To Market, to market

I have to admit, that being a single mom, and busy, I am a sucker for convenience foods. I try to buy mostly fresh and unprocessed stuff, but it is hard at times. So my goal is to eat better, buy and eat locally, and therefore make a smaller impact on the world around us. More importantly, I am going to shop the Farmer’s Market for my produce.

I experienced some insane guilt earlier this week, and this has spurred me to make a bigger effort. I was shopping for groceries last weekend, and saw bagged snow peas. I love them, so I bought them for lunches. However, Monday, when I took a closer look at the bag, I realized that they were imported from China.

The very country that has been ravaged by an earthquake. The very country that 15 million people are homeless and probably have little access to food. But yet, here I am, eating the food that they need way more than I do.

I talked to my best friend about it, as I could’t eat them without this incredible guilt, but at the same time couldn’t just throw them away. My friend told me that as long as I was aware of it, and since they would have been imported here anyway, that I should eat them. The guilt was showing me that I was a good person, even though I didn’t feel like it.

I also read an article this week on a bacteria called C. Diff. It is found in humans, mostly in people who are hospitalized for a period of time, and it causes some serious flu symptioms. However, the kicker, is that it has also been found in beef and pork. They say that the bacteria hasn’t crossed over from animals to humans, but the very fact that it is present scares me.

And if that isn’t enough to turn a person off eating, then how about the tomatoes being recalled due to large cases of salmonella being reported. What is our world coming to?

We have an obvious food shortage, and the food that we have isn’t necessarily all that safe either. I feel that by shopping locally, I have a much better chance of buying healthier produce. In turn, I am also promoting my local community. I am definitely not too comfortable with meat at this time either, but perhaps if I shop at my local butcher, I am also better off. That I am not sure. But I just might forgoe the meat altogether, since I have never really liked it anyway.

And eggs. I would rather buy free range eggs than the regular ones. What is the risk of eating a contaminated egg if the chickens are smushed together, never seeing the light of day, and dying in the same condition? Gone are the days of more natural farming and production.

So if the peas I ate from China weren’t needed there, would I feel less guilty? Probably not. Think about the environmental aspect of shipping them here. The fuel burned by the ships, the trains, the trucks just to reach my local store. The carbon footprint is exponential.

I worry a bit about what I eat. Maybe I worry about it too much. But if no one ever worried, then we would be in a lot more trouble.