My three month old son is my teacher. Watching him unfold to the world in these past 12 weeks has reminded me that the experience of being human is not easy. At first, newborns exist as though they are still in the womb. You can see this by the way their bodies remain curled up and their senses remain focused on finding food and ensuring security. Their eyes do not focus and they seem largely unaware of the world outside. Sometimes, this means that they sleep and eat and seem very content to largely ignore the world beyond their mother’s breast. My son was not like this. He came awake to the world fast and in the process, his senses were on overload. The wind on his face was felt as a trauma. Being touched was an intrusion. It was as if he was trying desperately to relocate that world of calm and peace that existed in the womb, but instead, he found himself full tilt in a reality that he was not ready to inhabit.

As the weeks have gone by, he is growing into his role as human being and in the process, I am reminded of some essential teachings. As he experiences sensations, his human mind attaches emotions to them and he suffers. The first Noble Truth, that human life involves a degree of suffering, is proved right. To begin with, it was wind in his belly that made him suffer. Now, as his brain learns that it does not need to attend to that sensation with so much energy, his suffering has moved on to express itself when experiencing other sensations. He doesn’t like the intrusion of having his nappy changed in the middle of the night. He doesn’t like it when he’s wet and cold after a bath. Sometimes, he just doesn’t like anything and when this happens, his whole body revolts as if the experience of being human is not one he can fully tolerate yet. He has no way of filtering out his discontent. He must face it head on, devoid of any means of distraction, for he has not yet learned that the tinkling rattle held to his face is a way out. He doesn’t know that the person stroking his face is a possible diversion or that the lullaby he hears offers a place of solace. He is lost to his suffering until it passes of its own accord.

I watch as he teaches me the second Noble Truth, that the cause of suffering is craving, ignorance and aversion. He wants what he does not have. He does not know what he wants. He does not want what he has. This othering and the emotions that are attached to it drive him to call out his discontent with his world loudly and as he cries, his body writhes as if in torment. He cannot shop away his troubles. He does not have the ability to bury his pain in alcohol or drugs. Until he learns the gentle art of distraction that as adults we utilise to dull our reality, he must be fully present to each passing sensation and the discomfort it causes.

He is just now beginning to show me how the third Noble Truth works.  As he nears the three month mark, he has started to learn that there is a way to end suffering. Although the tinkling rattle and soothing lullaby have begun to distract him from his discontent, he is most content when he is paying moment to moment attention to the experience of being a baby. He watches enthralled as his hands make contact with each other. He calmly observes the pattern of sunshine as it ripples its way across a wall. He likes stripes and dots and things that make surprising and unexpected movements. Unlike adult humans, he is able to fully inhabit the space of watchfulness, unfettered by interfering thoughts that try to make grand narratives about what his relationship is to what is happening. He is reminding me that paying attention is the way out of suffering.

He does not need the practice of the fourth Noble Truth yet. He has no use of an Eightfold Path and does not need the discipline of systematic practice to reconnect with moment to moment awareness. He has no use of right livelihood or right speech. He doesn’t need to be cautious of what he says or does. He requires no ethical code. But he will do. As his life moves further and further from observing with clarity what he is experiencing in the here and now, he will become fully human, attempting to attach stories and explanations to the sensations he feels. He will grow his ideas of who he is and use this overarching framework to make sense of what he experiences. And when this happens, he will cycle back to the first Noble Truth again, suffering when things are not to his liking.

In the process, he is a powerful teacher, inviting me to drop out of my head and inhabit the moment. I sit on the floor and hold his tiny toes for him to see. I poke out my tongue at his invitation. Nothing else matters but this moment and in this moment, all is well. Sometimes, staying in this moment means holding his tiny body as he cries. My human brain wants to make sense of his tears, to try and find a logical explanation. My human emotions rally as if in battle, jumbling together a collection of angst and fear and confusion, as he continues to revolt against whatever it is that is bothering him. The more I lose myself in stories of explanation and feelings of aversion to his cries, the more I suffer. Better that I remember what he is teaching me – that staying present requires no additional mental chatter or emotional outpourings. I hold him while he cries and practice awareness. He will stop eventually. I will provide comfort in until he does.

