Friendly Neighbourhood Vegans

06/01/2010 at 10:59 pm (Uncategorized)
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It’s not often that you have one of those moments in life where all the planets or cards or packs of tofu come into alignment and you get handed a beautiful series of events that restores your belief in the power of righteousness. This is one such story. It begins with growing despair and anger, journeys through just plain weird and ends up with hope and unity. In fact, if I were a whole lot more trippy than I’m want to be, I’d start seeing rainbows and fairies and butterflies and other such items of joy, given how good this story ends. Given my particular persuasions, if you substitute the fluffy pink stuff for Xbox games, cupcake parties and collective vegan rants fuelled by buckets of ginger beer, you’d be closer to the warm buzz that this story ends with.

It all began with anger. My partner, Leif, and I don’t know any vegans personally. This is admittedly our fault, because we know they’re out there, but given our socially phobic natures and our comfort sitting safely behind a computer screen, we’ve relied on intermittent fixes via vegan forums whenever that feeling that we are the only human beings left on a planet of zombie like flesh-eaters rears it’s head. We don’t even post much on these forums; we just soak up the goodly soyness, like an injured computer game fighter restoring her health. Sufficiently glowing, we move on, until the battle wounds from the world drive us back again. This strategy seemed to work well for a while and then it didn’t. We did talk about venturing out there into the real world in an effort to find some other vegans, but we’re shy and afraid of disappointment (Lord Seitan forbid that we find real, live, vegans, only to have them mutter ‘I’m a vegan, but I eat honey’). Keeping the state of our deteriorating social situation in mind, here’s another important step in taking you through this story – Leif was looking for work. I don’t mean the kind of work that brings in the rent, I mean work of the meaningful kind. As an artist, he’s always needed to supplement his income and the last couple of years have seen him soul searching solutions. The work he was doing paid the rent, but it involved selling bread and pastries and this was causing growing ethical conflict between his need to economically survive and his philosophical foundation as a vegan abolitionist. I know that many of you experience this dilemma because the vegan forums that we take refuge in regularly discuss this issue. I watched him feel more and more depressed as he trundled off to work each week in his non-leather shoes and a variety of pro-vegan T-shirts – hey, someone buying the bread might get the message! Despite attempts to veganise the range of goods they sold, he still had to touch, sell and survive what was rapidly becoming an ordeal. He wanted a long term solution that would see him making his living in a way that allowed his values and his behaviours to align. If you haven’t gathered it already, he’s quality. Given that I’m a social worker and my area of practice is ethics, I felt compelled to help in some way, and having tried every career counselling skill up my sleeve, I finally resorted to what’s called the ‘miracle question’ in my profession (and frankly, I’m way too droll to go down this track with a whole lot of comfort). Asking, “if you could do any job in the world, without limitations, what would you do?”, prompted the following response – “Well, someone just needs to open a vegan shop in Brisbane and I could manage it”. For those of you living in Brisbane, you may have an inkling of where this is headed, but believe me, there’s a few surprises along the way. So, keeping that part of the story in mind, I’m about to unfold a series of really freaky events that takes us towards our victorious ending.

Trolling the Internet for vegan products one day, Leif alerted me to the fact that Sol Breads, a popular sourdough bakery here in Brisbane, had labelled a range of their products as vegan on their website. Cool. Only not so cool when you discovered that many of the breads labelled ‘vegan’ had honey in their listed ingredients (visualise smoke coming out of ears and face turning purple). Not able to let this go, we sent separate emails to the Sol Breads contact listed on their website and I decided to visit a Queensland based forum that I hadn’t visited in a long time, to alert others and encourage them to email as well. It had been so long since I’d visited this forum that I had to search around for my log in details, and given that my patience is fairly limited, I almost gave up. I must have been psychologically weakened by Sol Breads honey problems. Just before giving up, I hit on the right username, I posted my comment and what the hell, it was a slow day at work, so I lurked around a little in the forum and came upon the following thread – ‘New Vegan Shop opening in Brisbane, staff needed’. Given that I was raised in a household filled with pessimists, my first thought was that this message was probably from a year ago. When I found out it was posted the day before, I think I may have actually squealed (in a tough girl kind of way). After staring at each other in disbelief, Leif emailed the owner and we spent the rest of the day in a deep shock that only the power of quinoa could dispel. The next couple of days saw Leif setting up an interview, meeting the owner and getting a job. Unbelievable. More so when you consider that the owner of The Green Edge, a vegan sanctuary and provider of every vegan product you ever wanted (plug – http://www.greenedgeonline.com.au) turned out to be none other than Amanda Benham, whose work we had been reading for years. For those of you not familiar with Amanda, she’s a dietitian-nutritionist and QLD vegan legend. Anything with Amanda behind it will be ridiculously fabulous. So, vegan job in hand, you might think this ends our tale. But wait, there’s more.

On his second work shift, Leif meets Jud, fellow vegan. As you do when you work side by side all day, the usual pleasantries were exchanged, including where they lived.

“I live in West End”.

“Me too. Where in West End?”

“Gray Road”

“Me too”.

Pretty understated, and I expect if this conversation had have taken place between women, there may have been tears, given how isolated vegan women are for a good chick conversation between fellow veganistas. Jud proceeds to tell Leif that he has two other vegan friends that also live on Gray Road, conveniently located between his house and ours. All this time and we’ve been surrounded? Wait, maybe they eat honey. Being the cautious (ok, at times paralytically socially suspicious) people that we are, we may well have done nothing with this information for another twelve months. Enter the next little twist in the tale. That night, emboldened by the knowledge that we are not alone (think spooky X Files background music), Leif engaged in a little late night prankery that we like to refer to as ‘night time ninjering’ and whipped up a ‘Vegan Road’ sign to put on the existing ‘Gray Road’ sign. Why not? Next morning, I take a drive past the sign to check it out (it’s cool – see the photo?). I went past it and drove around the corner and realised I really should turn back and take a picture, in case some meathead took offence and ripped it down. Turning the car around, I approach the sign and find three people looking it at. Thinking I should probably wait in the car, lest these three take it upon themselves to fly into a flesh rage and attack me, I wait. Only these folk aren’t scaling the sign to rip it off, they’re laughing and taking photos of it! Out I leap and as it turns out, the three in question are Jud and his two friends, the delightful Nick and Phoebe, from down the road. Introductions are made and Nick and Phoebe, being the incredibly hospitable people that they are, invite us over to a meal that very night.  We go. Which, given how reluctant we are to put ourselves out there, is both a testament to our increasing loneliness and a growing confidence in the belief that anything associated with the Green Edge shop is golden.

