Dilemma of an ethical eater: How to eat healthy for you and the planet?

Dilemma of an ethical eater: How to eat healthy for you and the planet? is a true question that spin in my mind every time I go and buy food to the supermarket, market or shops.

I totally changed my eating habits to healthier ones the past 6 years. I can really feel better, more energetic and happier since I do so. You can listen to my story on this video from my speech during the Women Economic Forum in The Hague in January 2017. (from minute 29)

While I changed my eating habits, I started to eat less meat, no processed food, no refined sugar products, less and less dairy,....

And I started to eat more veggies and more superfoods including quinoa, avocado, coconut, chia and hemp seeds, nuts, etc.

Being more and more conscious about how I honour my body with my food intake, naturally brought me to be more conscious about the origin and way of producing all that food. I became a fervent defender of Michael Pollan ideas and the Omnivore Dilemma's book.

I also come from the countryside, where I had been brought up by a family close to nature where we respect a lot what we get from it. This is not a hippie or bohemian philosophy, this is the way my farmers grandparents lived. This was common sense. Nature was feeding them, so they respect the soil and nature.

Proud dad with homemade bacon/bressaola

In our family, we all are excellent cooks, transforming nature in all kind of cold cuts, sausages, jams, preserves, sauces, etc. To be clear, I have never, in my all life,  eaten brand-made jams, nor tomato sauce or sausages. Taking care of a garden and getting my own produce is a life goal as it was for my father.

All this family environment taught me how to recognize high quality and tasty food. It taught me how to work hard to make your own food and fill up your pantry with home made grocery products.

If 2017 seems to be relaunching the trend of producing and making your own food like cold cuts, cheese, yogurt, bread, and everything else, it was in my DNA since forever.

Homemade Tomato sauce with our own label

All these elements tends to collapse and crash in my mind today. What is my dilemma as an ethical eater? 

It is getting more and more difficult in my opinion to eat healthy, ethical, organic, sustainable and local, all at the same time. Actually, I do believe today it is impossible.

All these concepts cannot fit together. Healthy eating and all the nutrition trends includes produce you cannot get locally. Think about avocado, coconut, or even my beloved blueberries!

I am afraid it is happening the same disaster that happened with Tuna and the democratization of sushi 10 years ago.

How on earth, you can produce ethical, organic and sustainable coconut and avocado when you live in Europe (where I am based)?

And finally, when you get acquainted to the farmers situation in France (probably the same in the rest of Europe), where they are literally getting bankrupted because of a wrong system that does not feed nor the farmer, nor the consumer or the cattle, but only the distributors and large retailers.

We are defending more and more fiercely ethical and sustainable agriculture in Africa, America and everywhere, but we do not even see our local producers as a pillar of our economy, consumption or health anymore.

Governments and marketers made a great job in separating people from food.  They managed to turn people into ignorants about food. The kitchen urban myth about the kids believing that milk come from a brick and fishes are rectangular are not myths but a daily reality.

I can only encourage each of us to take some time to re-wire with food and nature. To learn again what our body still remember since 1000 of years. In these times of fear, uncertainty and violence, make sure you take your political responsibility also for food and food makers: nature and farmers.

If you want to go further, go to a market, and talk with people who really produce what they sell. Read inspiring authors like Michael Pollan, or listen to Jamie Oliver, food revolution!

I do not have any answer to my ethical dilemma, and every single day I question myself about my food choices, and what I do buy, who do I feed!

Support your community, make meaningful choices in your life, protect the planet every time you can. 

Be kind to yourself, be kind with others, be kind with nature.

Food is also politics.

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