little things make a difference

I'm trying to eat better.

What do I mean by better?  Well, lots of things.  In the past few years some new information has slowly been seeping into my brain and consciousness.  It began when my daughter was born and people asked me if I was going to let her have regular milk or 'organic.'  "You know," these people told me, '"all the hormones they give cows is what's making girls develop younger.'"  Well, come to think of it, it did seem to me like teenage girls were much more 'developed' than when I was a teenager.  (This is making me think of Judy Blume!)  And as a parent, suddenly it seemed important to prolong childhood as long as possible.  Despite my husband protesting about the expense of it, we began buying organic milk.

This is only to say that I am no saint.  My motives aren't always, initially anyway, for world betterment.  I'm just saying this is how my plan to eat better began.  And as you read on, I guess I am going to grossly oversimplify a lot of what some really smart people have said.

In the past couple years, I also skimmed through The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.   Among other things, he suggests that a lot of what we eat, our grandparents wouldn't even recognize as food.  He also talks about farming and environmental impacts of the way we farm and concerns about sustainability.  Here's an article I just looked at in the past week.  http://www.good.is/post/hold-the-lamb-eat-more-lentils-new-guide-ranks-proteins-by-carbon-footprint/

This past spring , I watched Food, Inc. and saw some of the conditions that some of our livestock are raised in and the copious amounts of corn fed to our cows, for example.  I was amazed to learn about corn and its ubiquity in food and other products available in our grocery stores.  I started reading labels.  Wow.  Corn.

Simultaneously, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and I began facilitating a young women's breast cancer support group for the Cancer Support Community.  I researched links between diet and breast cancer.   New insights are gained all the time, but here is a reliable, balanced link:  http://www.livestrong.com/article/377091-is-there-a-link-between-breast-cancer-diet/s

What does this have to do with mental health/emotional well being? 

I'm about to make a weird leap, but I hope you'll stick with me:  many people have heard of the Butterfly Effect, which is really a demonstration of 'chaos theory.'  (A butterfly flutters its wings in Peru and it causes a wind effect that eventually leads to a hurricane in Australia).  The idea is that seemingly chaotic, random events may be caused by a precise set of circumstances at the start - if we can isolate all the beginning variables, then we can understand how the so-called chaotic event happened. 

Really, it's just that I believe everything is interconnected.   How I care about myself, how I care about the planet, how I care about all living creatures makes a difference.  How you care about yourself, the planet, others, makes a difference.  We might make little differences - at least that's what we see, but it's possible, in the end, we make a big difference (just like the butterfly).

So, I'm eating more consciously.  Not perfectly.  It's just one little thing.