I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve instantly felt comfortable with someone. I need to engage the other hand now though, because in about four short weeks, I love these people. I get these people. They are smart and funny and vegan and talented and silly and a little odd and really vegan and they LIVE JUST DOWN THE ROAD. I have a growing suspicion that I will know these folks for forever and this is a little weird given that we really don’t know much about each other yet (although we do know an awful lot about which Xbox games we all like to play, Jud’s sweet tooth and the history of our tattoos). We play together regularly, which involves lots of eating and other such social relations that I’d almost given up on every experiencing with other vegans. We’ve met Eli, who along with Phoebe, has become my 13 year old daughter Ruby’s new gold standard for defining all things cool in women. And it’s different with vegans – it truly is. Sitting at a table with other vegans allows you to bring your whole self to the party, instead of locking down that bit of you that cringes when your friends tuck into their pig or cow or trying to conceal your discomfort when the conversation turns to the latest product or item that comes with an unhealthy dose of cruelty. I didn’t realise just how disabling it is until I had the unburdened joy of tucking into tofu kebabs with my friendly neighbourhood vegans.

If you’re the kind of person who likes to take a message away with you from a story, it’s not too hard to find the meaning in this one. Leif’s work at The Green Edge has enlightened him to the number of vegans who are out there, and trust those of us in Brisbane when we tell you, that veganism isn’t socially on the radar up here in the way it is in the funky southern states. Leif’s new mantra is ‘there are so many vegans in Brisbane’. Having spoken with our new friends (saviours?) and from numerous discussions on vegan forums, I know that we are not the only ones feeling isolated. As a social worker, I also know that having social connections (and as much as I used to tell myself that this includes online friends, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t) is a major indicator of well-being. Getting out there and meeting people is easier for some than for others, so if you’re feeling like your house is a vegan fortress, everything past your front gate is enemy territory and conversing with your cats is the ultimate in quality conversation, here’s the moral of my story in 22 words or less.

You are not alone. Whether you’re afraid, anxious or apathetic, find a way to reach out in spite of your hesitation.

A side message might be that allowing yourself to dream big and put what you want out there into the universe might just pay returns, but this makes me think of rainbows and fairies again, so you go ahead and take that one if you want. Me? I’m off to The Green Edge to pick up the entire range of Fry’s products for me and some Tofutti ice-cream for Phoebe.

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The ’soy is bad for you’ myth laid to rest

22/12/2009 at 10:40 pm (Uncategorized)
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A new study, published in the Journal of American Medical Associations, finds that consuming soy products in a population of breast cancer patients has a possible protective function. If you’re like many people, you would have heard the popular myth that, advanced largely by the dairy industry, that soy products are bad for your health. Based on a number of small studies, funded in part by the dairy industry and unable to be replicated, the general public believes that eating soy products will do everything from giving breasts to men, feminising baby boys and cause cancer. Despite solid science disputing these claims, this has been a hard myth to dispel. The new study, summarised below, will hopefully be useful in putting this one to rest.

Soy Food Intake and Breast Cancer Survival

Xiao Ou Shu, MD, PhD; Ying Zheng, MD, MSc; Hui Cai, MD, PhD; Kai Gu, MD; Zhi Chen, MD, PhD;Wei Zheng, MD, PhD; Wei Lu, MD, PhD

JAMA. 2009;302(22):2437-2443.

Context Soy foods are rich in isoflavones, a major group of phytoestrogens that have been hypothesized to reduce the risk of breast cancer. However, the estrogen-like effect of isoflavones and the potential interaction between isoflavones and tamoxifen have led to concern about soy food consumption among breast cancer patients.

Objective To evaluate the association of soy food intake after diagnosis of breast cancer with total mortality and cancer recurrence.

Design, Setting, and Participants The Shanghai Breast Cancer Survival Study, a large, population-based cohort study of 5042 female breast cancer survivors in China. Women aged 20 to 75 years with diagnoses between March 2002 and April 2006 were recruited and followed up through June 2009. Information on cancer diagnosis and treatment, lifestyle exposures after cancer diagnosis, and disease progression was collected at approximately 6 months after cancer diagnosis and was reassessed at 3 follow-up interviews conducted at 18, 36, and 60 months after diagnosis. Annual record linkage with the Shanghai Vital Statistics Registry database was carried out to obtain survival information for participants who were lost to follow-up. Medical charts werereviewed to verify disease and treatment information.

Main Outcome Measures Total mortality and breast cancer recurrence or breast cancer–related deaths. Cox regression analysis was carried out with adjustment for known clinical predictors and other lifestyle factors. Soy food intake was treated as a time-dependent variable.

Results During the median follow-up of 3.9 years (range, 0.5-6.2 years), 444 deaths and 534 recurrences or breast cancer–related deaths were documented in 5033 surgically treated breast cancer patients. Soy food intake, as measured by either soy protein or soy isoflavone intake, was inversely associated with mortality and recurrence. The hazard ratio associated with the highest quartile of soy protein intake was 0.71 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.54-0.92) for total mortality and 0.68 (95% CI, 0.54-0.87) for recurrence compared with the lowest quartile of intake. The multivariate-adjusted 4-year mortality rates were 10.3% and 7.4%, and the 4-year recurrence rates were 11.2% and 8.0%, respectively, for women in the lowest and highest quartiles of soy protein intake. The inverse association was evident among women with either estrogen receptor–positive or –negative breast cancer and was present in both users and nonusers of tamoxifen.

Conclusion Among women with breast cancer, soy food consumption was significantly associated with decreased risk of death and recurrence.
Author Affiliations: Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee (Drs Shu, Cai, Chen, and W. Zheng); and Shanghai Institute of Preventive Medicine, Shanghai, China (Drs Y. Zheng, Gu, and Lu).

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Aloo Roti, street dogs and disconnection in Rajasthan

27/10/2009 at 12:50 am (The way we eat, http://blog.veganfreak.com/, vegan)
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Sitting in the middle of an expansive table in a remote town in Rajasthan, India, my 12 year old daughter to my right, my partner to my left, and a table stacked full of more delicious North Indian vegan food than we could possibly work our way through in one sitting….and I feel like crying. It’s been ten wonderful days so far that have completely exceeded our expectations, but right now at this moment it’s all unravelling and I’m sad and angry and confused and contemplating a very uncool outburst in the direction of certain members of our tour group. The word heartless comes to mind.

