Hunting and Gathering

Once I started thinking about the quality of the food we were eating, and how that might affect our own health and the health of our baby it became easier to develop a food philosophy.

I am the type of person who shops and mulls and waits and wheels and deals to get the best price on things, and I am absolutely awful at making commitments, mostly because I am terrified that I will commit and something better will come along. Thankfully, I don't have that problem with people, but I sure do for stuff. It took me months to stop shopping for a car after we bought. Committing to a mortgage rate and type almost did me in.

So decisions for me can take a lot of time, both in making the decision, then feeling good about it after the fact. I am certain I lose much of the value of bargain shopping in the time I spend working it out. The way I have been dealing with this is to develop personal philosophies about things, so I can apply the filter and avoid much of the back and forth that would normally consume me.

It's a "life hack", a strategy to get around personality quirk roadblocks, we all have them for things like getting certain chores done (fold laundry in front of the TV?) or work done (ever use a timer?).

My main issue was I have conflicting values when it comes to food. I am interested in economy, saving money to spend it on other things, like having a stay at home parent, or a mortgage. This is a big driver as I love couponing and bargain hunting anyway, so I slid right into this. However, I also value organic foods for health and environmental reasons, as well as social justice reasons (I'm thinking of the workers in the conventional banana plantations and heir extreme exposure to pesticides). Also, there are local foods, BPA in can liners, levels of processed foods, and on and on. I was making every decision on a case by case basis, and my judgements varied depending on how I was feeling that day, how much money was left in the food budget, and whether I had a coupon.

Basically I found grocery shopping to be fun, but also paralysing at times and vaguely unsettling, as I rethought many decisions. especially as we went to feed the baby or ourselves and I wasn't totally happy with what we were having.

Deciding to minimise preservatives is a quick and easy way to cut out SO MUCH food that is available and allows me to simply disregard sale items that I might otherwise buy. Basically, it feels like I picked a winning philosophy and everything else will fall in line. I still love good economy and bargain hunting, but I'm not bargain hunting every product available to me, just the ones that meet my preservative free/organic threshold.

I'm not completely preservative free, I will still buy pies as I see them but it all feels natural and easy. And restful, there's no second guessing, no worrying about whether I did the right thing. It sounds crazy but I was/am thinking about food a LOT for someone who actually is not a foodie at all. But I am simplifying, boy howdy, and the food is actually getting BETTER than it ever was before.

Next: how I am going to game the natural food system, as best I can, and working the budget.