Food Ethic

Okay so I may have a problem. Sugar is addicting and it’s hard to switch from that sugar to pure
organic. So can there be a balance? Well I’ve had a sweet tooth since I was in 3rd grade with
the fact that I trade with kids to get yogurts. Not like healthy yogurt like greek or 1% fat. I’m
talking about this sugary goo disguised as yogurt. In middle school on Fridays I would buy bags
of chips, candies and soda and eat that all in less than 30 minutes. At the time I thought it was
okay because I exercise ‘tilmy muscles are sore. When I tore my ACL and had surgery on it, I
ate a lot healthier because the sugar couldn’t heal my leg. And even when I started to work out
after my leg healed I ate a lot healthier but all it took was one bag of chips and I was back to
step one.

It's amazing to me that it took me only one bag and I was back to my “usual” diet. Step one is
my “usual” diet, and the addiction of sugar. I’m very lucky to have a fast metabolism and to live
in a community that has organic options and encourages those organic options. But there are
some towns where they encourage the sugar addiction. For example my cousin lives in
Tennessee and every time I visit his town I feel sick because there is too much sugar and
nearest healthiest store nearby is across the mississippi towards Colorado.

So with a little reflecting I came up with conclusion that we need to promote more healthy
choices to kids. Why kids? Because kids today are still trading kitkats for yogurts. So if we build
something like small gardens at our schools and then encourage those kids to take seeds from
the garden and grow at home and keep on doing that until mid-high school. Because sugar is
really powerful addiction kids need that much time to learn that there's a balance and I’m
speaking from experience. And hopefully this can go into places that encourage sugar and
change the culture in those places.

When those kids grow up and get out of school, I have a hope that they would take the lessons
they learned from school and implement them at home no matter where they are. Its
surprisingly easy to get seeds and the equipment needed to grow certain crops. Now obviously
they still have to go to the store here and there for certain things like mangoes or bananas but
having the balance of a small garden can help with losing weight and controlling how much you
eat. When I was younger my mother went to community garden and we would work at that
garden and every now and then we would have a potluck. Not only did they served good food
but my mother always talks about how she has less weight then she had last week. Now she
wasn’t starving herself but her body was actually getting fit because of the fresh food from the
garden that grew. What's even better is that these potlucks would feed 30-50 people and this
was small garden no bigger than 30 rows of vegetables. So imagine what would happen if we
had gardens not everywhere but small areas where people can gather.