To explain my descent into emotional turmoil, I need to backtrack a little. The words ‘tour group’ are not the first words that spring to mind when I think of how I’d like to travel. Frankly, they scare me. Visions of bus loads of loud Americans managing to both complain about everything and share intimate details of their surgical histories at inappropriate moments (is there ever an appropriate moment?) spring to mind. My prejudices are not based on hypothetical stereotypes but on my previous experiences of travel. I vividly recall sitting in a mountain hut high in the Himalayas in Nepal, chilling out on crisp mountain air and some fine hash shared by a friendly Dane, only to be assaulted by waves of ‘twang’ as a group of Americans began discussing hysterectomies and the lack of hot water at our humble accommodations. All in the one sentence you understand. So you’ll have to excuse my fear of large, loud groups of travellers. They bother me. My usual choice of travel overseas involves a beat up backpack, decent walking sandals and my own free will. This trip had to be different though. Along with our luggage, we were introducing my 12 year old daughter to India and it needed to be as painless as possible. Thus the search for a tour group that didn’t feel like a tour group. Added to this was the fact that we were vegan and although India is a delight for vegetarians, it can be a challenge for vegans. After a bit of searching around on the Internet, I found Veg Voyages, a small group tour company for vegetarians and vegans. I dug a little deeper and began to hear great things about the sort of tour experience that they offered. The key words here were ‘small group’ and ‘vegan’. This might work for us.

And it did. Nine people (including the three of us) joined up in Delhi and began a 14 day adventure around Rajasthan that focused on getting off the usual tour route, meeting the locals and EATING. I have NEVER been served such amazing, fresh, abundant vegan food before. They must have been very used to vegans feeling the need to be assured (over and over) that what was on our plates was indeed 100% vegan, because they explained in detail exactly what we were eating, where it came from and how it had been prepared. We felt so reassured and dived in to the task of putting on weight while travelling in India.

So why the sadness? It came as a result of a trip the tour makes to an organisation in Udaipur called ‘Animal Aid’. Began by an inspiring North American couple (see, I said something positive about Americans!), the organisation rescues street animals, restores them to health and returns them to their ‘homes’. It runs on a shoestring, receives no government funding as yet, but enjoys the support of the locals who often turn up with injured animals in their arms. On the day we visited, Animal Aid had many street dogs, puppies, donkeys, a turtle and cows. For anyone who knows even a little about India, you will know that the cow in India is sacred. This however does not alter the fact that cows have a pretty horrid life wandering the streets of India, albeit often garlanded. In fact, India’s relationship with its animals, like a lot of things in India, is a contradiction. According to Erika, the founder of Animal Aid, India proudly enshrines animal rights in its constitution and the country boasts many vegetarians, however this does not necessarily translate to providing animals with love and care on a daily basis. On the contrary, many cows and donkeys spend a lifetime in hard labour, tethered to a rope in the few hours a day that they do not work. In our travels, we saw this time and time again. Animal Aid hopes to begin to change the relationship between people and animals in India and for this reason, they have consciously chosen not to focus their limited funds on neutering street animals (although they also do this in small numbers), in the belief that doing so may reduce the population of street animals but will do little to reduce people’s relationship with those same animals. Instead, they hope to show love and care for the animals and to work with local grass roots animal rights people to enhance positive relationships between animals and people. Erika is vegan. She is also incredibly gifted at imparting the vegan message to the groups that visit Animal Aid…in small manageable doses. Our group was made up of roughly half vegans and half vegetarians (although a few of the ‘vegetarian’ group made reference to eating meat on occasion). When she began busting the myth of the ‘happy milk cow’, roaming free in its paddock, joyously providing us with our daily milk, I was hopeful that the vegetarians in the group were listening. She explained the cow’s reality as one of constant distress, kept just within earshot of its calf so that she could continue to produce milk. Her descriptions were fairly vivid and I thought, behaviour changing.

As an ex-vegetarian myself, I know that continuing to consume dairy and eggs involves two things – the first is simply not yet coming across the information that informs you about the realities of the dairy industry and the second is the ability to disconnect with this reality should you stumble across it. I know that when the truth does hit you, it’s often because you were ready, the timing was right, the universe was aligned and/or you just couldn’t live with the hypocrisy of your choices any longer. So here we were in India, a group of self-professed animal lovers, face to face with a woman who had set up an organisation devoted to the care of animals, confronted with the full force of the truth about dairy (shared rather sensitively without a heavy dose of ‘preaching’ or guilt throwing….she really was masterful!). Surely, surely this is the moment that the universe will align for the vegetarians in the group? You say you love animals. You won’t eat them. You care enough to choose to travel with an organisation specifically for vegans and vegetarians. You’ve just heard the reality of the dairy industry in India which you will notice runs contradictory to your snuggly held believe in happy cows delighted to serve you happy milk. What do you do with this information?

Lunch. Can you see where this is headed? You’ll remember the sadness I described at the start. Here it comes. Most meals served to us were purely vegan. At times, there were also vegetarian options available, which were kept separate from the vegan food. This involved the individual choosing either from the centre of the table or from waiters serving the food, what they wanted to eat. It was EASY to choose the vegan option, the only difference generally being that your roti had no butter and you left behind the yoghurt dip and paneer item. It’s about one hour tops after our trip to Animal Aid and I’m sitting next to vegetarians delightedly spooning yoghurt over their curry and tearing into butter roti that smell to me distinctly like suffering. And my mood is sinking. I want to be anywhere else but surrounded by whatever particular condition allows these people to disconnect so abruptly from the truth. It’s not that I was naïve enough to believe that one trip to Animal Aid would forever change their eating habits, but I did think that it might alter them for a couple of meals at least. Delicious vegan food is right in front of them, it’s never been easier and may never again be so easy to reject the dairy options….and yet they eagerly reach into the centre of the table and choose it. I don’t understand. I just don’t. I’m trying to be forgiving and accommodating and respectful and it’s not working at all. I think less of them with every ignorant mouthful. Strong words and I know I’m supposed to be non-judgemental and to recognise that I was vegetarian once and that people move at their own pace etc etc. Only none of that is working at this particular moment and if I don’t leave the table now, I might either burst into tears or fling my plate in their direction. So I leave the table. And fantasise about plate flinging.

It took some time for my sorrowful mood to lift after that particular lunch and I will admit that the distance that grew between my fellow vegetarian travelling companions and me was never forged, however I did manage to enjoy the rest of the trip. We ended up hanging out with the other vegans on the trip, snug (smug?) in the bond that united us. Despite the difficulties of that meal, the experience of travelling to India as a vegan with Veg Voyages was wonderful and I’m busy planning the next adventure. It’s just that along with my new understanding of Indian culture and history, the weight that I’ve gained from the excellent food and the fading henna on my hands, I’ve also brought back a new level of disappointment and confusion in my fellow humans. This has fuelled a curiosity in me regarding how we manage to disconnect from information that doesn’t suit us and a determination to explore this phenomena wherever I may find it.

Maybe the visit to Animal Aid that day planted a seed in my fellow travellers that won’t bear fruit until another day. I have to hope. Hypocrisy is not comfortable, I know from experience, and it is my heartfelt hope that the universe will align for my fellow vegetarian travellers at some point in the future, allowing them to bring their action in line with their beliefs.

For more information about either Veg Voyages Tour Company or Animal Aid, please check out:

http://www.vegvoyages.com/

http://www.animalaidunlimited.com/

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Critical thinking anyone?

