Every time you choose a food, you are choosing part of the future – the future of your body, your community, our land, our water, and our air. You might be choosing a future that’s better, that’s worse, or that strengthens the status quo. While listening to Jason Mraz perform at the 25th Farm Aid concert, I reflected on how America got into our current obesity epidemic and family farm crisis: We didn’t really notice as the foods (and the future) we chose changed.

Two key steps on the road to health:

1) Notice your food. Read labels. Notice what’s in the ingredients. Notice the source of food. There’s far more, for instance, to a glass of milk than meets the eye. Each glass of milk represents a system of agriculture. It might represent one that depends on antibiotics, a variety of hormones, and genetically-modified feed grown on many acres of land assaulted with toxic synthetic pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers.

2) Choose the future you want. Changing eating habits isn’t easy. They’re deeply ingrained in us, our families, and our culture. But choosing what kind of future we want, for our bodies and our world, can make it easier to get there.

In baseball, pitchers focus on the target, the catcher’s mitt, not on the complex physics calculations of the ball as it leaves the hand. Without a mitt to aim at, it’s extremely difficult to get the ball in the strike zone. But with a clear target, many of the subtle choices begin to happen without thought for the trained and experienced pitcher.

Train yourself to notice your food, focus on the future you want, and enjoy.

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• Horizon Organic in Support of Family Farms ›