Posts Tagged ‘grass-fed meats’

I am a married mother of one…soon we hope, two, living in Savannah, Georgia and have been living a nearly exclusive organic life for about 3.5 years now.  I say nearly because there are times when we have to eat what is available – I would say we eat organically nearly 85% of the time each week.   It’s really not hard because once you learn the truth about where your food comes from, who makes it, and how it’s made, you can’t go back.   It began with family members leading the way by example and the final push came from our Chiropractor who held a half day event educating us on the benefits of such food choices and introduced us to some of the scares of the truth behind American food production.  We then continued our education on such topics and documentaries such as Super Size Me, Food, Inc. and The Future of Food, among others, have been excellent resources.  Then, once we decided to have children it no longer became a choice.  We were going to be an all organic/all-natural/local food family as much as we possibly could. I can honestly say it has changed our lives.  We are so much healthier and feel it everyday.  The change encouraged us to make positive changes in our lives elsewhere as well, such as with regular exercise, stress management and spiritual growth.  We have also found that removing the processed foods from our daily nutrition has had a great impact as well.

Sadly, many friends say they can’t afford to change their eating habits, while on one hand I totally see their dilemma, on the other, changing their eating and exercise habits could most likely help them get off half of the prescriptions their on, or save them money from the numerous trips to the doctor each year. I can’t recall the last time I went to the doctor for an illness…I had to give that information to my health insurance company recently and we couldn’t come up with anything in over 7 years!  And we all have our vises, but if you can spend $6 or $7 a day on a specialty coffee…you can add a few organic food choices into your life.  Now, we do have to budget for our food, buying most at the local farmer’s market [ right from the farmers and ranchers themselves] and there are times where I have to supplement our needs with items from the local organic food co-op or our local grocer.  With proper planning we do quite well in comparison to buying what the typical American family buys.  I will say this though, grass-fed meats are most definitely more expensive–but SOOOOO WORTH IT.  Believe me, once you know where your food comes from and especially after you try grass-fed meat….you’ll never go back.  If we can’t afford it one week, well, then we go without-but we basically always have free-range chicken on hand-and never go hungry. It’s just a matter of prioritizing where my expenses go.

As for eating out…this is where the 85% comes in.  We do eat out about once a week and luckily more and more restaurants here in Savannah are adding organics and grass-fed meats to their menus.  But we don’t always visit those locations, and yes cost is one reason, so, when we just hit the local Mexican dive [one of our faves] or some other cheap but yummy restaurant I always try to bring something from home for our daughter.  I do share some of my foods with her – she insists! But she eats organically nearly 95%  of the time each week.  Like I said before, it’s very do-able…it’s all about making a commitment to your and your family’s health and proper planning.