30/04/2009 at 11:50 pm (The way we eat, vegan)
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Recently I managed to get myself pulled into a ‘discussion’ on veganism on a friend’s Facebook site. I did try to resist, but there comes a point when ignorance wears me down and I find myself compelled to ACT. That combined with the fact that my friend, who is on something of a journey of discovery, was being treated to a full mother load of uniformed rhetoric and I felt somewhat called to support her. The whole process has been fascinating, not least because its made me aware of how very different the frameworks we all operate from are and how without the ability to deconstruct our ideas, we end up sounding like idiots. A little judgemental? Guilty. Call it weariness, or disillusionment or just plain incomprehension, but the reality is that I’m thrown by the deficit of rational thought and the startling lack of what I thought was pretty general knowledge.

What would be most amusing is that if meat eaters attempting to defend their position could access a list of the ‘arguments’ that they put forward (and I’m pretty sure some of them think they’re being quite clever and original), they’d quickly realise that they all come up with the same old justifications over and over again. Justifications that are embarrassingly simplistic and largely discredited, by both intelligent omnivores, vegetarians and vegans alike.

For example, (and I’m only going to give one because if you really want to deconstruct your arguments than I firmly believe that you should do this and not me) let’s look at that old pearl ‘but humans were designed to eat meat’. This one often comes with capitalization, several exclamation marks and ends with a weak reference to our teeth. Fitting largely into the argument aligned with biological determents of behaviour, this one bases the whole ‘proof’ that we should be eating meat on the ‘fact’ that we were designed for it. I didn’t even bother to respond to this one in the Facebook discussion, because I’m not sure the people there were really open to exploring their opinions. I suspect they were just having a lark, although the fact that this came at the expense of their friend should at least have given them moment for pause.

That aside, here’s some further questions to consider with regards to biological determinism. If you draw from notions of the ‘design’ of humans, then you would surely need to consider what is meant by design. Who designed us? For what purpose? If you are of the religious bent and want to assert that Mr. God (and I am reasonably comfortable asserting that many creationists would embrace that notion of Mr. and not Ms.), then you would also draw on your vast biblical knowledge to conclude that there is no mention of Adam and Eve consuming meat in the Garden. It happened after the Fall. Some heavy connotations there and not many of them positive if you are going with ‘God wants me to eat chicken’. If you subscribe more to the evolutionary explanation of humanity, that you would need to accept that there was no original human design, given that we evolved and as I’ll get to a couple of paragraphs down, are still evolving.

Secondly, arguments centred on biological determinism have proven potentially pretty scary. It wasn’t so long ago that women were viewed as unclean and hysterical by virtue of their reproductive systems, or that black people’s skin was pointed to has ‘proof’ of their inferiority or that children with severe physical disability were locked away, their bodies ‘proof’ that they were not meant to participate equally in society. The point here is that our logic is filtered through the theoretical  paradigms and value positions of our historical and contemporary knowledge. History has taught us that it is dangerous to hold fast to views that no longer do credit to new understandings and emerging frameworks.

The beauty of human beings is surely that we are adaptive creatures. Were we to hold fast to notions of ensuring our behaviours meet the parameters of what we were designed for, we would most likely still be in trees or slugging around primordial ponds. Humans have adapted in many ways, making choices and changes that have ultimately allowed us to survive. We created shoes to provide protection for our feet, which were surely not ‘made’ to walk on hot concrete. We learnt to eat enormous amounts of fat, salt and sugar, and I’ve done enough research into heart disease and other diseases of affluence to have a reasonable suspicion that we were not ‘designed’ for that either. Humans evolve, making it far less relevant to determine what we were designed for and to consider instead what we are capable of.

It would all be funny if it wasn’t so serious. Can those firmly dwelling in the mainstream really not contemplate that humans will be challenged to further evolve if we are to survive? How ignorant it is to rehash old rhetoric when the message is out there that we will all need to change the way we eat and behave if the planet and the human race is to continue. To imagine that our generation today will not be called to do what has always been done in the natural world is really quite startling a view for an adult to hold. Eating steak and drinking milk while people starve, animals die, forests are cleared, diseases of obesity rise and water is depleted is to stick your head in the sand and giggle at your good fortune. Not today do you have to adjust your behaviour to give the planet and those that habitate it a fighting chance. It’s not your problem is it? Some of us accept that it is. We’re called vegans and we understand that we can leave behind old arguments and dodgy excuses to exercise our critical thinking abilities and make choices that embrace an evolutionary track free from suffering. We are the future.

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Fried Yellow

10/02/2009 at 1:33 am (The way we eat)
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If you’re trying to eat well, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the healthy choices you make at the supermarket are good for you. If you’re aware of the need to eat a balanced diet, try to avoid the obvious pitfalls of the chocolate and ice cream aisles and fill a good part of your shopping trolley with fresh fruit and vegetables, then you’d be eating well, right? Wrong. Hidden behind the pretty pictures on the labels and the perfect pink blush of your apples is a different story. A dark story that sees us eating what used to be known as ‘food’ but now closer resembles a chemistry experiment.

Leaving aside the whole genetic modification issue for another time, I’m speaking here of the hidden ingredients that turn up on your plate each day. Whilst our parent’s and grandparent’s generations may have survived quite nicely on staples such as bread, meat, fruit and vegetables, if you’re buying any of that stuff from your local supermarket, you may not be the picture of good health that they were when they tucked in to the same plate of food. And that’s because what we call food is not necessarily edible anymore.

Like me, you must have noticed that every second person seems to be gluten intolerant, suffer from food sensitivities or be stacking on the weight. This isn’t surprising when you consider that the cheapest food available is also the fast food that is clogging our arteries, unnaturally revving up our kids and re-shaping our bodies so that the dominant shape of humanity is leaning towards round. It’s a very real issue that the cheapest way to balance your budget is to take the family for a fix of what I like to call ‘fried yellow’. Have you noticed how the ads for KFC or McDonalds show a screen full of three or four different items of food that all suspiciously conform to the same yellow colour? It’s a colour that isn’t really associated with any colour of food that exists in nature, so we should be a little concerned that most of our meals are the same uniform, dull shade of fried yellow. Given that lots of families are reportedly finding it harder to make ends meet, a market that sees the cheapest options being the very worst options is creating a kind of food apartheid, where the rich have choices and the poor die young.

