First Post

First post. Welcome. Check out the About page to get some background info if you'd like. I'm not here to focus on greenwashing itself, or to tell you how bad you are for not recycling. I'm basically just recording some of my experiments and experiences with trying to live healthier and in a more sustainable way. I do feel greenwashed in a certain sense, though. With a lot of the supposedly environmentally friendly actions I take, it's hard to grasp the full impact that they have. Did I really do something "better" or does it just feel that way?

I was reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, and decided that it would probably be a good idea to pay a little more attention to what I'm eating. In the back of my mind I knew that cheap beef came from cows living in not-so-great conditions. But big deal, cheap food is great. Buying food from Wal-Mart and saving money means I can spend more money on other things. Well, while reading the book, especially after the feedlot description, I really started thinking about the quality of food. When cows are fed grain, which apparently they're not naturally equipped to eat, they tend to get sick. So they're all fed antibiotics to try and prevent them from getting sick. How good is that meat going to be? Probably not very good. I'm not going to rehash all the problems with industrial corn and concentrated animal feeding operations, you can read the book or search the Internet. This is just where I started thinking about food and got the idea to document my experiences.

Don't worry, it's not going to be all about food. That will definitely be a big part of it, but I'm also planning on discussing other areas of sustainability. It's hard to think about what effects your actions have on your environment. We can throw away or flush whatever we want and then not think about it anymore. Out of sight out of mind.

This isn't the first I've thought about all this. I've tried to make changes here and there. I use reusable shopping bags. Our garden gets compost that supposedly doesn't have any crazy chemicals in it. If it isn't too expensive or too difficult, I'll chose the "green" option. Hopefully that green option really is green, but maybe I'm just being greenwashed. Either way, I'm going to move forward and try to things in a better way. That's where this blog comes in. It's an outlet to share my experiences, and hopefully it will keep me motivated.

I have food on the brain right now, so that's probably what I'm going to write about first.