By Robyn O’Brien, Founder of Allergy Kids Foundation and LuxEco Advocate
Now, I’m not sure where you stand on this whole food thing. But if you’re anything like me, you probably don’t want someone telling you what to eat. So when friends first started trying to educate me about terms like organic, local, natural and grass fed, I have to admit, I tuned out (and probably rolled my eyes). Because the reality is that food is never just food. Food is comfort.
Food is family. It is security. It is politics. And it is loaded.
And you probably couldn’t find a more complicated relationship than women and food. From the moment we first put our hands to our mouth in our highchairs, food has been with us every step of the way. It has served as our companion, our best friend, our accomplice and our middleman. And it has been a love affair and a life long battle as we waged war with ourselves in a collective effort to get into those skinny jeans!
But now that terms like “grass fed” and “rbGH-free” are becoming part of our visits to the grocery store, it’s getting pretty hard to ignore them. And if you are someone dealing with kids, it’s proving kind of dangerous to ignore them, too, because it’s becoming increasingly obvious that we’ve got a compromised generation: with jaw dropping rates in the number of American children with obesity, asthma, diabetes, allergies and cancer.
So whether you are standing on the sidelines of the food movement, gently dipping your toe in the water, trying to figure out how best to navigate this newfound stream of information, or you have jumped in with both feet and started swimming with all your might in this tidal wave of new information, the important thing is that either way, you are doing something. And you deserve an award for that, because change is not always easy.
Because I have to admit, as I began learning about the things polluting our food supply (I even wrote a book about it called The Unhealthy Truth), there was a lot of information that just plain freaked me out. From pesticides, to antibiotics, to biotechnology, there were a lot of changes in our food that I simply hadn’t been aware of (and I didn’t like the way that ignorance made me feel).
But I’ve learned a lot- about what is happening to our food and to the health of our families, and why organics cost more (and if they are worth it), and how to stock a healthy pantry on a budget and most importantly, how to believe in your own abilities to create change.
So I am excited to be here with you at LuxEcoLiving, and I hope you’ll join me along the way because you are the kind of person that is going to make the world a better place. Because one of the most important things I’ve learned in this process is that it helps to have a friend beside you when you start to make changes. And we’re going to be making some exciting ones here. So grab a friend, bring your questions and let’s get started! Because it isn’t just the little kids that are being affected by all of this, it’s the big kids, too.
