Best of Mother Earth

This post is my entry for this months green mom’s Carnival hosted by Diane over at Big Green Purse - the theme is the prevention agenda and what we collectively would like to encourage the Obama administration to follow.

Instead of federal programs treating problems after the fact a prevention agenda would alter the approach to a more preventative strategy 

A Prevention Agenda forum has begun here.

I have not ever felt that my voice mattered in relationship to our government. 

I found myself thinking as I started to write this if I was wasting my time… 

I also feel intimidated… the old who am I thoughts keep trickling in…or that’s a really stupid idea, noone is ever going to shut down the fast food industry…

Yet, as I was writing I thought what if the shifts I believe in could actually occur?  I thought darlin, say how you feel —  it certainly can not harm.

It warms my heart the hope Obama is offering all of us, not only here in America but also around the world.

The man is walking into a bit of a nightmare wouldn’t you agree??  Certainly a very long list of must do’s..

I have many concerns of course, but the one I am writing about today hits me the hardest. Fueling my family. Our everyday food sources. We try really hard to eat well. I just wish eating well was the norm. At our house we already practice prevention through nutritional supplementation.  What if that too was the norm?

The green movement includes greening our food sources

We just have to find a new way.

Dear President Obama,

A very wise man once shared with our sales team the concept of Kaizen.  Japanese for continuous movement and incremental improvement , Kaizen is a business philosophy about working practices and efficiency, improvement in productivity or performance. In other words, the Japanese way of saying change for the better. This wise man further explained how within this philosophy companies look within to solve concerns. There might be a hierarchy of administration, management and employees, but if a company is intentional the efforts of producing something of quality is a team effort

Our nation needs to shift the way we eat. To me, this begins with the seeds we plant and the way we farm them. It continues into priistine manufacturing practices  and with policies that supports and reeducates families about getting back to eating locally and seasonally 

As a younger mom I will never ever forget when I found out that the milk I was drinking and feeding my children was tainted with growth hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals. I found myself horrified when the more I looked at the food I was feeding my family the larger the chemical nightmare became.

How could dairy farms produce taint our milk? How can fruits and vegetables be heavily sprayed? How could the soil which we grow our food in be nutrient depleted? Who says it’s OK to alter fats, to irradiate foods. How can they be allowed to genetically modified corn?  Most of all why?

When I began sharing what I was learning the biggest comment I’d hear was why would there be chemicals in our food, what do you mean they inject things into oranges to make them look better? Who would allow that ?

Exactly??  How did we become these chemical factories?

I didn’t grow up in an eat from the land environment. Raised in a suburb outside of Chicago I was raised by scratch cooking in a time when the box was way more popular. I was lucky. We had a small garden. I know what dirt feels like, the smell of it – the richness it can provide. I minimally know the experience of harvesting what you have and enjoying it’s bounty from my back yard. What I remember most is that it’s remarkably simple. Plant a seed, water it and watch it grow – food! That simplicity inspires me

I understand how the act of producing, manufacturing foods became a big business, and in that business someone makes a profit. When did that turn to greed? When did that greed turn to harm, at the expense of the American public?

Food took on the role of convenience vs the role of nutrition. 

That convenience became an addiction, eat faster, make it quicker, who has time to eat anymore, we eat on the run, dash and dine, we shove something in and call it a meal?

Food is what sustains this thing called our human body – nutrition is what fuels the cells we are made up of.  We are no longer eating for nutrition

This lack of nutrition is showing up in our health.  Would you agree that we are one sick nation? 

Who’s going to pay for the health care for all of these sick people?

In the spirit of the Kaizan philosophy couldn’t we just go back 100 years and consider this rich and delicious land we have access to and redesign the way we do things?

Having the world we live in move so fast may not be such a good thing.

My wish list includes: 

local safe food.
having the family evening meal back
healthy school food programs – like fruits and vegetables every day!
as a culture to grow food again and have preparing it be joyful and celebratory  
that farming could come back to my community
to stop factory farming   
to end to mass food production 
that our dairy cows could healthy and produce healthy milk.  
that our vegetables come from this country.
that imported foods arrived safe
to mandate the validity of the multi-vitamin to support the local farmer. 
that unsafe foods no longer be manufactured.
to shut down the fast food industry
that the top ten food additives no longer be produced.

Stop this at its source. The industry is not in charge – we are!  

Reward and champion the organic farmer. 

Penalize the chemical farmers. 

Better yet take the chemicals away. Change the standards. Change the way it’s being done. 

Kaizen suggests that we might consider going back to the beginning, begin with the seed. Go back to the seeds we plant for the food, the way we grow them and the way that they are then distributed. Take our advertising dollars and spend them on the value of a gorgeous red pepper grown here in our country!  Let the brand be the name of the farmer that picked it! Tap into the brilliance of men like Michael Pollen. 

Our green moms carnival is inclusive perhaps you have a prevention agenda letter you’d like to share?



to the heart of the matter flickr image credit

the image above also had this ever so appropriate quote:  

Within the seed of your desire is everything necessary for it to blossom to fulfillment. And Law of Attraction is the engine that does the work. Your work is just to give it a fertile growing place in order to expand. © Abraham-Hicks 


Karen Hanrahan | wellness educator and consultant | writer
nutrition ~ green clean ~ inch loss  ~ anti-aging

Contact me:  708.482.0678