Get involved in politics; grow a garden

I feel like I should take a step away from showing you what's growing on in Gidget's Garden today and talk more about some of the reasons I am so invested in growing the food we eat, bringing some of that food to people in my own neighborhood, and why you should consider doing the same.

With all of the things most people and families need to focus on and deal with in today's world, it's no wonder the state of our food and the entire food system has eroded to its current state; which is bad and rapidly getting worse.

Gidget didn't think it could be any worse than being a cat that owns a vegetable garden

I understand you may not have the time, energy, knowledge and money to investigate where your food comes from and whether it is actually nourishing you, rather than harming you. With that said, we need to make the time for this because the food we use to fuel ourselves is supremely important. Everyday we are losing more of the freedom we have to choose the food we want to eat. This freedom is being taken in many ways while a lot of people don't even notice. If you don't get involved soon, your grandchildren may be stuck eating FDA approved soylent green.

First is the egregious decision to genetically modify important crops like corn, soy, and wheat among others. The FDA is suppose to maintain safety in our food but does not. You should not trust them any more than you would trust a rabid dog to babysit your child. Genetically modified foods were not studied for safety to either the environment or humans before our FDA worked along side of the Montsanto company to unleash them in our farmland. It turns out the genetic modification of our crops is really bad for both the environment and our health.

I could write a whole book about the problems Genetically Modified Organisms or GMO's and the FDA's unwillingness to force labeling on them are causing for our farmers and your family, but I want to move on to some of the other outrageous concerns we have with regard to food freedom. If you don't know what a GMO is then you are certainly already consuming them and even those of us that try to avoid them at all costs are most likely consuming them sometimes. What's worse is one of the reasons behind GMO's was that we would be able to produce more food for people around the world, but instead of feeding babies, that extra corn is going to fuel your vehicle. To learn more about GMO's then you can start to educate yourself about the pain and power grab, or freedom grab they have caused by watching the movie, The Future of Food, it is an OMG caliber situation.

One of the next issues we have is our FDA's focus on things like using multiple agencies to raid businesses that provide raw milk and pastured meat to the educated consumers who want them, while tainted "conventionally" processed foods kill people and no arrests or raids are made. If you believe that all of the forced monitoring and regulation by the FDA and other countless agencies on natural pasture farms is critical for keeping you "safe", then you don't know about the wisdom of people like Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. We need the FDA to investigate the so called conventional farming practices because simply put, they go completely against nature and therefore create incredible risks to our health.

You can think what you want about people choosing to consume raw dairy, for many people it's a concept that seems crazy. I'm not going to go into why I think raw dairy is healthier here; I am not trying to convince you to consume your dairy raw if you don't want to. People, like myself who do consume raw dairy do so because we believe our health is improved by raw dairy while seriously diminished by drinking pasteurized milk. We don't trust the FDA, so when they tell us we are risking certain death from drinking milk the way our grandparents and all that came before them did, we file that soundbite in the same bin where we file the claim that GMO's are safe and we have no right to labeling.

As if using tax dollars to raid businesses that provide a product that consumers are educated about and want, and unleashing GMO's into our food supply is not enough, we also have local authorities cracking down on people who are just trying to grow some vegetables around the country.

"I am not going to be arrested, am I?"

Even lemonade stands are against the law now. I don't agree with laws that say I cannot support my local lemonade stand. I'm willing to take a risk to buy lemonade from a young entrepreneur, and I feel I should be free to make the choice to do that. Health risk doesn't even seem to be the biggest concern because it is legal to have a lemonade stand with a permit in at least four cities. Is it all about power and money?

To recap on this rant so far, we have the FDA and Montsanto working together to basically force GMO food on farmers all around the country even though GMO's cannot be controlled and pose risk to human and environmental health. We have crackdowns happening on people who are trying to provide what they and their customers believe are the healthiest options for milk and meat, while actual deaths are occurring more often with conventionally grown products but no crackdowns ensue. And now we even have local municipalities trying to crackdown on growing vegetables and your child's lemonade stands on your own property. These are some compelling reasons why you should get more involved in your food and where it comes from, but your health is probably the most important.

Your personal health has been adversely affected for at least a generation due to the lies or at best, bad information you get from the FDA, USDA and special interests. Starting with the first food pyramid and moving into present day, the government's suggested food guidelines will not keep you optimally healthy.

We need to get back to the growing and sharing of food on a local level, and in a natural way, as much as we possibly can if the health of the children and the planet are at all important to us. The amount of access we have to food has increased significantly while the access to actual nutrition diminishes rapidly. We are now getting less vitamins and minerals while we get more and more potentially damaging substances such as antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, herbicidal chemicals, and don't even get me started on FDA approved food additives.  

One of the most important things you can do to start to turn the food crisis around is plant a garden, or even one tomato. For every tomato you grow on your own, you are putting money in your pocket, getting more nutrients, ensuring you aren't eating GMO's, preserving your right to grow food, teaching children to identify and enjoy eating healthy food and preserving some of the vegetable varieties that will go extinct before long if we don't grow them. You are also reducing pesticide and fuel use. If all of those reasons are not enough; home grown food tastes significantly better.

If you get really crazy and share one of your tomatoes with your neighbor, you are further securing our freedom to grow, eat and share healthy food. If you cannot grow your own tomato, then please take a little bit of time to educate yourself about this important subject. It's not just an issue of unhealthy versus healthy; it goes much deeper than that and we have to take back control of our food system. We have made strides but it's going to take more effort, more people to speak up, using food dollars more carefully and more front yard vegetable gardens to solve it.