The Undying Desire To Know More, And Being Informed.

  "If you wanna make the world a better place, you gotta look at yourself and make a change."
 -Micheal Jackson.

This is something I've been wanting to write about for some time now. Within the last six months my family has undergone some extreme changes and transformations. This started by simply watching an episode of Jane Valez-Mitchell (I no longer do this because we got rid of cable). She was reporting on an animal abuse case against  McDonald's. I remember being totally shocked and disgusted by what I saw. Then it hit me really hard, seriously, I mean hard. I've been living so blindly for all of my existence. How is it that I was so unaware of the world that I lived in? Something inside me snapped and I haven't been the same person since. I find myself having this undying desire to know more, and more about everything around me, especially the food we eat. This is huge for me. I view the food a very intimate part of who I am. I also attribute the reason I was so very sheltered, to living in the same place I grew up, and not being exposed.  It is pretty much like only reading one page of a book, and re-reading it, and re-reading it. Kind of like being stuck in time. I'm surrounded by the same people, the same things, same routine, nothing much changes when you live in a small isolated town . Don't get me wrong, we live in a very beautiful part of the country, but you can't learn much about the world here.

Once I saw Jane's report, I immediately spoke with Andrew about what I saw. He is always my base line go to for things like this. I am an emotional, hysterical, passionate creature at times, and have a hard time getting past the initial emotional shock of things, and he helps me through this every time! He also knows a little bit about everything and gave me some info he picked up on the subject. I took off running with it and started to research everything about factory farming, food, and food related diseases. I seriously couldn't get enough. Along the way, we got Netflix and I was having a great time watching tons of food documentaries. Sometimes I would absorb so much information at once, and it was overwhelming at times. I started to change the food I purchased for my family. I started to change the way we ate. We changed the way our family viewed meals and mealtime. I was on the path of becoming informed and enlightened. Some people are so unaware as to where their food comes from, and some people don't care to know (which is fine). We went from being mid-less carnivores, eating whatever was the cheapest foods to buy, to vegans, mostly organic, mindful eaters. Total 360!

Some great food/animal documentaries to check out are:

Ingredients
Food, Inc. 
Fat, Sick, and nearly dead
A River Of Waste
Fed Up!
Frankensteer (On Netflix)
TED Talks: Chew On This (On Netflix)
Food Fight
The Gerson Miracle
Food Matters
Forks over knives

(All of these titles are on Netflix, but I wanted to link them up so you could see what they looked like)

I think that everyone should know where their food is coming from. It is extremely important. "It is health that is true wealth, not pieces of silver and gold"-Ghandi

This awareness also got me thinking about our carbon footprint. As I explored the world of our "food", it led to discovering about our wasteful ways as Americans, or as humans in general and about living in a convenient society. This opened up another undying desire to know and change. We have already transformed our eating habits, now we were ready to take on our wasteful ways. I hate to admit it, but I use to hate doing dishes, so I would buy Solo cups, paper plate, plastic ware, etc. Little did I know I was contributing to the planet's pollution problem. But now that I'm informed, I have changed all of this. We try to reuse everything we can. We recycle everything (I'm pretty sure the recycling people dread our house on recycle day) I feel that knowing and changing is the responsible thing to do. Some documentaries that I found helped me make this change of mind are:

Plastic planet
No Impact Man
The End Of Suburbia

We have also stepped out of the way of consumerism and are using what we have and trying to avoid buying anything new. We have been trying to live with less these days. I've been thrifting for things that we need and this as been an awesome experience. We no longer use plastic bags (plastic is toxic) from the store, we always bring our own. I have also become aware of the toxins in the world around us (plastic, everyday household cleaners). I will save this for another post. I am just shocked and moved enough to change the way we live in efforts to help the world be a better place, and us to be a healthier family. As Ghandi says" You must be the change you want to see in the world." We try to live this everyday.

What has inspired you? What has moved you? Please share!

♥