At another end of this process of being human is my teenage daughter, who has been my teacher for nearly 15 years. Like her baby brother, she once inhabited the peaceful space of moment to moment awareness, watching ants crawling along a path, playing in a blanket of fallen jacaranda leaves, covering her naked body in red texta. As an adolescent, she is back at the first Noble Truth and greatly in need of the Fourth. For her, much like myself at her age, life is suffering. She has left behind the ability to simply observe, giving way to the human need to attach stories and emotions to each experience. She does not choose to dull her pain with alcohol and drugs, but instead walks head on into it with a ferocity that I fear will not allow her an easy path in life. I am comforted by the knowledge that those of us that allow ourselves to feel our discomfort, eventually seek out a method of finding a better way to live in the world. She will need to find her own Eightfold Path, to search out a method of making sense of her world and allowing space for contentment and joy. She will need a code to live by.

My children are my teachers and without them, I may have strayed too far from the path to learn all that I have learnt so far. Life is suffering. There is a cause of suffering. Suffering can be ended. The way to end suffering is to find and practice a code. In this way, a human need not be at war with themselves or the world. Instead, they can watch the path of the sun as it makes its way across the bedroom wall, and in this moment, all will be as it should be.

By now, I think I can recite the dictionary definition of vegan almost off by heart. Only I think this definition is a little too limited and I’m not surprised that whilst most meat eaters can grasp the notion that vegans don’t eat or use animals (actually, lots of them have trouble even with this), the underlying reasons why we don’t are mostly lost. This is because the definition of vegan is very descriptive – it covers what we don’t eat or use. It doesn’t capture why though, and I think it’s this why that matters most. I would suggest that although the impetus for going vegan might differ amongst our clan – maybe you cared lots about the environment, or maybe you felt passionate about the pain inflicted by animal testing, or maybe you are committed to optimum health, the general underlying philosophy at the heart of veganism is about reducing suffering. Isn’t it? Whether your main focus is to reduce suffering for animals, the environment or yourself, this is the why that serves as the foundation to our philosophy. And I would argue that it is a philosophy. It’s certainly not just a set of actions concerning what we eat. It’s the motivations behind why we make the choices we do that form the essential drive towards being vegan. At least it is for me. I don’t follow rules about what I eat or use simply because they are the rules. And neither do any vegans I know. Mostly, vegans aren’t the best at signing on to rules just because they’re there. The vegans I know tend to critically evaluate any and all rules, to examine what they mean, who made them and how they might apply. This being the case, the story of why vegan is not about what we eat or don’t eat, what we use or don’t use, it’s about why we make the choices we make.

If you can accept that being vegan is not about what we eat or use, but why we do so and if you can accept that this moves the central tenets of veganism beyond descriptions and rules to inhabit the murky landscape of a philosophy, then here’s why I think we need to stop shopping. Or more specifically, reduce our involvement in consumer culture. If the reduction of suffering is the banner that most of us feel comfortable marching under, then it is undeniable that the folk who took digs at us by asking why we don’t care about human suffering, had a point. What are we doing?  Are we being vigilant in informing ourselves where and how suffering exists and what we might be able to do about it? I don’t think we are. And I don’t blame us. Most of us are already slightly unhinged by the daily knowledge that others of our species kill and consume non-human animals. It’s fucked and we feel it. Many of us can’t eat at the table with our families anymore, because the sight of mindless consumption of other beings is just too disturbing. So my suggestion of widening our lens to consider all suffering doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? But we vegans know the cost of turning a blind eye to suffering, we remember it when we were vegetarian but knew that eating eggs wasn’t really okay. In order to get through that plate of scrambled eggs on our Sunday breakfast plate, we had to employ some tactics so that we could turn a blind eye. Because if we opened ourselves up to the truth, we wouldn’t be able to keep eating those eggs, instead we’d have to acknowledge that they were a result of suffering and we’d have to go vegan. So we did. Even though we knew it would be sometimes difficult in that it would set us apart a little more from the acceptable mainstream message. But we did it anyway. And I think we need to do it again. And again. Over and over wherever we find suffering.

As confronting as it might be, I believe that the philosophy of veganism requires us to identify suffering wherever it lies and to make efforts to do something about it. For me, this has led to a process of opening my mind to consider the suffering that exists within each item of clothing that I purchase. I’ve been down this road before and I’ve read the books, blogs and arguments about sweatshops and what ‘made in china’ really means. But like those Sunday eggs back when I was vegetarian, I think about it for a while and then put it in the too hard basket as my own consumer desires rear up and I delight in the thrill of a new dress or shoes or whatever. I try. But I pretty much fail time and again. I read a few blogs and watch a doco and feel sick about what’s in my cupboard and whatever the most recent purchase I made without even looking where it came from was. I feel sadness and despair for the young women who leave their villages each day and move to a factory in the big Southern cities of China to work 20 hour days without breaks, proper wages or respect. Sometimes, they are only 14 years old. Sometimes, they sleep at their workstations when there is a big order to ship out. Often, after deductions for their food and bed, there isn’t money to send home to their families. Which was the whole point of them leaving their villages for the big smoke in the first place. Sometimes, they live their whole lives like this, slaves to the production of my jeans, of your t-shirt. This knowledge hurts me. I can feel it in my chest. I think it makes my heart ache. So why do I continue to override this knowledge when I determine that I need a new something or other from the shop and more importantly, what is the cost of doing this to my being?

