A topic that can push buttons - food superiority.

I'll start off by saying I am a huge proponent for a whole foods diet. I think it is important to eat fruit, veggies, grains, dairy and meat as a balanced diet and limit processed foods. I also believe that organic is better. I don't buy organic all the time, but probably about 75% of the groceries I buy are organic. Thankfully here in the Pacific Northwest, organic and natural foods are easy to find and not terribly more expensive than non-organic foods. I feel like I can taste a difference, and I'm willing to pay a bit more for that. I use mostly organic ingredients in my baking, and I think it helps make it taste better. I also try to mostly buy local organic/free range meats.

Discussing food can really strike a cord with some people. My brother-in-law calls organic food "or-scamic" because he thinks it's just the same as non-organic but way more money and he rolls his eyes at me when I visit and buy a carload of organic food (yet he never complains about the taste of my home cooked food. Ha).

An acquaintance of mine (who is vegan) frequently posts links to articles on FB about how vegan's have a significantly smaller carbon footprint than meat eaters. Man, this really got my blood boiling (plus, the statistics in the articles she links tend to seem a bit too extreme to be true). OK, while I personally would not choose a vegan lifestyle, I respect that choice of hers. What I don't respect is the moral superiority of articles like that. Ugh. I also know a lot of people who cloth diaper for various reasons, and while that probably creates a smaller carbon footprint, none of my cloth diaper friends throw that in people's faces. Hand scraping my kids poo into a toilet and double washing cloth diapers in addition to all my other laundry - not something I am willing to do. I had two kids in diapers overlapping for 20 months, I shudder at the thought of how much extra laundry that would have created.

Getting back on topic...food. I've read, thought and experimented with food a lot the past year and half. When I was losing weight it was important to me to eat healthy so that I would reach my goal, and then once I reached my goal it was important to maintain. I did well maintaining for a few months, but I'll admit that with the holidays and the stress of P5's diagnosis, a few pounds have crept back on. I know that I can be a "stress eater" and I need to be mindful of that. Food is not a good way to cope with stress. It creates a double negative - it makes you feel physically bad after you've over eaten or eaten junk food, and it makes you feel mentally bad. Also, it makes you crave more crappy food too. It can create a negative cycle. Now that our household is over a round of sickness we are back on track with eating good (mostly home cooked) food.