"... a day of wine and roses" by juntos on flickr

I have no doubt that we are living in a time of conscious evolution.  All around me I see signs that humans are opening their minds, hearts and souls in order to receive universal communication.  We’re on a communal path towards something inexpressible and not entirely knowable even to those who are closest to it.

Yet no matter how many yoga asanas I practice, how many hours of meditation I log, how many days of juice fasting I complete, or how many traditional healing modalities I try, I am still confronted with the fact that I exist within a physical, animal body.  And as an animal – albeit a consciously evolving one – I have appetites.  I have to take care of basic urges – eating, sleeping, exercising, desires – on a day to day basis.  It’s a perplexing paradox that while I experience the world through the filters of a relatively sophisticated brain which can consider the philosophical aspects of existence, I am still bound by my animal desires.  As a conscious, thoughtful being, how can I gain some freedom from the appetites?

Some might suggest that appetites are something to be mastered.  However, they are part of our design, and seeking to master them is to struggle with a powerful force.  I suggest that a more resonant way to become free from our baser appetites is to acknowledge, embrace and cultivate them.  For we weren’t given hunger alone.  We were also given taste buds – a tool for discernment.

Every time I get hungry, I have a choice to make.  How am I going to satisfy this need? From a purely animal, instinctual perspective, I could eat anything that is close at hand and will fill my empty tummy.  I can eat a McDonald’s burger or a big green salad; I can eat something snatched from the depths of the freezer and zapped to warmth in a microwave or something fresh and juicy plucked right off a tree and warmed by the sun.  The difference between my human hunger and that of any other animal is that mine has evolved – or perhaps devolved – beyond an instinctual classification of food and non-food to something more intellectualized.  In our contemporary global society, all foodstuffs are open to consideration.  Whether by social convention or the simple necessity of survival in times of scarcity, we’ve become omnivorous.

In theory, an omnivore is a great thing to be.  My body can survive on such a wide range of sustenance – what a miracle!  Furthermore, being an omnivore requires more than an open mouth.  It also requires an open mind.  This means that I can taste the foods of other peoples and literally become one with their cultures.  Sharing in someone else’s cuisine is an easy first step towards recognizing my unity with this person and all other living beings.  Omnivores are cultural ambassadors who communicate not with the nuanced skills of political diplomacy but with the universal language of flavor, aroma and satiation.

Rejecting omnivorism does not mean closing one’s mind or restricting the palette.  In fact, it brings about a more enlightened state of consciousness by elevating the act of eating from a base instinct to an existential experience.  The pathway to heightened sensual pleasure and intellectual engagement with one’s sustenance is through the cultivation of taste.

Let’s take the classic example of flavor discernment: wine.  Imagine a rustic dinner table spread with fantastic food and surrounded by flush-faced friends, sipping a nuanced nebbiollo and engaging in joyful conversation.  Now picture the same scene, but guzzling wine out of a box.  It changes the whole scene, doesn’t it?  The box wine may not exactly taste bad, but it’s presence becomes more of a prop in your wineglass rather than a sensually elevating experience.  As one begins to taste wines of different varietals, grown in the unique conditions of different vineyards, and with the touch of different individual winemakers, an appreciation of the breadth of possibilities born of the humble grape blossoms.  A world of flavor, of pleasure, of intellectual engagement opens up.  Each winemaker becomes an artist, working in partnership to express the integrity of his land and fruit in every bottle.  Don’t we owe the artist and his materials the utmost respect?

Furthermore, don’t we owe ourselves the respect of providing sustenance that nourishes on every single level?  Nourishment may begin with vitamins and minerals, but it certainly doesn’t end there.  We respect our bodies and our earth by choosing wholesome, nutritious ingredients, and we respect our souls by preparing them with love in order to enhance our eating experience.  Preparing good ingredients to the best of our ability is an act of humble gratitude.  Eating and truly enjoying our food is an act of worship.