I do try. I’ve emailed many of the shops I buy from and asked about where their clothes are manufactured. I’ve contacted my daughter’s school uniform supplier. I’ve read the Outworkers Code of Practice and I know about which brands are sweatshop free. The responses I get provide little information. Companies frequently tell me not to worry, it’s all okay because their manufacturer in China is really nice and treats their workers with love and lollies, so go ahead and buy our stuff, it’ll make you feel good. Only I know this is rubbish. I’ve read about how the factories easily convince the inspectors that it’s all fine. They coach the workers and given that the inspectors don’t really want to overthrow the whole capitalist system of production, they ‘re fairly easily appeased. I know it’s not even the factories fault, given that the brand name companies demand cheap labour and fast production and would simply take their business elsewhere if the price wasn’t cheap enough. And I know that it’s ultimately the consumer, whose demand for cheaper and cheaper clothes drives the whole system further and further down into depravity. I know times are tough and money is scarce and some families struggle to buy clothes for their kids and cheap clothes might make their lives a little easier. It’s not a simple problem with a simple solution. I know that. But still, as a vegan, I know I cannot ignore it any longer.

I’m not suggesting that vegans need be Saints. We are no more or less perfect than any other creature. We have limits to how much we can do, to how much we can take. The difference though, is that we try to act on suffering when we see it. Don’t we? Our actions may not make a huge difference – they may not solve problems outright or overthrow systems.  But they are a step in a direction that seems like a more compassionate place to go. The bottom line is that at the very least, we should be identifying where our clothing is manufactured and choosing not to buy it if we cannot guarantee that it was made without suffering. This is only the first step though, and I can see that following the logic of reducing suffering, we might eventually want to do away with purchasing new items altogether. Some of us might even end up somewhere down the road deciding that consumer culture and the whole damn economic system that underpins it might need some re-dress, but for the moment, I’m starting with this. Being vegan now means that I don’t buy clothes that I suspect have suffering sown into them.

What I want is for those of us who understand ourselves as being vegan to broaden our lens on suffering so that it includes the suffering that comes with consumption. Many of you will already do this, I know. Some of you have gotten rid of your car, reduced your energy consumption, only buy local and drink fair trade coffee. Many of you make hard choices everyday that expose you to the constant awareness of the extent of suffering and for this, I bow low to your courage. If you, like me, have a nagging feeling that some action you’re involved in perpetuates suffering, human or non-human, then I think it’s time for us to step boldly into that suffering, to open our minds and take action against it. Doing so will better embody the true philosophy of being vegan.

So, why is it that people freak out when I do it? I think maybe there might be the surprise element, in that I don’t generally discuss and explore the decision with a perky group of girlfriends before hand and I don’t book appointments at hair salons and tell people when the big day is, actually I don’t know myself until it takes my fancy and I find myself in front of the mirror with the scissors and dustpan. Maybe the surprise element throws people a little, and sure, why not express your surprise, but some of the reactions I’ve gotten over the years of my hair cutting antics are downright weird and I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed observing them and pondering what they might mean.

Actually, I’d say I’ve had a thoroughly empowering time thinking over the whole thing. It’s seems to be something about the fact that my hair was long and an interesting colour and had some curls in it. And although this is true, it was also fundamentally annoying. For one thing, it took an awful lot of maintenance. It took so much attention, not just to maintain it, but to consider it. Time sucking distractions that ultimately begin to change your image of who you are. You see, a women’s hair in some odd way, has the power to afford her or deny her acceptance by other human beings. I realise that’s a big statement, but honestly, if you walk around with very long hair for any amount of time, you’ll experience a level of acceptance, based purely on your image as a reliable personification of brand feminine. It’s pervasive. Before too long, your hair becomes a fashion accessory and although I know not too many women think this is necessarily a bad thing, I’m of the bent that I have better things, more satisfying things to be doing with my time than accessorising.

