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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

All Natural


I was struck by something as Tim and I were picking out breasts.  
Chicken breasts.
This topic is serious, and scary, so I thought I better lead with humor.  
oops.

We were trying to decide which CHICKEN breasts to buy, and comparing labels and pricing.  Right next to the Organic frozen chicken breasts were ones labeled All Natural

My first thought was "as opposed to...?"   Semi-Natural?  Sort of Natural?  One Half Natural? 

Fake.  


Fake food.  Man-made food.  And not man-made as in "I planted this, watered it, cared for it, plucked it, harvested it, and boom it's on our table man-made" -- BUT man-created, man-developed, man-genetically modified "food." 

Meaning... many things that we eat don't have a bit of REAL in them.

There are so many things out there that the average person just wants to ignore.  I, for one, didn't want to know that "pink slime" is the term for castoff cow parts used as filler in ground beef, which is probably why it rips up my intestines every time I try to eat a fast-food hamburger.  I am one of the thousands horrified by documentaries like Food, Inc, which expose just a small part of our food industry's corruption.  In fact, I spent the rest of that afternoon in the fetal position on my couch.  Why do things that taste so good do such awful things to our bodies?  We are destroying ourselves from the inside out and slowly turning our bodies to mush.  Well... that's my personal mental picture.  You're welcome to make your own.

Doesn't this scare you?  It does me.  I can't claim to have the best eating habits, but we certainly try to take at least small alternatives to the mainstream.  For example, it's expensive to buy all organic, so I buy those fruits and veggies I know have high count pesticides organic, and any others I buy non-organic.  When we eat bread it's whole wheat, whole grain, or sprouted grain.  We drink Soy or organic skim milk from grass-fed cows.  We treasure my parent's home grown eggs.  Obviously, I choose organic chicken breasts over "all natural."  Whatever the hell that means.

We eat pretty simply and we rarely, if ever, eat fast food.  Even so, a few years ago we decided we wanted to have more control over the food we put in our bodies.  In the not too distant past families probably knew the farms where their produce came from.  They bartered for chickens and eggs -- and trust me, these chickens weren't stacked on top of each other, never seeing the light of day, as they are today.  They milked their own cows, churned their own butter, cured their own cheese.  Call me crazy, but that sounds pretty sweet to me.  I used to think life on a farm or life "back then" seemed like a lot of work just to feed yourself.  Now it just seems like a lot of work to pick out what I feel comfortable eating from a grocery store.

Two weeks ago we took another step away from mass-produced food and bought three hens of our own.  After two weeks of adjusting to their new home, Flora, Fauna, & Meriweather rewarded us with these...

We're not certain which fine feathered friend to give credit, but clearly three chickens didn't lay two eggs.  One old gal needs to get to work.  It was a special moment -- more so for Tim than for me, since he did all the prep work -- to know that we're a little bit closer to producing our own food.  Plus we have the peace of mind knowing exactly where these eggs came from. . . 

Unless, of course, our Hens are egg-nappers.




 
I wouldn't put it past them.


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