Cultivating taste is not an argument for hedonism.  Rather, it’s about engaging all of the senses to become fully present in the act of nourishment.  It’s about appreciating and participating in the chain of creation.  It’s about finding inspiration in the most mundane places.  When we take the time to cultivate taste, we become free from the tyranny of hunger and elevate the simple animal act of feeding ourselves to an expression of the soul.

Perhaps a future exists in which we don’t need food, water and shelter to sustain our living vessels.  But until then, we can celebrate these appetites with which we must live in a graceful balance by cultivating taste.

In the latest offering from the author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer turns to the nonfiction genre in order to ask an imperative question: What are the health and moral implications of eating animals?

When you think of eating meat, what do you picture?  A big glistening roast turkey atop a pile of potatoes, or poultry that can’t walk under their own power and are pumped full of antibiotics just to keep them alive?  A juicy pink-middled steak with mushrooms, or a feedlot filled beyond capacity with malnourished cows that gives off an unbearable stench?

While I’m not writing this review to push a particular vegetarian agenda, I do want to push some sensitive buttons that require considered probing.  The meat question is one that any responsible person living with the realities of industrialized meat production (and that’s all of us) needs to consider.  Does the question about the health and morality of our collective flesh habit make you feel uncomfortable?  If so, I’d like to suggest that there are some unpleasantries – to put it nicely – regarding where and how our society’s animal-food is raised, and you know enough to know you don’t want to know more.  I’m sorry to break it to you, but ignorance is just not an option here – at least not if you have any concern for the health and wellbeing of your body, of society, of the planet, and of the creatures with whom we share this earth.

Eating meat is basically a non-choice in Western society.  It’s rejecting meat that is considered to be the (somewhat unnatural) choice.  While I’ve personally wrestled with the question of whether or not to eat meat countless times over the years, it was reading Foer’s latest book Eating Animals that prompted me to actually write about it.  It’s just too important of an issue to stay quiet.  Ultimately, like Foer, I don’t care what choice you make in the end.  I only ask that you consider the information I share here and actually think about it.  And then grab Foer’s book and pick up where I leave off.

What makes this book so good?  To start, Foer is a storyteller.  As a fiction writer, he recognizes this skill and adeptly begins and ends his book with sections entitled “storytelling.”  But in this case, Foer isn’t talking about a story born in the depths of his imagination.  These are the stories that we tell ourselves and our children, the values we communicate, particularly around the table.  He conjures up warm memories of childhood Thanksgivings, and the importance of abundance at these gatherings as his Holocaust-survivor grandmother quietly reveled in the plumpness of her progeny.  Surely we can all recall such scenes from family gatherings past, and the culture and ritual surrounding the particular foods that took pride of place on the celebratory tables.

For many people, perhaps the story would end there.  But Foer was one of those kids who was deeply troubled when he learned that the food he called “chicken” was one and the same as the barnyard bird.  With his “mouth full of hurt chickens,” he vowed never to eat an animal again.  Until he did.  Thus began a struggle that lasted for decades, embracing a shaky sometimes-vegetarianism that left him feeling uneasy and unsatisfied.  While his rational mind rejected the idea of meat-eating, he told himself stories to make it okay to eat some of his dad’s roast bird this time.  That is, until the prospect of becoming a father made him take a closer look at the stories he wanted to tell his newborn son.

Like most of us, Foer realized that he didn’t have enough information to make a truly informed decision about a reasonable ethic in regard to meat eating.  The fact of the matter is, the majority of Americans (and increasingly other nationalities) don’t really know what meat actually IS today.  So he set out to do some good investigative journalism, supported by the most conservative of facts and figures.  By and large, what he discovers is beyond disturbing.