Thus, the time had come to be done with all the petty annoyances such as washing and styling, and on a truer level to face the world without the disguise that my hair had become. To the bathroom. With the clippers. Now.

The moment itself is always a bit of an anti-climax. It’s the decision that feels uninhibiting. Like pulling yourself back from a side path in your life that if left unchecked, could become awfully hard to get out of. Knowing in advance that the experience is going to be something of a challenge, that your movement through the world will be altered and therefore felt in a slightly different way. Once you’ve made the decision though, and you’ve got the hair in your hand, scissors poised, it’s pretty much pure fun.  Many a childhood Barbie could attest to my love of cutting hair, introduced to me by my sister, another frequent lock cutter. This same sister was so devlishly drawn to chopping hair that she took great chuncks out of my other sister’s hair, an act which was certainly cruel, but by the look on her face, also satisfying. Her sheer delight at the incident willed me on to cut the hair off my most prized possession, my Bionic Woman doll, which due to the rather manly physique of the doll, ended up looking like a boy. This turned out to be fortuitous, as due to my mother’s unexpressed belief that providing her three daughters with male dolls was somehow morally inappropriate, I had a harem’s worth of Barbie dolls, but no prince. Anyway, the point is, I had an early history of experience in the joy of changing an appearance, which often led to re-considering just who this plastic creature in front of you was that used to be the Bionic Woman. Her ‘personality’ was again up for grabs. No one else could tell me what she was supposed to look like or which mould she was supposed to fit into. Those decisions were mine to make over.

So, the hair came off without much fanfare. Using the clippers was another challenge, but I ended up doing a reasonable job. I had started the day with long, golden, curls almost to my waist, and ended with a smooth, crystal clear number three shave.

Given that I hadn’t planned to do it when I woke up in the morning, I did expect some level of shock from those around me and I suppose also from myself. My husband’s jaw dropped, not because of the haircut but because he didn’t think I’d ever do it again. It’s helpful that this look on women seems to be his favourite, at least if you can assume that the female characters he designs in his Xbox games all end up having golden coloured shaved heads. His reaction last time, when I shaved a head of long dreadlocks was pure enchantment. He drew pictures of me. So we can rule out having to consider whether the person who found us attractive before might not anymore and that’s not something to understate. I would have perhaps needed a whole lot more courage to take the decision to shave my head if I knew that a consequence might be that my favourite human found me repulsive or hey, even less attractive as a result. Then again, maybe not. Because the thing is, I quite like it. I like the way it feels when I run water over it and I like that I can feel the breeze on my scalp. I feel somehow grander, maybe even a little shinier. But from past experiences, I also know it invites a shadow side, one of self-questioning and fear of rejection and exposure. The last two times I did this, I felt these things strongly. Even unpleasantly, for a time.

I waited for the reaction that had come both times before, from within me, but it never seriously took hold.  I still like it. Freed from most of the self-doubts, I’ve been able to observe the reactions from others without getting too emotionally side tracked in them.

What was really weird, and the story I really want to ponder, concerns the way people reacted and the struggle that some of them seemed to go through as a result. . Of both genders, although I think maybe for different reasons. And whilst I can by no means generalise, I did notice that a significant number of men who react seem to be mostly confused. This can sometimes lead them to make assumptions about my sexuality. And although guys dig girl on girl porn, they still like those girls to look super feminine and frankly, I was just a little too far outside the model of ‘lesbian’ that most of these men could embrace. Other men screen me out. I’m no longer there. At least in terms of being a creature of the opposite gender worthy of some sort of extra attention. This has had the surprising effect of freeing me from attracting their gaze. All women know that thing we do sometimes where we go a little blank in the eyes, tilt our gazes down just slightly and do our darnedest not to attract any male attention. This is a technique we will sometimes employ when we don’t want attention of a certain kind. If you don’t think you do it, watch next time you’re out walking alone and you come upon a man. An exception of course is if you really want to engage the man and then you probably wouldn’t be staring at the pavement. The point here is that woman sometimes don’t have the choice over who ogles them and who doesn’t, and in my experience, having long hair attracted more of the kind of attention that I’d just rather not have. When I walk now, I just hold my shaved head up high, reasonably certain that I’ll be free of drawing the gaze of most men. There is of course another reaction from a very small subset of men, mostly those you read sci-fi and like computer games and strong women, but these men are mostly confined to comic book shops and their lounge rooms, and even in the wild, they don’t tend to be ogglers anyway. I’ve become invisible to the people I would most like to be invisible from and this makes me pretty content.

