Thoughts about food...

I haven't posted anything here in a while.  Probably doesn't really matter because it's not like anybody reads this blog.

Anyways, I've been thinking about food a lot lately and the implications that it has health-wise, as well as financially (food is expensive!).  After reading about the topic and watching numerous documentaries, as well as jumping on the bandwagon and seeing "Food Inc.", I've been able to improve my eating habits and my diet as a whole has improved and I basically feel pretty good all the time!  One thing that I was very interested in after seeing "Food Inc." was the fact that fresh produce and fresh foods in general are more expensive than processed foods in a lot of cases.  This basically infuriated me because I don't really feel like anybody is doing anything to lower the cost of fresh foods.  However, I still choose to buy as little processed food as possible and am eliminating things left and right and substituting them with whole foods (I'm still stuck on a cost effective way to get processed breakfast cereal out of my diet!).

I've changed my shopping habits over the past about six months and started shopping a grocer that sells fresh foods that were grown right here in the US, and recently I've started shopping at my local Greeley farmers market (where my landlord sells the most delicious cucumbers!) and I've noticed a pretty big cut in my produce bill just from that one change.  Today my purchase from Larry (my landlord) totaled $3.50, which included a bag literally overflowing with red leaf lettuce, five huge carrots, three cucumbers, and a red onion.  Suck on that McDonalds.  I also went with some local beef from locally owned slaughterhouse.  I got a big hunk of sirloin for $5.00 even.  Pretty good deal, the only problem being that the cows were still fed on corn rather than on their natural diet of grass.  In other words, great shopping trip!

I've started making some of my own food to, including bread to eat with my processed cereal in the morning :), and homemade granola with all-natural ingredients.  Now I only have to figure out to get refined grains out of my diet, and somehow start disliking the taste of soda to the point where I don't buy it (it's my guilty pleasure).  In honor of this post, I'm drinking a tall bottle of Powerade (finishing it from my pre-dinner run).