La Aventura Project website

Hey everyone!
Please check out the new blog/website for my awesome new documentary project!  CLICK HERE to go to the official website with it's own domain name and everything and then bookmark it!!! 
The project is going to be amazing and fundraising will be starting soon!
Thanks!

Food Blues

I love to eat.  I am vegetarian, but meat is pretty much the only thing I won't chow down on.  I especially love bad-for-me foods like cheese, french fries, chocolate, and ice cream.  This love of food is (I believe) the main reason I've struggled to lose weight ever since the dreaded "freshman 15" took hold of me six (ahhh, can't believe that number!) years ago.  Well, I also love beer and margaritas.  Those definitely don't help.  Additionally, I have come to believe that my metabolism moves at a snail's pace.  No matter how much I work out, I could never just eat whatever I wanted and not get fat.  I loathe those people who can munch down on anything, never hit a treadmill, and stay skinny as rails.  How are they so lucky???  Zach (my boyfriend) is one of those people.  AHHHHH!!!  He has always been skinny and he actually loses weight without trying.  So now that we live together it's a constant struggle between trying to fatten him up and slim myself down.  Since I love baking, I bake him all sorts of goodies and then try not to eat them while they hover under my nose.  Does this work??  Not very well.  Case in point, the delicious Grandpa's Chocolate-Rum Cake with Mousse Frosting that I made for Zach's birthday cake.  It was AMAZING.  I wish I had a picture.

A couple nights ago we watched a documentary that highlighted another food issue that's related to but ultimately more important than my weight-loss problem.  It was a saddening but welcome reminder of how my food choices have an effect that extends far beyond myself.

Food, Inc. website

I had been wanting to see this for awhile but part of me kept putting it off because I knew it would challenge me.  And it definitely did.  The film illuminates the scary reality of large-scale, corporate agriculture.  Rather than go into all the arguments it presents myself, I'll just highly recommend that you rent/Netflix it.  But be prepared.  For me, the documentary reinforced many of my reasons for choosing to avoid meat entirely.  But the HUGE problems of the food industry extend way beyond just meat.  The overriding message, of course, was that local, organic, sustainably grown food is the only way to go.  Yes, it's often more expensive, but the only way to bring change in practices and prices is to use your money as your vote.  Zach and I both felt guilty about repeatedly choosing the lower prices of non-organic Safeway/Kroger groceries over the ridiculously-priced organic alternatives at Whole Foods-type.  Food, Inc. made us realize that although we might be saving money now, the savings are not worth all the health risks, loss of jobs for small farmers, and environmental destruction caused by factory farming. 

So, we are challenging ourselves to buy everything organic and (if possible) local for at least the next month.  We want to see if we feel any health changes in such a short time. I bet we will (even if it is mostly due to the "expensive organic cheese=eating less cheese" effect).  Unfortunately we had just done a big Safeway haul the very same day we watched the movie.  So it will take some time to phase out all the cheap non-organic food we have in the house (c'mon, I'm still not going to give away food I spent $ on).  But everything from now on is going to come from either the wonderful Flagstaff Farmer's Market (which actually has a storefront that's open every day year round) or New Frontiers Natural Marketplace (our version of Whole Foods...and they always have samples!).  I'm actually really excited to begin this challenge.  I know that changing my food purchasing habits is absolutely the right thing to do both for my health and for the earth.  I'll be excited to report back on how things are going with our new food mindset!