Women have trouble with it for different reasons, I think. Not all of them, and hearteningly not any of the friends that know me well, but some do. My sister freaked. She was grieving for my hair. At first I found it amusing and I kind of thought she was joking, but no, she was upset. She kept repeating how pretty it had been. I don’t disagree with her, but housing your sense of beauty in your hair feels a little wrong for me. I know how this can slowly happen though, your sense of your identity being constructed like a uniform around you. It was this very attachment to my hair that had been a big factor in the decision to get rid of it. Only my escaping this situation by a drastic haircut was a nightmare scenario to her. I think my sister thought I was hurting myself. She said she couldn’t think of why I would do it and I think that maybe she can’t. She was so startlingly invested in my hair that I realised something else must be going on here.

My sister’s reaction was not the only one to alert me to the way that we as women privilege the role that our hair plays in our identity. We understand on some level that a hairstyle which falls between the accepted boundaries of femininity gives us social currency. So to chop it all off seems like social suicide. Why would you do this to yourself, they wonder? Why would you self-harm?  Because this is clearly what they imagine I have done. The only way they can make any sense of it at all is to come to the conclusion that I must loathe myself in some way. It’s as though I’ve cut my skin and not just my hair. I can understand what makes them think this way. By ten years old, a girl has already learnt how to package themselves as appealing or at least how to avoid the pitfalls of being unacceptable.  It’s tantalising being accepted. And it’s just plain easier. Having acceptable hair and for that matter dress style allows you to fly under the radar. People serving you in shops have a neutral attitude to you and this makes the whole exchange very pleasant. Other parents at your kid’s school accept you as a parent, as opposed to not quite being sure that you have the uniform right and maybe being a little suspicious about whether little Jane should really be allowed to come play with your kid at your house. And I won’t lie and say that the acceptance by men wasn’t somehow beneficial to me. They would chat with me at those times when appropriate social chit chat was required, instead of looking the other way as I walked by (an example provided by the owners of the gym that I attend, who overnight, seemed to forget who I was).

Some people of both genders seem to think I’m sick. With cancer. They think that the only reason a woman would be faced with such a situation must be because of chemotherapy. These folk take long arcs around me, smiling sorrowful and poignantly should our eyes meet. Like they understand, but please would I put a headscarf on so they wouldn’t be confronted with my decay? It must really suck to lose your hair to cancer and have to deal with those reactions.

Other women delight in it. They whisper to me that they’ve always wanted to shave their hair off, but never felt brave enough. They tell me they are worried that the shape of their head is displeasing or maybe it’s their job, but it’s just too risky. A few remember when they too had made a similar risk with their hair and what they had learnt. Grannies still look a little disapprovingly, but some of them have blue hair, so that’s ok.

My 13 year old daughter thought it was cool. She started sending me email images of famous movie stars who had shaved their head and stuck up for me when others disapproved. She made my picture with my new hair cut the screen saver on her mobile and she joked that at least I didn’t have to worry about what the girls at school would say. I told her I do, they’re just older now.

This time, I haven’t been much bothered by all these shenanigans. Maybe it’s because as I get older I care less for other’s reactions. Maybe over the years I’ve picked up some courage to resist other’s expectations of me. I’m not sure. But I do know that by shaving my head again, I have escaped from something treacherous to my self and I think just in time.

By taking out my clippers again and ridding myself of my hair, I know again that the world is not what it seems. Like sci-fi folklore, it might just be true that we are in a matrix, controlled by our own insecurities, fostered on us by a society hell bent on persuading us to package ourselves within the tight margins of acceptability and familiarity. It’s one path to follow, but it’s not a very satisfying one and I know that the costs are high. I don’t know exactly what makes me resist this path, but I’m certain that the motivation is a good one, a right one. It’s not easy, but it’s character building and building character seems like a good enough thing to spend a lifetime doing.

And then what about ‘maximising human potential’? Social workers are meant to do that do. What are we talking about  here? Humans as a whole? Because if that’s the case then we might need to make some tough decisions about individual humans who might get in the way of our grand plan for humanity’s maximisation. And what grand plan is that?

Or are we talking only about maximising an individual’s potential, maybe the one right in front of us at work? How can we do that? What is the maximum of an individual’s potential? Nobody knows the answer to that. Social workers have some ideas about communities of empowered folk joining together to adjust well to their world. But is it healthy to be well adjusted to this world? Maybe maximising potential is less about walking alongside people to assist them to fit into society and more about finding methods and means of waking people up from the slumber of modern life? Take your medication, join a book club and do a parenting class or two. Feeling better? Feeling ‘maximised’?

