Finding the Food

Easily the most important moment in trying to make significant changes in the way you eat is the moment you buy the food. If high fructose corn syrup, Oreos, and Mountain Dew don't make it into your grocery cart, you skip that whole routine back at home of "Have it now? Save it for later? Maybe just one? Oh what the hell, I'll finish the box and be done with it!"


So to wean yourself away from processed food you can steer your cart around the perimeter of the store, hitting the vegetables, fruit, dairy, and meat sections and then straight to the checkout line. It's those inner aisles where the junk sits, and obviously if you don't go down them you can't lose your head.


That's what I did for years, ever since starting the Feingold Diet for my son back in 2002. But since then, there's been a genuine food revolution, and now it's easier than ever to get your food directly from the farm.  Now I'm lucky enough to get meat and eggs from Polyface Farm, my milk from Avery's Branch Farm (and when I say my milk, I'm not kidding. Thanks to Virginia law, I own two shares of a Jersey cow.) I get vegetables and fruit from our local farmer's market.


Three ways this is massively better than supermarket shopping: first, the taste is vastly superior for all the foods just off the farm. We're so spoiled by Polyface chicken that a Bell & Evans organic roaster seems flabby and tasteless now. Second, the nutritional content as well is shockingly better for the farm food. In a comparison done by Mother Earth News:

                        regular supermarket eggs              Polyface eggs
Vitamin E          .97                                                  7.37
Vitamin A          487                                                 763
beta carotene   10                                                   62
omega-3 fats    .03                                                  .71
cholesterol        423                                                 292
saturated fat      3.1                                                 2.31




Not just marginally better, eh? Polyface, with its pastured chickens rotating through new grass, crushes the competition, those sad chickens jammed in -- uh, I don't want to think about it. Did you watch Food, Inc. yet?

Third, and this is really the point of this post, making the change from supermarket to farm makes getting your food much easier, once you get used to the new habit. I pick up milk once a week, meat and eggs once a month, fruit and vegetables once a week. Yes, I still have to pop over to Whole Foods or Integral Yoga for stuff I can't get from the farm yet, such as mushrooms and cans of chipotle, and to support my serious cheese habit. But at least for nearly three-quarters of the year, most of what we eat comes straight from the farm, and the cries of happiness at the dinner table are much louder and more delirious because of it. 


If you're looking for a milk source, try here. For farms in your area that sell direct to the customer, look here.