Happy Tuesday Mamavation family. Thank you to all who asked questions via this site and twitter last week about the Water Conservation. I hope you learned something about your local water supply and feel more connected to that resource. That connection is going to make you more apt to conserve it. This week we are going to explore the HUGE topic of food sources. As a note next week we will be discussing gardening so that is why it will be largely absent in this post.

In pop culture we are at a fun point where you cannot avoid the topic of processed foods and what they do to our bodies and our families. Popular shows like Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution and movies like Super-Size Me and Food Inc. have brought some of these lingering questions from the back of our minds about our food system to water cooler conversations with friends and co-workers.

I want to stress a point I made on the Mamavation show last night, this topic needs to be free of guilt for parents trying to do the best for their families with the resources they have at hand. Yes, our society has become fat and unhealthy and a good deal of that can be attributed to our diet but in the last few decades there have been forces at work beyond your control. As a parent all we can do now is become informed about our current food system and make healthy choices our families will adhere to. This challenge best exemplifies the tie with our planet’s health to our personal health because when we don’t eat well it only takes a few minutes to not feel well.

A little background to the forces at work beyond our control are the relationships between corporations, food manufacturers, government regulation, and food growers. These entities are huge and relatively absent from the dinner table. “Good” Americans have worked hard, put their faith in their religion, and faith in their government to take care of them over the last 30+ years and did not realize the power corporations have garnered over our food supply to become such large juggernauts. Food corporations now exist at such a level with the power to change legislation via lobbying and planting their executives in regulatory positions that the protection we as consumers have relied on from the USDA and FDA no longer exists like it has in the past. Food producers are no longer simple farmers but many times they are large-scale growers that can be sued at any time by their employers and generally cannot eat the product they grow because it is even unrecognizable to them as real food.

Here is a graphic from Grub: Ideas For an Urban Organic Kitchen by Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry (2006) looking at the sheer monetary power of these corporations when compared to other nations.

Now honestly ask yourself, as a parent, how are you supposed to keep up with a corporation that is as powerful as an oil-producing Middle Eastern nation? You are not. This is why food and environmental justice issues that have plagued urban areas for generations are now hitting the majority of America head on. How are you supposed to feed your family given your income and your choices (where processed food is subsidized and generally cheaper than real food)? This is where our challenge comes in.

#1. Monitor What You Consume. Unlike the water challenge we are not going to look at our food supply, but monitor our waste. It would be easy to see what is in our pantries and freezers but honestly, the healthy stuff in there may stay in there next week as well. Instead take a look at your garbage. What food containers are you recycling or putting in the trash? What fast food wrappers do you end up with every week? What cereals are your kids eating? What food scraps are you composting? There is a great deal more processed food diversity in our markets than real, whole food so your family’s preferences may be bizarre, but corporations have engineers being paid to put your family in a specialty niche.

#2. Become Informed. Take a look at the wrappers from what you have eaten. Can you recognize all the ingredients? Can you at least recognize the top 6 ingredients? What about the basic nutrition label… does it make sense? Here is a tutorial on reading nutrition fact panels. The goal for you and your family is to eat more real, whole foods… the kinds of foods your grandparents could recognize. Also continue to look at media in your education process. If you want to watch a movie with your kids I recommend King Corn to trace how prevalent this grain is in our food supply even though many of us would hardly recognize it as corn. The movie is also entertaining and does not contain disturbing images. I also suggest reading Mark Bittman’s Food Matters since it is 1/2 research on our food system and 1/2 cookbook with basic recipes (most libraries carry it).

#3. Make Small Changes. Now this is the big one that can be hard for a family because every family is different in how they currently eat, how easy they adapt to change, and how much money they have in their budget for a diet. In an ideal world I wish everyone could jump on localharvest.org and find farms, growers, and restaurants that use local, fresh, organic ingredients and call it a day. In reality your family may not like this kind of food and may not be able to afford it. In truth if you are coming from a family that eats a majority of highly-processed foods getting your family to eat produce and recognizable grains like rice can be a huge victory.

This is for you as a family to decide what works best for you. Just keep in mind processed foods do not provide the nutrient density that real, whole foods do. Actually in processing the food is stripped of nutrients that are usually added in at the end in the form of supplements. Processed foods can be laden with ingredients that are causing or exacerbating illnesses such as ADD with additives and preservatives. And keep in mind that chemicals in conventionally grown produce (even from the seed stage) are present in produce and feed given to animals thus their meat and other products.

Here are some small changes and explorations you can do this week:

• Make a food from scratch. @notdiyheather has a simple french bread recipe she uses for her family
• Visit your local farmers market to get an idea of what is in season, compare this to what is in your grocery store. A goal for you will be to eat in-season, local food. To find markets and farms click here. Also keep an eye out for farm tours that are occassionally offered. Sometimes they are open to the public, sometimes just CSA (community supported agriculture). We will talk more about CSAs next week.
• Get your family involved in the kitchen. If produce or a product is new for all of you then let your kids have some say in picking it out and even preparing it like chopping it for a salad. Giving them some ownership of the changes will help them be more willing to try something new. For tips on getting kids in the kitchen look at What’s Cooking Blog.
• Switch to something organic, here is a list of the more important produce to buy organic because of how it absorbs pesticides. Be cautious of the organic label though, it is everywhere and buying processed organic foods will cost you a lot of money, go for real food if expense is an issue.
• Consider going meat-free for a dinner meal this week. We will explore energetics and nutrition as our last challenge but eating plant-based proteins will be leaner on your wallet, better for your health, and better for the planet. Stay away from processed meat-substitutes if money is an issue… look at grain and legume combinations for a complete protein. MeatlessMondays.com is a great source for recipes and reasons why this is a great idea.
• Get involved with Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution and the actions including signing the petition to reform the lunch programs in our public schools.

This topic of food sources is so HUGE that I barely scratched the surface. Luckily many ladies in Mamavation have some knowledge in these areas so let us discuss. Add tips. Ask questions. I know I am not the only one that has a thing or two to say on this topic. Talk here, talk on twitter. Talk ladies, not only for ourselves and our families, but for our greater community. Let us support each other as we engage our families away from an overly-processed diet to a more nutritious, real, food diet. We just have to navigate food traps and find ways for ourselves and our families to enjoy a potato vs. a french fry. Good luck.

Finally I am offering the companion book to the film Food Inc. for a challenge participant. This book contains 13 essays including one on Kids’ Nutrition, a small piece on the challenge of Childhood Obesity and 14 pages of additional resources for the consumer. In my opinion this book is an optimistic companion to the movie because the movie exposed many to our food system problems, this book offers solutions.

I will look at discussions via this post and on twitter to pick who I send the book to. Let me know what you discovered about your family’s diet and the small changes you did this week. I’ll announce the winner on the Mamavation show next Monday 10 PM EST.

-kia a.k.a. @bodhi_bear