Too much food on my plate

As a college student, food is one of the great challenges in my life. Is there enough of it? How much does it cost? How long is going to take me to make it? Etc. My freshman year was the first time I started to put real consideration into where my food was coming from though. My mom decided to be a vegetarian my senior year of high school, and as she did all the cooking and grocery shopping I followed along pretty blindly. Then I got to college and decided that I wanted to keep doing it. I had to have a reason though – why did I want to be a vegetarian? I wasn’t a huge fan of PETA, so the whole animal protection thing was out, and I honestly didn’t know many other reasons why people would decide to not eat meat. So I did some research. I ended up writing a paper for my freshman writing class all about what would hypothetically happen if everyone in the world stopped eating meat tomorrow. It was actually all about health and the environment.

I can’t honestly say I’m a very good vegetarian. I can’t justify wasting meat, so when someone puts it in front of me, I eat it. Also, I love traveling – new cultures are not always so conducive to my eating habits. Finally, sometimes, I just really need a burger – I like to think it happens to the best of us. Clearly, I’m conflicted.

But in any case, it’s not just about the meat. I try to buy most of my produce from the farmers markets around AU (the one on campus actually gets all its produce from right around my hometown – so I know just how local it is). I also try to limit myself to fresh fruits and vegetables that are in season. Again, I’m not always so successful at these things. Eating environmentally is not always so cost effective.

Taste and health are also important considerations but for me the primary ones are the cost and the environment; the balance is tricky. I like to think that just being aware of what I’m putting in my body is the key at this point. My decisions reflect my awareness and eventually I’ll get to the point where I can fully commit. I realize it’s the slow track, but sometimes you look down and just realize there’s too much on your plate to begin with.

I think that the most environmentally thing I’ve consumed in the last two days would have to be the coffee that I can’t live without. This is one of those places I tend to make a few too many compromises. Fair trade, sustainably grown, organic coffee is an expensive thing to come by so my solution is to ignore the problem completely and get the cheapest kind. I know it’s flown in from some obscure corner of the world where they pay the farmers nothing. I know they probably slashed and burned an entire rainforest to plant it, and I know that the chemicals and pesticides will probably make the land unusable for generations to come. However, without it I’m hardly awake enough to get out of bed, let alone save the world.