The major conclusion he draws is about the unacceptability and inhumanity of factory farms.  Ultimately it is less the very fact of eating animals that troubles him than the inability to locate a strong viable alternative to the cruelty of the factory farm.  He discusses “selective omnivorism” – the practice of eating meat only when it has been raised sustainably and ethically – and agrees that while it comes from a noble sentiment, it still engenders a conscious forgetting that perpetuates the current system. As he observes, there are no absolutes on this matter: “Perhaps there is no ‘meat.’ Instead, there is this animal, raised on this farm, slaughtered at this plant, sold in this way, and eaten by this person….”

The service he does to our society in writing about the realities of the contemporary meat industry is invaluable.  He manages to convey the shocking, the upsetting, the perverse and the downright disgusting practices that have become the norm in livestock production in a clear, compelling voice.  This is, after all, the same voice that conjured up scenes of horror and intensity in the all-too-real holocaust story of Everything is Illuminated and captured the emotional landscape of a September 11th orphan in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  And while he explores the environmental devastation, public health abuse, human welfare violations and economic unfeasibility of the current meat production industry, the bottom line in this story is suffering.

Foer’s research makes it clear that 99% of the animals eaten for food in America today suffer unthinkable cruelty from birth to slaughter.  And while he makes other points about the myriad abuses and irresponsibility of the meat industry, his ultimate conclusion is that the daily cruelty inflicted upon these beings is unacceptable.  He doesn’t advance a moral argument for the inherent “rightness” or “wrongness” of eating animals.  While he concludes that his personal morality leans in a vegetarian direction due to extreme unease with even the most humane methods of slaughter, his refusal to dilute the strength of his facts with personal feelings makes for a stronger and more compelling book.  The facts alone are enough to make anyone think long and hard about developing a clear ethic around animal consumption.

However, his endeavors to find truly good alternatives to the factory farm system are devastating.  He discovers only one producer – Frank and his turkeys – who he feels has developed a truly humane form of animal husbandry.  Of course Frank’s form of farming was the norm sixty years ago – it’s a story of a takeover of the industry by the factory model so complete and pervasive that there really is no traditional farming left in America today.

Foer’s book is, above all, a condemnation of the factory farm and what they’ve stolen from and inflicted upon not only animals but also the eating public.  We’ve lost dignity, connection to our food, purity, integrity, and health – all in the name of a cheap meal.  That’s the bottom line here, isn’t it?  America – and, increasingly, the rest of the world – keeps buying the bullshit because they want meat on their plates and they’re unwilling to pay the true cost.  Instead they end up paying in public health crises, in environmental devastation, in pollution and global warming and antibiotic resistance and bacteria and in a loss of dignity.

I’m not a meat eater.  For me, it’s a philosophical issue: I think that consuming other animals breeds anger, and I prefer to cultivate gratitude.  But I don’t mean to sound high and mighty – I continue to struggle with how I feel about eating fish, eggs and dairy, and much of my dietary decision is influenced by the fact that I feel best, physically and emotionally, on a vegetarian diet.  But I appreciate that this book, rather than exploring the ethics of meat eating in a preachy tone, takes a good hard look at where meat comes from today and informs rather than moralizes.  Foer gives people power by giving them knowledge.

If I take one thing away from this book, it’s that ending the era of the factory farm is imperative.  His image of the Thanksgiving table is a powerful one.  We can have a bird – one of 45 million – that can’t support itself on its own two legs, that is riddled with disease, that is fed an unnatural diet and pumped full of antibiotics, and that endured tremendous pain due to its unnatural breeding, the horrendous conditions in which in lives, and the treatment it receives – that is, if it even survives to adulthood.  Or we can start telling a different story, about why we choose not to eat this bird, not to support this corrupt system.  Ultimately, we may end up asking ourselves, “Why did we ever eat that?”

Read other reviews of Eating Animals:

The New Yorker

The Huffington Post (by Natalie Portman)

The Green Fork

The Monthly

Civil Eats

This is Vegan

La Vida Locavore

Interview with The Young and Hungry

New Year’s Resolutions: do you make them, or not? If you make them, do you brake them?

