But let me tell you that I myself have not been a really conscious eater until a few years ago. I was raised in these staples of American diet: cereals and milk, ready-mix pancakes, or hotdogs and eggs with bread for breakfast, whatever they serve at the school cafeteria for lunch, then for dinner, mom’s meaty, salty, and fatty dishes with sides of chips or mashed potatoes, then pies for dessert. Throughout the day there’d be a lot of candies, chips, softdrinks and other junk food too. As far as I know, my family sourced these items from the grocery, and it’s a family bonding experience, driving there to get the goodies and point to chocolates for my parents to buy.
When I have moved out of my parents’ home and started working on my nine-to-five job, my diet has changed – for the worse. No proper breakfast for me anymore, just a tall latte from a coffee shop, although sometimes I also grab very sugary pastries. For lunch and dinner it’s fast food most of the time, except when I had time to pack a sandwich, or during my payday, when officemates and I would head to a restaurant. And like when I was growing up, I subsisted in a lot of sweet treats between meals, too.
For some time I thought this was the only way to do it, because it was the case for almost everyone around me as well. With my very unhealthy diet, I found myself not having the right weight, but again, so did everybody else.
That’s until I found myself in the development world and met people whose diet formed a part of a sustainable lifestyle. And it helped that we are also having a national conversation on the relationship with obesity, health, and diet in America. As soon as I embraced the tenets of environmentalism, changing the way I eat just made a lot of sense. Check out my next entries as I continue to share my journey towards ethical eating.
This is a guest blog post by Richard A Kimball. To learn more about him, check out his LinkedIn and Pinterest pages.
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