I thought this important piece ( below) from the New York Times on CSA’s may have fell below the radar for many, so I am sharing it here as it is an important trend to watch. I share important updates and trends in wellness culture and flag it so you can be aware and make wise decisions for yourself. I always look for context and balance in journalism, and while their headline is a bit ‘leading’, the actual article does present a fair well-rounded overview of all the ‘food purveyors’ involved. What I add to the equation is highlighting why these issues reported matter to you…
Many times issues aren’t black or white, but what matters is we are all informed before making decisions. This is especially important when it comes to our consuming habits. We now know how important ingredients are in processed and packaged food and how not paying attention to them can be a detriment to our health. We also know how ingredients in personal care and beauty products can cause some cancers. One of my first WWB Icons was Kristi Marsh. She was my feature presentation for a WWB Pow-Wow event in Princeton, New Jersey as well. Kristi is founder of a Choose Wiser and wrote a book called ‘Little Changes’ . I bring this up because she brought awareness to so many woman by just asking questions for herself as a consumer. She is now an eco-health conscious public speaker and makes it her mission to help women become savvy and wise. I thought it was a good time to remind you of her work, as you read the NYT article on CSA’s and farm to table services. It is people like her who are cutting through the static and confusing marketing information information out there. Check out her new non-profit alliance called Savvy Women’s Alliance and stay well informed on non-toxic living.
As many of you know, GMO’s are a big issue and many feel passionate about not using them at all in our food production. It is a complex issue and what really matters is transparency. You should be able to choose and know and how your food is grown. It’s as simple as that. This brings me to the central purpose of shopping with local farms and CSA’s. If you don’t know what a CSA is, here is a good link to learn more. I covered this a year or so ago, and now that CSA has become a far more trendy word like ‘natural’, it is important to revisit, so we can all understand what a CSA is and what it is not. The New York Times article below covers this and really gives us more to pay attention to. We discover a CSA isn’t always a CSA especially when you find them on-line using a ‘service’. Like all the other issues driving wellness culture, transparency is extremely important. It matters because making informed choices is absolutely crucial to staying healthy and preventing disease. This does not mean a ‘farm to table’ service is necessarily bad, but it does matter how they market themselves to us. Click on the link to learn more about them…
If there is a takeaway following the WWB Watch it is to literally ‘watch’ and be a conscious consumer. Being a conscious consumer may help animals, farm workers, and the environment but it also helps you, your family, and your community to stay healthy. This to me is the central idea of wellness culture, where we as society make the connection that we are all interdependent. We can’t be a thriving country in any area of achievement, if our people aren’t well and suffering from chronic disease. This seems like a no-brainer, and yet when we look around you can see the connection hasn’t been made. Let’s expect and demand transparency when it comes to food sourcing, production and marketing. If you’re a CSA, then you better be able to prove it. If you’re not, then don’t market to us under false pretenses. Marketing is fair game in the business world, and if we as consumers don’t ask for transparency, we won’t get it!
Choices and options are great, but I want to be able to make informed conscious choices. How about you?
FOLLOW LINK FOR FULL STORY AT THE NEW YORK TIMES…
Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farms in Yolo, California. Photo Credit: Matt Whitaker of the New York Times