I’ve always liked the idea of New Year’s Resolutions, in theory. It seems like such a positive concept: starting off on a fresh note, untainted by the missteps of the past, we set out to create a new sense of who we are by changing our habits. But old habits die hard, and so often within a few weeks, days or hours we’re back into our old, destructive routines.

So I gave up on New Year’s resolutions a few years ago after observing both myself and others encounter failure after failure. I came to realize that the error of our ways is not in the difficulty of trying to change our habits, but in the nature of the resolutions themselves.

According to the USA.gov website, the most popular New Year’s Resolutions are:
1) lose weight
2) manage debt
3) save money
4) get a better job
5) get fit
6) get a better education
7) drink less alcohol
8) quit smoking now
9) reduce stress overall
10) reduce stress at work
11) take a trip
12) volunteer to help others

While these are certainly all worthy goals, of the twelve resolutions, five of them are worded in a negative way – things we want to do less of. And the others, while written in either a neutral or positive way, are still very vague goals, and very impersonal. The truth is, I’ve been in the bad habit of making similar resolutions all the time in my life. “I’m going to eat less cooked food.” “I’m going to drink less alcohol.” “I’m going to spend less money going out.” And like many of you, I generally fail to follow these resolutions after a few days. Not only are they pretty much impossible without a plan, they’re also not helpful and not fun.

This year, instead of making resolutions about what I don’t want to do or setting vague, unrealistic expectations for myself (which might even be based more on what society expects me to want rather than what I really want for myself as an individual), I’m going to set good intentions instead. Good intentions are different than resolutions. They’re based upon a vision of being my best light-self – my most creative, fun, vibrant, glowing, abundant self – and they’re things that I actually want to do. These are practical concepts that I can grasp onto immediately. And most importantly, these are positive changes. They’re action-based, and I can start them immediately. The more positive actions I’m taking for change, the less room there will be in my life for the old behaviors that I’d like to leave behind.

Which brings me to the reason I’m writing this post – because after all, everybody and their mom blogs about New Year’s Resolutions, and there’s plenty of other good advice out there, so why should you read mine? According to a Quirkology study, women achieve better success with resolutions/intentions when they make them public. So I’m writing this post partly for selfish reasons – to make myself accountable to my readers for the goals I’m setting here, and also to create a space for you to state your intentions in a safe and nurturing environment. So, here are my good intentions for the next journey around the sun:

Writing
1) Design a new WordPress blog and post 3 days per week on really fun topics, expanding my readership and allowing for the blog to become profitable as well as a labor of love :)
2) Seek out one new writing assignment/market every week.
3) Open myself up to the many possibilities of supporting myself through writing by repeating an affirmation daily.

Food
1) Be grateful for every morsel that I eat or drink by stopping to say “I am grateful for this X.”
2) Drink one green juice or green smoothie every day.
3) Drink a bilberry tea every day to improve my eyesight.

Social
1) Email one old friend every week (I’ve set up an alert on my computer to remind me!).
2) Phone one overseas friend or family member every week (see above).
3) Invite someone from my broader social circle to join me in an activity that I love every week, or accept a similar invitation from someone I want to get to know more.

Fun
1) Spend one entire day outside in a beautiful place hiking/camping/swimming/skiing every month.

So there you have it, my 10 good intentions for 2010. I actually have a lot more, but this seems like a manageable amount for me to focus on at the moment.

What are your good intentions for 2010?

I got really sick last week! I came home from my Wednesday night shift, got into bed and started shivering. It wasn’t even a cold night. I couldn’t stop shaking for over an hour, even after covering myself with layers of clothing and blankets. I spent the next 2 days in bed with a fever.

I had been working without a single full day off for about a month, not getting regular exercise and my diet was kind of erratic. For several days leading up to my illness I was eating calorie dense foods – a lot of nuts and raw desserts, as well as some cooked food. My stress levels were high and I wasn’t allowing for any release through relaxation or exercise. Is it any wonder that my body reacted by overheating and then shutting down?

