Go green and save

Eating one hundred percent organic was initially challenging because I got incredibly sick as my body purged the toxins from conventional foods from my body.  All those lovely pesticides and preservatives and who knows what else had really taken a toll on my body and my liver.  It was well worth it, but I felt after that my biggest hurdle had been dealt with.  I feel amazing, but only now is the challenge of eating completely organic really sinking in.

I have always loved eating out in restaurants, in fact it was one of my main sources of entertainment.  I say “was” because eating out is now a thing of the past.  I cannot eat at 99.9 percent of restaurants in my city any more.  Not only is the ingredients in most restaurants not organic, but they also use the cheapest and most toxic ingredients they can find.  Restaurants exist solely for profit, therefore they always use product that has the highest profit margin.  My wife says that this is how she felt when she became a vegetarian. All of a sudden she couldn’t eat at most restaurants because most of the menu was meat based.  There are two restaurants in the city that are 100% organic, where we are now dedicated regulars.  It is doubly nice to eat at these spots because everyone looks so healthy and happy.

It is strange to look at most dining establishments and see nothing but toxins and chemicals being ingested daily.  I know I probably sound pretty harsh, but do some research and you will soon come to the same conclusion.  The food found in most restaurants will make you sick and harm your health over the years.

For seven weeks now I have prepared and cooked 99 percent of the meals my wife and I have consumed. As a result, my cooking skills have improved quite a bit.  I feel like I am living back in the days before there were restaurants.  As organic ingredients are quite expensive (most cheaper conventional ingredients are subsidized by the government, making them even more cheaper) we have started making our own hash browns, mayonnaise, salad dressings etc.  I have completely fallen in love with food, all over again.

I think my body always knew that conventional food wasn’t healthy for me because I was never really in a rush to eat.  It had turned into a daily chore, and I always felt tired after eating.  Not any more. I inhale my food, only pausing slightly to wonder at the overwhelming taste of everything.  When I make an organic burger with an organic bun, organic tomato, organic mayo, organic ketchup, onion (doesn’t have to be organic as it has no pesticide anyways), organic beef, organic lettuce and organic cheese, the flavors literally explode in my mouth and I can hardly wait for another.  It’s almost as if my body knows now (which it probably does) that this food is safe and so it can’t wait to feed itself.

I have also become addicted to the slow glow of energy spreading through my body that I have never felt before.  With my liver bogged down with all the toxins, it’s amazing any food got digested.  So I have a new found love of food, offset with the realization that I won’t be able to eat at most restaurants any more.  Throw in how amazing I feel, and it is totally worth the sacrifice.  The only time it gets weird is when I am invited out, and get chastised by my fellow diners as it is trendy and cool to not care about yourself and ridicule anyone who does, probably due to jealousy.  I bet it won’t seem as cool when they end up with cancer.  It is a true testament to marketing and the power of the food industry to create such an apathetic view of self and a total disassociation towards death.  Most of the high fat, high sugar, toxic laden food these days completely destroys a persons health, without nourishing the body at all. Oh well, everything’s a choice I guess.

I just wanted to add a little bit to yesterday’s blog.  When I cut out pesticide laden food from my diet by eliminating it, or buying its organic variety, several things happened to my body that I would like to share.  I am the world’s biggest skeptic, and always research and cross examine something before I believe in it.  I guess that I’ve been burned too many times in the past.

When I altered my diet, I made sure to eat exactly the same food I ate before, just organic.  I wanted to make sure it was actually my diet that was making me feel better, and that it wasn’t all just in my head.  I keep reading all of these reports that organic food isn’t more nutritious than conventional food.  At sometimes triple the price, there has to be some serious evidence to support buying it, especially if it doesn’t necessarily have more nutrition.  So for five whole weeks, I ate my usual diet of burgers, fries, chicken wings, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns (made them myself with organic potatoes), sandwiches, chili, spaghetti, you name it, all organic.  Shoppers drug mart even has a nativa organics line that has organic ginger snaps, maple cookies, oreo cookies etc. I would really like to stress that I didn’t alter my diet at all, just simply ate 100% organic.  I didn’t eat in one restaurant, but instead made restaurant food at home (like I said, chicken wings, burgers etc).  What followed was probably the worst five weeks of my life.