If like me, you just don’t see fried yellow as an option to feed yourself and instead head to the supermarket to snatch and grab your weekly fodder, you may not be much better off and here’s why. There’s been a revolution in the way food moves from the fields to your table in the last fifty years that has seen not only a massive shift in power from the farmers to the multi-nationals that run the supermarkets, but also changes to the make up of the food we eat. Let’s start with bread. Sometimes called the ’staff of life’ for it’s long history of providing us with a nutritious and affordable foodstuff, bread today has little resemblance to the bread our grandparents ate. Driven by the never ending search to increase profit margins, the pressure to supply large quantities quickly and cheaply led to the development of new methods of baking. Enter CBP, a process that sees the traditional slow fermentation process sped up by adding air and water into the dough and mixing at high speed. So far, it doesn’t sound too freaky. Only in order to make the bread not fall apart in this process, you need to add double the yeast, chemical oxidants and hardened fat in the mix. Known as ‘chemical improvers’, these substances are often pointed at to explain the rise in allergies and sensitivities, not to mention that doubling the yeast just might have something to do with the growth in yeast infections that plague many people today. The fats they add are frequently made up of a class called ‘hydrogenated’ fats, reported as being responsible for clogging our arteries and fattening us up. And turning your loaf of bread over to read the ingredients list might not be much help either, given that manufactures will just list a long chain of numbers which are meaningless to you. Take ingredient E920. It helps bread appear light and fluffy. And it’s made from animal feathers. Or the ubiquitous ‘enzymes’. These could be composed of a genetically modified bacterial source or the pancreas of pigs. You won’t be able to find out which though, so if you’re Jewish, Muslim or vegan, you’d best steer clear. Whilst it is true that wholemeal bread is a better choice than the standard white sliced, if you flip over the pack you’ll still notice an ingredient list rich in numbers and low in items you recognise as foodstuffs. Which is probably why when you eat supermarket bread it frequently ends up stuck to the roof of your mouth and if you eat enough of it, bloats you up as the chemicals all begin to break down and swish around your innards.

I don’t want to talk too much about what’s in meat these days, as I have trouble understanding why anyone would choose to eat it in a world where more ethical choices are available, but I do feel the need to examine what is meant by ‘chicken nuggets’. Kids eat these often, I’m told. You probably can’t argue with the word ‘nugget’ as they are nugget shaped, but the word ‘chicken’ might be a little misleading. Imagine if instead of ‘tender chicken’ on the packet they listed MRM or as it’s more accurately titled ‘Mechanically Recovered Meat’. This refers to the process of taking all of the left over and previously unprofitable sections of the animal and feeding it through a gigantic strainer into a tube that mashes it up and squeezes out a glop of pinkish fatty substance. To keep it all together, you need extra water, gums (glues) and chemicals. Then, in order to make it taste like chicken, you need to add flavourings, sugar and proteins. Imagine that lot digesting in your body? And if you’re thinking that none of this relates to you because you eat organic animals, think again. Whilst it may be lower in the hormones they feed non-organic animals, it’s still processed in the same factories. This means your premium organic chicken goes through the same machinery that the standard bird does, and visitors to large processing plants tell of conveyor belts covered in chicken faeces, squeezed out of the dead bird in the de-feathering process. There’s a far bigger story behind animal husbandry (and isn’t that a nice sanitised wording) that includes unforgivable suffering, disease and the growing risks to the consumer of food poisoning from contamination, so if you’re interested in cleaning up your act, search out one of the many books about the subject .

What about fresh fruit and vegetables? Surely I can fill up my supermarket trolley with this stuff and be eating good quality, healthy food? Think again. Many of you will have heard of the research that found that supermarket apples can be stored for up to a year before they hit the shelves, but this is really just the tip of the iceberg. Farmers speak of the impossibility of producing the products that supermarkets are demanding, a process which sees around 40% of their product being rejected due to the fact that it doesn’t meet the high aesthetic standards required of supermarket ‘fresh’ produce. No one is really sure what happens to all this rejected fruit and veg, but it doesn’t get returned to the growers. In order to have any chance of selling their produce, farmers must hit their crops with dose after dose of chemical sprays and fertilizers, some of them so toxic that they’re banned in some countries. And just in case you thought a quick wash under the tap will rid your fruit and vegetables of pesticide, think again. Tests have shown that lettuces, particularly the outer leaves, still contain alarmingly high concentrations of Listeria and E. coli bacteria. They might look nice and crisp though, especially if they’re in one of those pre-packaged vacuum bags that have undergone the process that sees oxygen levels reduced inside the bag and the carbon dioxide levels raised. This process is called Modified-atmosphere packaging and whilst it might reduce the time you spend cutting up your vegetables or salads, the nutrients you will derive from eating them will be nothing like what you’d get if you bothered to cut up fresh stuff.

If you’re looking for someone to blame for the changes in our food that have emerged over the last fifty or so years, you’ll have to go beyond the multi-national corporations that own our supermarkets. Of course you’d be right to be annoyed at the system that places profit over quality product and in doing so places our health at risk. Supermarkets are so powerful now that they tell us what we can eat and decide what will be in the food we eat, by virtue of demanding the cheapest possible product. They’ve contributed to the death of many varieties of fresh fruit and vegetables as they favour those that travel and store well. They’ve helped along the exodus of farmers from the land, driven to ruin by the impossibility of providing perfect looking food at the cheapest possible price. Sure, they’re motivated by profits, but they’re also doing the job of giving us what we demand. Our personal inconvenience at not being able to eat an orange when it’s not orange season (do we even know when that is anymore?), have motivated them to bring in oranges from overseas, and in the process add deadly carbon to the environment from the journey to market and prop up unethical work environments that come from demanding the cheapest labour possible. Do we even know what a real apple looks like anymore? If we did, supermarkets tell us that we’d probably refuse to buy it, replacing it on the shelf and searching for one of those supermodel ones that have no smell and little taste. Our desire for super size fruit has forced farmers to pump ridiculous amounts of fertilizers into their produce so that we can eat Really Big Fruit (RBF?), but at a cost to the flavour and texture. We are at least partners in the decline of real food, stomping our feet and demanding year round access to what we want, as if we are masters of nature. Not much point whinging about toxic spraying when it must be done to give us our summer grapes in winter.

Being unprepared to turn my body into a digestive chemistry set, I’ve made some changes. If it has a number on the ingredient list, I’m not buying it. Yes, it means I need to spend more time shopping for whole food ingredients. Yes, the cooking process takes a little longer when you need to make a pasta sauce from scratch. And yes, my meals are simpler these days. But I know that if you put me in front of a table that was filled with the various substances listed as numbers on ingredient lists – with the fats, emulsifiers, improvers, sugars and starches in their powder form (what do they actually look like?), I wouldn’t eat them. I’m generally cautious when it comes to putting things in my mouth that I don’t understand, let alone recognise as food. Admittedly and unfairly, this could mean that my grocery bill goes up, as I move from cheap, synthesised products to real live food. I don’t know what’s to be done for those people who can’t afford to eat real. For me, supermarkets are going to be reserved for those items like tissues or toilet paper that I can’t buy anywhere else.  I choose to buy my fruit and vegetables from a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme and if you want to know just how many varieties of potato there are and what a real banana looks and tastes like, I invite you to locate a CSA or visit an organic growers market in your area.  You’ll be unable to eat what passes for food in the supermarket after you’ve eaten the real deal.