The cure was SIMPLE, however. I just stopped eating and rested! I drank water at first, adding in juice as my appetite began to return. Then I moved on to some simple vegetable soup. I slept a lot, and went for some short walks as my strength returned. Within two days I was feeling pretty great.

The lesson I learned, which I’d like to share with you, is this: keep your raw food simple! Raw desserts are great, but they should be treats for special occasions. I am now focusing on designing a daily way of eating that incorporates fresh juice, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, greens, and lots of water and herbal tea. I personally have a tendency to forget that the above is the basis of a happy, healthy diet and go overboard with the raw sweets and gourmet recipes. Yes, these are raw, but they are really dense and hard to digest and shouldn’t be eaten every day.

The other lesson is to give myself time off to play and relax! So I have now adjusted my work schedule so that I have one full day off every week. And that day happens to be Sunday, which is a day off for Jayson as well, so we can spend the day together having fun. This past Sunday we went bushwalking in a kind of eerie feeling gorge near Bacchus Marsh.

My question today is, what do you do to remind yourself to “keep it simple?” And what do you do to relax?

After reading Gina Kolata’s recent New York Times article on the continuing search for a cancer cure, I wanted to throw my hands up in the air in frustration. Apparently Barack Obama has pledged increased funding for cancer research over the next few years in the hope of finding a cure for the disease. He is, of course, just the latest in a line of leaders who optimistically encourage us to think that if we keep on the current track of scientific research, this plague of the modern world will be eradicated.

Noble intentions, certainly. But as Kolata points out, hundreds of billions of dollars have already been poured in this type of research with only the slightest drop in cancer deaths over the past 55 years. And here’s the thing: most of the more innovative research never gets funded, because of its riskiness compared to research that will make tiny, incremental advances. A lot of what is being funded is basically drugs and treatments that will keep cancers at bay, maybe give patients a little bit longer to live.

I’m not saying that any of this is bad. It’s fantastic that there are doctors and researchers out there trying to improve the prognosis for cancer patients. And how wonderful that some government money is going to health research. But I just think the entire system is approaching this disease from the wrong angle. I know I don’t have a medical background, so I’m only saying this from my own perspective. But doesn’t it seem like more than a coincidence that the rise in cancer coincides with an increase in processed food consumption, increased industrial activity, and the use of chemicals in our homes? I mean, how obvious can it get?

I think this is a disease that is going to be slow to eradicate, and I say that because I think what is required is a fundamental shift in the way we live. We’re just exposed to so many carcinogens in our modern world, and really the obvious solution is to remove as many of these toxins from our environments as possible. Eating non-processed, organic, plant-based foods, using natural cleaning and beauty products, drinking the best water we can get, and keeping our minds positive will go a long way towards stopping this disease in its tracks. There are stories of people who have “cured” their cancers with juice feasts, affirmations, or ever laughter! I wonder how much research money is looking at these sorts of possibilities?

But the problem here is that the research money seems to be looking for more of a quick-fix – a drug or treatment regimen that will “cure” cancer in an individual patient. Yes, I understand this desire. Like most people in this world, I’m no stranger to friends and family who have struggled through – or died from – cancer. It’s scary, and I like to think that should I receive such a diagnosis, I can be cured. But I’m not convinced that this sort of research is the best approach. And cancer drugs and treatments can have so many side effects – after all, it’s not just the cancerous cells that are affected by pharmaceuticals and radiation.

These are just my thoughts on the subject – I have no medical background and really know very little about the topic. And I certainly wouldn’t tell any of my loved ones to ignore a doctor’s recommended treatments and use entirely alternative approaches – though in all honesty if I received such a diagnosis myself you can be sure that I would research every single alternative/complementary option before trying anything that conventional medicine has to offer. I would be really curious and grateful to anyone who has any more information on this topic and would like to share to leave a comment – I think this is a really important discussion.