable crowd.
We started out small, in the “can’t hurt, might help” camp: we switched to organic non-RBGH milk and yogurt, we stopped buying anything with hydrogenated oils and HFCS and started shopping at farmer’s markets. We actually, you know, read stuff about food and the food supply and where it all comes from and why it’s important. We learned that cooking at home can be awesome and fun. Plus BPA, phthalates, parabens, oh my! The day I stripped Red 40 and Yellow 5 out of my special needs preschooler’s diet and saw a huge, overnight and sustained difference in his ability to process the world was the day that the ceiling came down on my previously blase attitude about whether or not this stuff matters. It did. A lot.
It’s one thing for me to decide to drink that can of Coke — I know it’s not good for me, but I’m a grown-up who can make my own choices, plus ZOMG COKE I LOVE YOU — but it’s quite another for me to shrug my shoulders and saying “whatever” about the things I put on the table in front of my children.
When my second baby was born I looked into his eyes and realized I no longer cared about being cool or awesome. I cared way, way more about keeping his little body healthy and safe.
Having children turned me into an organic-shopping label-reading vegetable-gardening composting baby-food-making bread-baking crazy person. And I love it. Thanks, children!
A big thanks to YoBaby for sponsoring this campaign. Click here to see more of the discussion. And prepare yourself to watch me geek out and post recipes here in the coming weeks like the crazy person I just told you I was.
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More from Amalah’s West:
I AM
I Don’t Know How I Do It
An Open Letter To Certain Random Strangers at the Grocery Store
I’m with you on this one 100%. I’m extremely picky about anything I let my kids eat. And since I don’t want to be a hypocrite, I won’t buy anything for me to eat that I wouldn’t also let them eat. I’m much healthier because of it :-)
I look forward to seeing the recipes you used for your kids.
We’ve been mostly organic for almost a year and what a difference it’s made. I can see night and day changes in my child just based on what she’s eating. When she’s home, she gets organic, completely natural snacks and meals. At school, she eats their food and when I come to pick her up at 5, I can tell. She’s a normal kid, at least the textbook version of normal, but give her a store produced cupcake loaded with the HFCS and dyes, she turns into a high energy, crazy kid who can have an emotional meltdown in seconds. While I don’t want her feeling left out at parties and activites, I feel like giving her that crap is akin to handing her a loaded gun.
Yep, I’m right there with you on the cooking (I made my own sourdough starter!) and farmer’s markets (yep, plural, I know the schedule of most of the little markets around town by heart) and organics (as much as I can afford it). I’d like to compost and grow a vegetable garden but I haven’t been able to figure out how to start. If you wanted to post any tips on that I’d be very very very interested!
Nice post. Surprised to see YoBaby as sponsor as the stuff is typically reviled by the Michael Pollan natural eating crowd, especially in Berkeley, where I had my first two kids.
After watching my 21 month old go BALLISTIC on antibiotics last week – the pink stuff – I’m more convinced than ever that his usual organic, real food diet is super important. It was such an eye-opener for both my husband and I that we HAVE to advocate for him. Then, when the original antibiotics didn’t flush all the bad stuff out and we had to take him back for The Big Guns, I mentioned this to the dr. No real response (although that could have been because baby boy was sobbing “I wanna GOOOOO!” the whole time). When I asked if they had any tylenol to give him so he didn’t have to wait til he got home to have some, they brought me red stuff. Not one to deny my kid pain-relief, or necessary antibiotics (and yes, I’m THAT mom, who asks if things will just run their course) he had it, but I bought extra dye free everything when we picked up the prescription. Not cool, Big Pharma. NOT COOL.
Could you share where you started doing your research and the types of things you read? We are in the “before” part that you talked about – eating out, lots of packaged things, etc. I feel guilty about it and I hate having to feed the kids b/c I feel like every meal is just me failing but I don’t know where to start to understand *why* I am feeling guilty and why all the stuff you mentioned (red dyes and HFCS and parabens(???)) are bad. Is there like, a beginners guide to this?
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