And if we think maximising potential is just a good idea anyway, then why are we stopping only at humans? Surely this is not sound, admiting that we are concerned only with our own species. Surely we should be concerned with the potential of all species? How about the environment? We have a nice phrase in our business called ‘person-in-environment’, only I don’t think they meant giving a second thought to trees when they came up with that one. I think we might have meant the living room? Or maybe your friends and family? For that matter, we don’t maximise potential when we buy coffee that isn’t fair trade, or clothing that we are uncertain of the conditions it was made in, or food that involved unspeakable levels of suffering just because we like to eat it.

This line of thinking led me to take a look at the other words our profession is based on. Around the globe, social work has a few values that they all agree should serve as the foundation of the profession.  The two big ones are 1. Human Dignity and Worth and 2. Social Justice. These were my calling to the profession and the reason that I believed doing this work mattered. When I first started studying, they were mighty welcoming words. They told me that I was not alone, that there were others who also believed. But I don’t think I had really explored what it would mean to deliver on these values.  I thought I wanted to and I suppose I even thought I could. It was a nice idea at the time.  When I’ve asked other social workers, they also speak about the way the values of the profession called them. Certainly, as a group, we enjoy the nobility of pointing to these core values as evidence that we are somehow different, and maybe once-upon-a-time were, but it’s different now. Today’s world doesn’t want you to mess with the system. Everyone’s just getting along best they can. Start talking about social justice and affording everyone some dignity and then start trying to do something about it and see what happens to your career. Or your place in society for that matter. Or your health. If you can forget about the fact that we’re probably not even sure what these values mean, beyond a sense of rightness about them, how can we know what we’re supposed to do about it as social workers? Learning about evidence based practice and crisis intervention and filling out pscyho-social assessments will earn you a living, and doing one subject in Ethics is probably a start, but shouldn’t we be teaching our social work students how to break the system? If it truly is social justice we’re after and if we want to afford dignity, then by anyone’s account, the society we live in runs pretty counter to giving anything other than a tick box approach to those lofty plans. No more so than in some of our big ‘welfare’ agencies. So how fair is it to put pretty words in a code of ethics and charge each other with a modern day quest of delivering? Downfall anyone? Why are we surprised when we can’t do this when the system that we live in does not want us to and furthermore, we’re not really sure how to do it anyway. If we can’t all know what we all mean by these values and principles, and we are fairly uncertain on how to deliver on them in a system that doesn’t support them, and the times that we’ve tried we don’t really get anywhere, then aren’t they a little meaningless? A little misleading?

If the profession of social work wants to continue to use these values as some kind of banner, then it needs to get a whole lot more critical of the world we live in. If we are to avoid being nothing more than band-aids for the wounded, patching them up and sending them on their way, providing a useful service to the system in re-habilitating folk that don’t seem to fit in, we better face the reality that our society is not about to turn around now and decide that we really all should be nice to each other. It’s not going to roll over. It’s going to take a fight to change things and I remain sceptical if the job is even do-able. And if it is, it’s going to take more than words of encouragement. It’s going to take outrage and action and possibly destruction. Given that I don’t think the professional association is really gearing up for that battle, I don’t think we have much integrity when we bleat about social justice, human dignity and maximising human potential. And without these intentions, I’m not sure I can continue to feel at home in the profession of social work.

This isn’t to suggest that social work shouldn’t continue as a professional qualification. I just think we need to be honest about what we really mean by a social worker. Maybe we should acknowledge the band aid model and put aside those values for another day. If that’s the profession, than it’s undoubtable that delivering on this kind of service helps some folk. But if that’s the case, then it’s not for me. When I talk of social work, I talk of critically examining the world, our place in it as humans, the way our society functions, the potential for evolution for ALL systems and most importantly, what we intend to do about it.  And then I’m talking about doing it. Alongside each other, gaining strength from our resistance and sustaining a movement that tugs and pulls at a world gone mad.

Five years after deciding to be a social worker, pretty much called  on the basis of the values of the profession alone, I’m not so sure I’m in the right place anymore. On carefuller consideration, I’m not sure the reality of the job is at all like what I thought it would be. It would be grand if it was, but I think it’s stuck too far inside the system to be able to do what it really needs to do to embody the values it wants to claim. I’m not sure if it wants to try.

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.

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).

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/

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.

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.

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.