I want to get off the conveyor belt of chemistry and take control of the food choices I make. If I turn over the label and it has a number on it, I’m not buying it. I need to know that what I’m eating nourishes my body with what nature intended. Growing my health is more important than growing the profits of a multi-national or giving into my whims for non-seasonal tasties. If we all tuned into what our bodies really need and how they feel when we feed them what nature intended, we might start remembering what it truly means to nourish ourselves.

Singer, P 2007, The Ethics of what we eat: Why our food choices matter, Rodale Books, USA.

Robbins, J 2001, The Food Revolution: How your diet can help save your life and your world, Conari Press, USA.

Campbell, T. Colin 2004, The China Study, Benbella Books, USA

Lawrence, F 2004, Not on the label, Penguin Books, Australia.

http://www.foodconnect.com.au

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Marshmallow Cocoon

06/02/2009 at 4:38 am (values)
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What stops us from doing what we know is right? Why, when we profess to endorse a belief, value or idea, are we unable to embody it. Most of us hold ideals and whilst living up to these ideals can be challenging, why are we unable to try? What is the personal cost of falling short of our ideals on a daily basis? Are we sickened inside that we are less than we think we should try to be? Do we feel a sense of disappointment in ourselves as we reach the end of another day that saw us fall short of even trying? I don’t think so. In reality, I suspect most of us greet dusk by taking refuge in our couches, turning the television on and stuffing sugar or wine down our throats until we can’t think at all. Is it possible that if we all tried harder to act in ways that we knew were right, that instead of blocking our true selves out by escaping into our marshmallow cocoons, we just might reach the end of the day feeling a rewarding sense of achievement?

I know that many people profess to just not caring about much beyond their own immediate wants and needs. Taking on that kind of apathy is beyond my abilities and to these people I send heartfelt wishes that they may one day make room for more than their own self interest. I’m speaking instead to those of us that profess to give a damn. If you can name one or two beliefs that you hold dear, express concern over a couple of issues facing the world today or show a healthy interest in what constitutes right or wrong, then you are capable of doing something with your thoughts beyond just thinking them.

So why don’t we? Whilst we enjoy passionate debate at dinner parties about what’s wrong with the state of the world, quote facts about world poverty and profess to be committed to social justice and equality, not many of us manage to do anything beyond publicly raging over a glass or two of red. Instead, we come up with lots of justifications for why we can’t do what we know we should. We’re too exhausted to volunteer and anyway, our own families need us. We really are planning on setting up a regular donation to a charity, but we want to get our credit card balances down first. After we buy this new outfit, we’ll stop spending money on clothes we don’t need, honest, we will. We know that eating meat causes suffering, but we just can’t give up our favourite meal. We didn’t mean to spend an hour gossiping about our colleague, it just sort of happened. Next week will be a better time to stop smoking and start exercising. Just not now. Not this moment. In some unspecified future tense, we all pledge to start being the people we want to be and in the process we run so far away from ourselves that we don’t even remember who we believed we could be.

Like some giant global excuse note, we’ve given ourselves a free pass to acting dishonourably. We’ve all gone soft on ourselves. In our justifications, we all sound the same. I’m doing my best. I’m just going to be kind on myself. I’m not going to beat myself up. I deserve it. I’m moving on. I tried once. I can’t be bothered. I’m on a journey. I don’t care anymore. This is who I am. Although self flagellation is undoubtedly self indulgent, isn’t it time we got a little tough on ourselves? Turned off the distractions and the justifications and spent some time with the vision of who we believe we can be – and started on the path to being that person? Why is it so hard to try? I don’t believe it is. I believe the real resistance is that we fear meeting the reality of ourselves head on. If we take the time to think through what we value and believe, and how we ought to be living to embody what we know to be right, we may just discover that we are not making the choices we want to be making. That we are falling well short of our ideal. Having a quick lump of chocolate and a couple of wines keeps the doubts at bay and blurs the edges enough to make them fade away. It’s painful to examine our shortcomings. For some of us, to do so is to enter a very dark place that we fear we won’t emerge from. Self loathing is a quick sand coat that can wrap itself around us and pull us further and further from the ability to take any kind of action. Hating ourselves may be even less productive than losing ourselves in intoxicants of one kind or another, but self knowledge is never a bad thing, and entering the dark is necessary if we plan to eventually walk in the light.

We’d much rather feel good than bear the discomfort of knowing how far short we fall of our ideal. Addicted to instant gratification and feel good pleasure bites, we reward ourselves constantly and begin anew the search for our next gold star goody. Like vigilant parents protecting our children from the pain of negative emotion, we arrest our dis-ease before it arises by saturating it with a hit of feel good attitude. I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re all just fine.

Only we’re not. Here’s an experiment for you. For the next month, cut out alcohol. If you’re an out of control shopper, stop. Stop smoking and eating rubbish food. Stop gossiping. I’m not suggesting you stop having fun for a month, just that you take a break from anything in your life that you suspect you are relying on to make it through the week. By all means keep doing the good stuff. Keep exercising, meeting up with friends or whatever you do that’s a healthy way for you to de-stress. Just remove the quick fix junk that allows you to take a break from yourself. A warning though, you will be shocked at the result. This experiment is so powerful that if you’re currently under the care of a mental health professional or dealing with very real trauma or addiction, it’s probably a good idea to talk with a professional and ensure that you have lots of support before embarking. The insights possible from this experience are many. You may find that it turns out you don’t have the skills to manage conflict, disappointment or even mild discomfort. After the first couple of weeks, a nagging sense of discontent might begin to arise that prompts you to wonder if there shouldn’t be more to your existence than there currently is. It might turn out that being sober, aware and awake to your reality allows you to notice that all is not right with the choices you are making. And it’s at that moment that the whole exercise becomes worthwhile.

By taking away all the things we use to distance ourselves from the realities of our lives, we force open a portal of potential. Although it’s probably possible to open this portal without the suffering of withdrawing our pet rewards, it’s more likely that we’ll stay lost instead in our justifications and pleasure domes and never really get there. In order to be all that we want to be, we must first know who we are without the distractions and illusions. We must make the space to ask ourselves what we want our lives to be. Although this process is a little horrid, I wouldn’t want you to think that it’s not worth the discomfort. Sure, you might not like what you find. You might realise that you were not really living in your life so much as medicating yourself from the side lines. But it is from this self knowledge that we are able to begin to build a life well lived. We have to see the justifications we use to stop doing what we know is right, before we are able to start the work of removing them. If we don’t, we run the risk of either being in a state of constant disappointment in ourselves or raising our glasses to each other for yet another collective ‘cheers’ to the soft state reality we mistake for real living.

