Blog Inspiration #3: "Animal Vegetable Miracle"

This whole diet idea started with a book recommended to me by a friend in Book Club. Over the summer, I finally read the book Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I haven't been the same ever since.

This book is about a family who decides to only eat local food grown within a 100-mile radius of their home. This book tells us that we should be eating less processed foods (i.e. canned goods, frozen dinners, fast food, even food at the grocery store) and going back to the basics: fresh food, food that is grown locally and not shipped all over the country and pumped with preservatives to have a longer shelf life (Twinkies!). The book said that anything between the meat aisle and the produce section should be avoided! 

I grew up on Cheerios, Goldfish, and Teddy Grams. Who knew they don't have much nutritional value?? They are labeled as a healthy snack for us when really they can be almost as bad as the foods labeled as "junk food."

I started telling some of my friends about my findings. Most people don't understand my zeal. I have heard things like "everything in moderation" or "I'm just eating like my parents and their parents eat." But are we really eating like our parents or their parents? Just 50 years ago, things like high fructose corn syrup didn't exist! Now it's in everything from bread to yogurt to canned vegetables, not to mention it makes up some of the packaging of some of those items, eek!

I have taken a lot from that book. It has inspired me to question what I am finding at the store. I even started buying my produce at the farmers market instead of the grocery store!

This book is your wake up call, the American diet is bad news.