Your Courageous Life

So. There’s this thing that’s been brewing around in the back of my wee ole noggin.

The thing that has been brewing looks something like this: Last year, I started eating meat again. It was sort of an accident. Kind of. It was an accident that looked like Andy eating an In n’ Out Burger hamburger, and me having a bite, and that burger was, you know, SO GOOD, so I got a whole one. For the twenty-four hour period following eating that hamburger, I had so much energy. It was such a noticeable amount of energy that I went, “Hmmmm. Maybe I’m supposed to be a meat-eater.”

So I started eating meat again. I noticed that I had more energy. I had been a vegetarian for 14 years, and then switched to a raw foods diet, in the hopes of counteracting the near constant tiredness, headaches, and colds that I’d been getting. The raw foods diet certainly does work, in my opinion, but good heavens if I could keep that up. Especially come winter time–who wants to hunker down on a cold night with a…spinach salad?

I am a voracious reader and, in the past year and mostly thanks to instant downloads on Netflix, a voracious documentary watcher. I read and then saw the movie Fast Food Nation. I also watched Food, Inc. I’m almost finished with John Robbins’ Diet for a New America. I’m a total Michael Pollan fan. I’ve watched and/or read a whole host of other documentaries in the past year, and again and again I keep coming to a conclusion, one that has a core basis in my sense of personal integrity and what I am willing to participate in, that factory farming is just not at all good for the planet. Stemming from that I have been questioning eating meat, how I make purchasing decisions around food, and my overall environmental impact.

I have not done anything about what I’ve been questioning, for one simple reason: I have not been ready.

Now, I’m ready.

Over the past weekend, I watched the documentary No Impact Man. In essence, what I take away from the film are a few things. One, that I am educated about the issues and have been content to sit back and let my awareness of them be enough (sometimes, awareness is its own contribution; for my own personal sense of integrity on the issue of environmental impact, it does not feel like the case). Two, if a couple with a small child living in New York City in a tiny apartment can completely cut out their environmental impacts for a year and eat in season, then I, living in a house with no child to take care of, living in the state of California, mecca of the farmer’s market and the longest growing season in the country, can make some shifts myself.

Then the essential question becomes: What shifts to make? There are a few that I know I won’t be making. One is giving up my car. San Francisco is home of what I call “shitty and inconsistent public transportation charging an arm and a leg while trying to pretend it comes even remotely close to the subway systems of New York City, Chicago, London, etc.” There is totally a market here for a widespread and efficient public transit system–tons of people who would happily give up their cars–and yet there is not the willingness to build it or make it cost-effective. It is cheaper for me to drive my car over the Bay Bridge, even paying tolls and gas, than it is for me to take the BART train, and even if I were to take BART, I’d still have to drive my car to a station, anyway (where I’d then have to pay even more money to park in a station lot, or spend 15-30 minutes burning gas circling to find a parking spot in a residential neighborhood).

So, no giving up the car.

There are other things that I know people around here do, like not turn on the heat in the winter because it really doesn’t get all that cold. Hmmmm. Near the top of the list of things I dislike, being cold is one of them. So, the heat will stay. And for sure, I don’t see myself giving up toilet paper or electricity, like No Impact Man.

But I have always been moved by the saying that “No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.”

So I’m preparing to experiment with two things: moving back into vegetarianism and possibly even veganism, and eliminating all food packaging from my life.

I say “experiment” because I know that one of the quickest ways to kill enthusiasm for an idea is to make it something that I “have to” do. Additionally, while I have a theory that the reason I felt sick so often when I was a vegetarian has more to do with eating bowls of cereal and calling it a “vegetarian diet,” I’m also aware that I did feel an immediate and substantial benefit from eating meat, and that is not to be overlooked. One of the reasons I’m really impressed with John Robbins’ book is that he specifically states that a.) he does not believe that one should be judged for their food choices, and b.) that yes, there are some people for whom a vegetarian diet does not work. Earlier this year, I talked to some vegans about their choices and one vegan nutritionist even said that some people’s bodies don’t produce enough carnitine, though it’s unknown why, and that this can be supplemented. Ultimately, even continuing to eat meat won’t really be too much of a problem–I am lucky enough to live near a place that has a local butcher, and that butcher buys only from farms where animals are treated well, fed organic and no-hormone diets, etc. So if I don’t stick with being a vegan, it’s great to know that I have other options.

Shift two that I will be experimenting with is moving into eliminating all packaging from my food purchases. I’ll start with eliminating plastic (the worst thing to use for anything, because it takes the most chemicals to make and is hardest to recycle), and then move towards eliminating all packaging. Perhaps this shift is the one I’m most excited about, in part because most of the foods I eat (rice, quinoa, cereals, etc.) are things that I can easily find in bulk grain bins and it’s a shift that I can feel proud of while really only being of minor inconvenience. Currently, I buy cereal by the box; I can switch to getting it from a bulk bin. Currently, I buy rice by the bag; I can switch to getting it from a bulk bin. It’s a matter of convenience, and I have one set of plastic bags that I can use for transport between the store and my home, and simply re-use those bags each time that I go to the store. Also, I’ll just make it a point of going to any one of the gadzillion farmer’s markets around here and this will enable me to eat seasonally and support local farm producers, which I feel better about than supporting factory farming.

Another step? Spending this past Sunday in the back yard, planting a vegetable garden! I’m excited about this one in particular, though I’m holding a space of low expectations because who knows whether or not raccoons, birds, or bugs will get my first crop. I’m notorious for killing houseplants, so we’ll see how it goes with my little vegetable plot!

So–let’s say I’m not becoming a “no impact man” so much as I’m being a “less impact woman.” In measurable results, I can say that Andy and I currently produce one and a half trash cans full (13 gallon trash cans) per week of recyclable material. Andy’s along for the ride at the moment, so if we were to cut down our packaging use to zero, one could estimate that we’d save approximately 1,1014 gallons of recyclable material each year. Is it significant? Nah. But is it kind of cool? Absolutely!

The only part of this that I’m not looking forward to? Justifying decisions. Blech. The one thing I was happy to leave behind when I started eating meat again was dealing with people who assume that my food choices were an inherent judgement of their own, or the people who insisted that plant-based diets were dangerous, etc. At the end of the day, though, I know that I am “behind” my choices and so ultimately, it’s okay if others disagree. I’m committed to feeling good about my choices, not changing others’. I also like what Stacy writes about that, here.

I’m so curious to hear about other ways that you personally step into “no one can do everything, but everyone can do something.” And of all the things I’ve brainstormed for alternatives to packaging, I’ve found solutions so far for everything but two: chocolate and soymillk. Any idea where I can get my hands on chocolate that isn’t packaged? Any idea where I could do a bottle deposit system for soymilk? Hmmmm.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 2:42 pm |