I’m not suggesting it’s possible to be perfect. I’m not. I will never be. But it is possible to make some hard choices to try to bring our actions into alignment with what we think is right. If you are putting your own small pleasures ahead of the real good you can do in the world, you are not being all that you can be. If it’s too hard and you know you should, but just not today please because you tried it once and it sort of sucked – try again. Who are we to think that we have the right to defer our goodwill for a future time when we’re feeling better about it? In the meantime, while we wait for the stars to align, people are suffering as a result of our inaction. If we need further motivation to take our brand new high heels and kick ourselves to action, it’s not difficult to find it. Consider this. Each year, 10 million children die of poverty related diseases. It takes around $200 US dollars to save a child’s life in the developing world. How much was your new handbag? Don’t you already have three perfectly fine handbags? Around the world, one child dies of hunger related causes every five seconds and yet there is plenty of food to feed all of the people on the planet, if we just produced it more efficiently. Did you know that we get back one kilogram of beef for every thirteen kilograms of grain it takes to feed a cow? If we took that thirteen kilograms of grain and fed it instead to the world’s hungry, than we have more than enough food to go around. But you enjoy your steak tonight, go ahead, you deserve it. Despite the fact that many children go to sleep hungry, the annual cost of obesity in Australia is estimated at $3.7 billion. Why don’t these facts spur us into immediate action? Why aren’t they enough to make us move forward boldly to do as we wish we could?

The answer to that is undoubtedly complex and perhaps in the end just not knowable. Perhaps some people just don’t care about the problems they cannot see. But if you do care, if you’re one of the people that knows in your bones that you can and should be doing more to align your beliefs with your actions, then you must. Aside from the benefits your actions will bring to others, you will find that the rewards for yourself are rich and real. Bringing ourselves in alignment with our visions of who we want to be might take courage and commitment. It might ask us to sacrifice some of the small pleasures we show a preference for, in pursuit of greater gains for the wider world. Instead of giving our struggles and justifications permission to de-rail the work of reaching our ideals, we must embrace the discomfort of re-scripting our actions so that we can begin the work of living a life well lived.

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A year of abundance and why it’s not enough

05/02/2009 at 4:46 am (Consumerism)
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There’s something unsettling about money to spend. I’m not referring to the money we need to cover our essentials like food, rent, clothing or even the odd coffee or dvd hire. I’m talking about amounts above and beyond our needs. I believe it’s called ‘discretionary income’. After a decade or so of having absolutely none due to being in that financial vacuum known as motherhood and studentdom, I had fantasised about how joyful the experience of having left over money at the end of each pay check would be. With money in my pocket, I envisioned a life made easier. Surely, more money would mean more happiness? And to a point, it did. Having finally emerged from my decade of lack, I graduated with a professional qualification and a salary to match. Over the last twelve months I’ve been in a position to compare and contrast the experience of only just managing to make ends meet to having a discretionary income that I was free to do with as I pleased. Despite my predictions of increased happiness and growing joy, the experience has left me unsettled and somewhat frayed.

I won’t argue that having enough money to comfortably cover all of your expenses, buy the odd unneeded but much wanted item or saving for a holiday or a rainy day does not bring a feeling of satisfaction and achievement. It does. After years of relying on my partner or Centrelink or in emergency situations, my very generous mother, the ability to self-support is a wonderful and necessary thing. I would not give it up for anything. But it’s what we do with the rest of our money that makes me uneasy. And for most of us working full time professional jobs in Australia, no matter how much we may whine about lack of money, there is enough left after paying for our essentials and not so essentials to do with as we please.

I should mention here that my professional qualification is in Social Work, and you’d be right to infer that as a Social Worker, I tend to have a healthy interest in lofty ideals like social justice, equality and the right for all people to live a dignified life. I read books about world poverty, I listen to Radio National and I prefer to buy Christmas gifts from Oxfam than from major department stores. I know that my values and beliefs have played a major role in my feelings about how I spend my money, but even so, consumerism is a slippery slope that the most committed anti-shoppers amongst us can gradually find ourselves sailing down. After twelve months of having money left over, I can attest to how difficult it is to resist the temptations of a society which not only encourages us to spend, but informs us that it’s our duty to keep buying up big if we are to keep our economy buzzing along in the right direction. It’s been both amusing and alarming to chart my relationship with abundance over the course of the last twelve months. By doing so, I’ve gained some life changing insights into my relationship with money that I think are worth sharing.

I spent the first two months of my new improved pay scale replacing and repairing all those items that I had neglected over the past decade. I fixed the washing machine. I rented a new television. I threw out all my underwear with holes and bought replacements. I serviced my car and took my daughter shopping. I subscribed to two magazines, visited the dentist and bought a home water filter system. This felt good. Who doesn’t feel better in underpants without holes in them? I did all this, but I still had money left over each fortnight. The next couple of months I upgraded my mobile phone, bought new clothes and started saving for an overseas holiday. And I still had money left over. I began to take notice of the junk mail catalogues and to look in the shops that I had previously walked right past. I noticed lots of pretty things and started telling myself that I could have it if I wanted it. After all, I’d worked for it. So I bought some more new clothes. As a jigsaw puzzle lover, I had previously bought or been gifted one or two puzzles a year. Now I could buy one as soon as I finished one, turning the area under my bed into a used jigsaw puzzle graveyard. Whilst I did not overcommit my funds or wantonly purchase big items I had no real use for, I did considerably grow the amount of ’stuff’ that came through my door.

About eight months into my newfound financial freedom, I began to feel a sense of unease. I couldn’t really articulate why, but something felt wrong about the situation. I don’t think I was really ready to address why I was feeling uneasy at this point, but I did decide to engage a financial planner to try and make some smart decisions about my money. This turned out to be an excellent idea and helped me to feel that I was in control of my money and not the other way round. Plans were made and mostly stuck to. My holiday savings were growing nicely and I made a small investment. Still my unease did not go away. I wondered why working for my money and then being able to spend it on stuff I wanted, did not really make me feel any better. Sitting down to yet another new jigsaw, I realised that there was something about abundance that had reduced the quality my experiences. My one or two puzzles a year were always so enjoyed – treasured even. Now that I could do as many as I liked, I found I liked each one just a little less. On the rare occasions I had been able to afford a new item of clothing, I had worn it feeling like a queen. Now that I had several new clothes, I did not savour the experience of putting on a new dress in quite the same way. I got less satisfaction out of my five new pairs of underwear than I did from the one new pair I had previously been able to buy. And worryingly, I felt that anytime I left the house I was unconsciously in a state of ’scanning’ for possible purchases. Window-shopping had been replaced by purchasing and I felt that in the process, I had lost something more valuable than money itself.

