The beginning of a new year is a good time to reflect on your life and to think about establishing new habits or goals. Many experts will tell you that the best success at establishing new habits comes from focusing on one new habit at a time. However, there is a certain thrill that produces a greater sense of motivation for starting a larger life transformation all at once, which implies changing many habits at the same time. I find myself having trouble resisting the temptation to do this, or at least to contemplate it in some detail. So I’m going to write a sequence of appends about initiating a larger set of transforming habits. The idea is to start these on Jan 1st, 2010. We’ll see how successful such an approach really is.
To start the list, I’ll pick a topic that’s rather straight forward though not necessarily easy – eating. The strategy for eating food should be based primarily on maintaining the best possible health. That’s actually a somewhat radical notion for most people. Granted that there are exceptions where sharing food becomes part of special celebrations or social activities, but this should not in any way be a driving force in your diet habits. Food choices can also be an important part of an effort to live in a responsible and sustainable way, which interestingly often results in making the same choices that would be made if health issues drove your selections.
So here are some new choices that will help transform my diet:
- Eat three healthy meals per day – no between meal snacking.
- Fast one evening per week (i.e. No eating after 3pm).
I will eliminate the following from my diet:
- Cookies, donuts, muffins
- Soda (including diet)
- Candy
- Fried Foods, including French fries
- Bread (except as part of meals)
- All junk food (you know it when you see it)
- Eat lower in the food chain, and eliminate beef
- Anything I’ve seen advertised (with exceptions for obviously healthy food, but such food is rarely advertised)
That’s a good start. If I can pull off most of this, it will be a major improvement in the quality of my diet.
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3 comments:
Your goals for the New Year call to mind this tidbit that appeared in our congregation’s most recent newsletter:
“I once listed all the good things I did over the past year, and then turned them into resolution form and backdated them. That was a good feeling." ~ Robert Fulghum
You might want to reconsider your decision to forego beef if you choose to continue eating animal products and wish to minimize their suffering. Grass fed beef is a better choice in this regard than pork, dairy, eggs, fish, or poultry.
Charlie,
Are you saying that eating grass fed beef has a lower environmental impact than eating normal dairy, fish, or poultry products? I wouldn't have thought that would be the case. Or are you saying it's healthier?
This does bring up a general point though. The real goal when eating animal products should be to chose foods that have been produced with a minimal environmental impact and raised and harvested in an ethical manner. Eliminating beef is a simplified version of this, perhaps overly simplified.
Mike,
Maintaining an environment friendly to humans is an important and relevant consideration to one’s dietary choices. Your goal of eating lower on the food chain will help, and it will probably be more healthy too, but keep in mind that Oreos and potato chips are relatively low links on the chain too!
Animal suffering is also an important consideration for eating ethically. Grass fed cows are not generally treated as badly as other beings in our industrial animal agriculture system, and not nearly as badly as the most abused: pigs, dairy cows, and egg laying hens. Also, because cows are large animals, fewer of these individuals suffer in the conversion process to food for humans.
I recommend you take a look at Jonathan Safran Foer’s recent book Eating Animals. It’s a beautifully written work by an accomplished author, focusing on this issue of their suffering, which I believe our Unitarian Universalist faith in (or recognition of) moral progress compels us to confront in our era.
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