The first week was probably the most extreme.  I got the shakes, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, intense withdrawal and detoxification symptoms.  It was the same as, or worse than when I quit smoking.  For the following weeks the symptoms were still there, but they did alleviate a bit.  Bit by bit, I felt better and better and better.  I no longer sweat profusely all the time, if I do sweat, it doesn’t smell at all, my eczema has gone, which I had for 20 years, I sleep soundly the whole night until my alarm rings (never happened before, I always woke up several times throughout the night).  The difference is night and day.  I feel as though I have woken up from a dream.  All this from simply eating organic.  Isn’t that insane?  If someone had told me that if I simply ate organic I would be horribly sick for about 5 – 6 weeks and then most of my health issues would disappear I would have thought they were nuts.  A question comes to mind, what was in that food I used to eat?  People say certain things are okay in moderation, but when you take into consideration this:

• the tap water I drink has chemicals and chlorine in it
• soft drinks are loaded with chemicals
• produce is laden with pesticides
• the air we breathe is laden with chemicals
• lots of food is full of preservatives
• household cleaners have lots of chemicals that are harmful to humans
• carpets and dust in houses has lots of toxins in them

it’s the buildup each and every day that makes people’s systems out of whack.  Without the ability to cleanse the liver due to being overloaded, these toxins reduce the bodies ability to cleanse itself.  I no longer drink soda pop, I have eliminated the preservatives and pesticides in the food I eat by eating organic, and only use biodegradable cleaners at home now.  By doing these simple things, my health has improved dramatically.  Just goes to show you how a little work goes a long way.  By “educating” myself I improved myself.  Let’s apply this strategy to the earth.  If we just chill out for a bit and allow it to replenish itself, it might do a world of good.

I’ve always been a big supporter of education.  Not post secondary education, which is simply designed to make you a good worker.   Not that that is bad, I’m simply talking about a different sort of education.  For example, when I was younger I used to smoke cigarettes.  Back then, there was no warnings on the packs, no public messages on how harmful cigarettes can be for your health.  Many people I knew smoked, so I figured it was okay.  One day, after smoking for on and off for about ten years, I sat down and actually researched why it was that made smoking so unhealthy.  After I educated myself, I found it impossible to have another cigarette.  Might as well drink some chemical cleaner each day.  The only reason you get a rush from a cigarette at all is because your body is going into shock from such a toxic amount of carcinogens entering the body.  This is the type of education I am talking about.  Real life, smack you in your face education.

I recently “educated” myself about pesticides.  The reason they are unhealthy for you is because they attack the very cells in your body, compromising your DNA and inhibiting your body from doing many daily tasks, such as absorbing the sugar and fat from your food (sounds good, not absorbing the fat, but the rest of it is simply stored in the body, so good luck losing weight with pesticides in your system) to overtaxing the liver.  I recently read a book title “lean green and clean” and it has many ways of avoiding pesticides, as well as tips on how to detoxify your body and house.  There is a list of safe foods to eat in it, which I have followed for the last 6 weeks.  If the food wasn’t on the safe side of the list, I didn’t eat it or bought it organically.  6 weeks ago I was tired all time, had no energy at all, my head was always cloudy, found it difficult to concentrate etc.  Now I have more energy than I have ever had in my life.  I have more energy now than when I was in my teens.  By educating myself, I was able to make intelligent responsible choices that have severely impacted my life, in a positive way.

And so we come to the purpose of today’s blog.  If the people who are opting to change the world for the better were to concentrate on hammering home these facts:

• That when you throw out plastic, it will end up in the ocean, and subsequently in the food we eat.
• Almost every single problem facing the earth is reversible.
• Simply boycotting certain companies will cause them to have to change their toxic ways.

We could create the intelligent responsible individuals we need in order to create a sustainable and beautiful earth for everyone.

Where to start?  I used to be one of the people “polluting” the earth.  I didn’t recycle, didn’t care how much gas I used, got plastic bags from the grocery store and threw them out.  All the time I would hear all the usual doomsday jargon.  The world is going to overheat, all the species on earth are going extinct, peak oil is here blah blah blah.  It was all just too much.  For me to even believe what was being told to me, I had to adopt a negative view of my future, when the future was already overwhelmingly negative.  Having left home at 15 due to a violent and abusive home life, life had and was always going to be a struggle.  Now I had to believe that even if I somehow did make a success out of my life, the earth was going to be too polluted and destroyed and hot for me to enjoy it?  So I shut it out, and effectively (although largely unknown to ignorant me) helped destroy the planet.  After many years, and a relationship with an astute and intelligent vegetarian, I slowly began to see that all is not lost.  Indeed, there are many positive aspects to the environmental and recycling causes around the earth.  For instance:

Eighty-four percent of a typical household’s waste–including food scraps, yard waste, paper, cardboard, cans, and bottles–can be recycled.

Using recycled paper for one print run of the Sunday edition of the New York Times would save 75,000 trees.

If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25 million trees a year.

By turning the heat down, Americans could save more than 500,000 barrels of oil each day–that’s over 21,000,000 gallons

To sum things up (I’ll go over it more in my next blog) how about starting all attempts to change people’s views about “green” philosophy as positive?  Instead of doom and gloom statements that honestly just push people deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of their psyche, tell them that we could have an amazing , beautiful, and more importantly clean earth if certain incredibly simple steps were taken.  Then everyone could feel like they were helping to create a greater existence instead of destroying our only one?

Another copy of this green blog can be found here.