This shouldn’t have surprised me as I have many books about happiness and what contributes to it and what doesn’t. I know that rampant consumerism does not increase personal happiness and that there is more joy to be had in giving than in receiving. I know that the cycle of ‘work, buy, work’ does not bring lasting rewards. Further, I know that in a world full of real poverty, the kind that kills through lack of access to basic nutrition and clean drinking water that growing my ’stuff’ is both unethical and amoral. As the end of the first year of my financial abundance draws to a close, I think it was perhaps this knowledge that began to rise to the surface, nagging me that I was in danger of entering into a bargain with the economy that would neither make me feel good about myself nor do anything to address the bigger picture.

It was around this time that I had considered a change in my employment that would see me embark on another period of study. Looking down the barrel of a three or four year PhD meant certain reduction in my financial situation. What would it be like to have less again? Surprisingly, I found that considering the idea did not put me off, but rather excited me. I want to point out that it’s important for me to ensure that I am financially independent and able to provide for my daughter and that I had no intention of taking on further study if it meant that either of these things were in jeopardy. I found that I could consider studying and still have enough for what I need. I would not however, have enough for what I want. And that’s really the crux of the matter.

The difference between need and want has become so blurred, that many of us have no idea what it is. I’m suggesting that we would all benefit from spending some time deciding what for us is a reasonable need and what is just a passing want. I walk around the shops and I see that we are all out of control. Like five years olds demanding that our parents buy us some piece of plastic that we will cherish for thirty seconds and then forget about, we seem to think that a moments fleeting (and costly) satisfaction is worth more than the pursuit of more lasting joys. I don’t know if we’re all trying to fill up voids in our lives, use new shoes as band-aides for some internal pain or whether we are just so apathetic about our world that we really don’t care much. Whatever the reason, I personally can’t do it anymore.

Driven by the need to make change, I’ve drawn up a list of all the things I ‘need’, and I’ve given myself plenty of leeway, going beyond the absolute necessities like shelter and food, to include those items that enrich my experience of living. Books are on my list and so are movies. They bring me joy and promote learning. I’ve also included paying for a hobby, as it connects me with my community and helps me to exercise and de-stress. I’ve even budgeted for coffee, as I’m sure those amongst you who are caffeine fans will concur, that for the minimal cost of a coffee, much pleasure can be had! However, I have decided that buying five coffees a week is my limit and that I really don’t need jumbo sized ones. My point is that by examining the differences between what I want and what I need, I’m not depriving myself. I’m just limiting myself to those experiences that I believe allow me to enjoy myself without becoming lost on the ‘purchase til I perish’ treadmill. Everybody’s list of what they need will be different. Some people may be able to strip it right back to the essentials and to these people, I bow deeply. To those of you who would argue that you need those new shoes each month or can’t do without that monthly trip to the solarium or nail salon, I would suggest that you can and you should and here’s why.

To begin with, once you address what you really need and stop buying the things that you think you need but actually you don’t, you will find that your relationship to what you have changes. After deciding on my course of action, I have spent the last month ‘not buying it’. The result has been that I absolutely savour those five cups of coffee each week in a way that I never did when I let myself have as many as I want. I’m in no way worse off from by my reduction in purchasing. On the contrary, I feel better. Even so, resisting hasn’t always been easy and it’s been fascinating to watch the withdrawal symptoms. I’ve had lots of thoughts pop into my head to rationalise why it would be okay to have that sixth cup of coffee this week, or why I really should have put buying a Bollywood Film magazine on my ‘need’ list, but so far I’ve managed to stop myself. The way I’ve done this is by recalling the following fact that I read recently in a book. In 2007, 10 million children under the age of five died of poverty related diseases and that one such death can be prevented at a cost of around $200 US dollars (Singer 2009). Which brings me to my second argument for why you should get off the shopping merry go round. If you reduce the spending of your discretionary income, you’ll have money left over to make a very real difference with.

If at this point you’re still reading this, having not been turned off by the thought that you can’t possibly give up your trips to the nail salon, I’m hoping that you are at least open to the idea that we have an ethical responsibility to ensure that in a world where nobody needs to die because of poverty – that nobody does. If you’ve just launched into a whole bunch of justifications for why you can’t be held personally responsible, or that you can’t possibly make a difference or that agencies that deliver aid do a dubious job of addressing poverty, then I would suggest you read Peter Singer’s new book, ‘The Life you can save’, because you’re wrong. Further, if doing something right doesn’t motivate you enough, you can always fall back on the many studies which show that giving brings more personal satisfaction to the giver than receiving ever could.

My own experience has been a powerful one and I’m grateful that I was able to learn from it before being sucked into a lifetime of spending and the discontent that accompanies such a journey. I know that there will be times that I will fall short of my intentions and find myself walking out of a shop holding a brand new purchase and wondering what just happened. It’s hard to ignore the constant advertising and to combat the desires that seem to arise uninvited. On reflection, I realise that it was not enough for me to know that I should resist the temptation of consumerism and instead use my excess to contribute to solutions for the problems that really matter. Apart from a few donations to persistent charities over the last year, I did not give significantly. It wasn’t until I realised that my personal sense of enjoyment and satisfaction was being eroded by my ability to buy plenty that I began to look for another way. It has taken a selfish motivation to spur me on to change. I don’t want a wardrobe full of clothes when one or two new items a year bring me more joy. I don’t want a jigsaw puzzle graveyard under my bed when a couple of puzzles a year are more fun. I don’t want to have my every excursion plagued with an undercurrent of latent hunting that sees me scanning for objects of desire.  I don’t want a lifetime of working-spending-working that does little more than invite a mountain of stuff into my house that buries me and my values until all that’s left is a memory of someone who once dreamed bigger dreams. That is not a life well lived.

What I’m saying is of course nothing new. Encouragingly, of late there’s been growing discussion on how the path to abundance in the West has come at a cost. That we are somehow ‘less’ as a result of the experience of having more than we could possibly need. My year has shown me that this is true and I know that I must turn away before I get hooked. I invite everyone to take a moment to consider what life could be like if it was lived more simply. To wonder what it is that allows us to keep purchasing when we know that we could use that money instead to contribute to saving a life. What sort of mechanisms do we employ to remain ignorant and uncaring? What does distancing ourselves from the realities of global suffering cost us as individuals? If we are faced with the choice of having an expensive hair cut or saving a child’s life, who amongst us would not save the life if we knew we could? Then why don’t we? How do we justify being part of the problem and not part of the solution? These are hard questions to ask ourselves, but to ignore them makes us in some way less human than we are capable of being.

I leave behind my well paid job and enter into a period of less income knowing that it’s okay to have less money, if what you have instead is worth more than all of the riches in the world.

Reference

Singer, P 2009 ‘The Life you can Save’, Random House, Australia.

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