choices

one of the blogs I love to follow is the "Gluten-Free Girl". one of my dearest friends has celiac's, and I discovered Shauna's blog in search of gluten-free baked goods. I was immediately hooked. even though I've never made any of her recipes, I love reading her blog because of the way she writes about love and life and food. this morning I logged in to find a new post from her, which was very different from the usual. please read it.

I'm having trouble finding the right words to articulate this. I was moved to tears by her story, for many reasons. I am glad she is deciding to make healthier choices, but even more excited about her reasons for doing so. not because she feels pressure to lose 20 pounds. not because food is the only thing in her life she can control. not because she wants to be a size 2. not because she needs someone's approval. not because all models look like toothpicks and society tells us that's right. because she wants to be healthy.

I've been thinking a lot lately about choices. I'm not going to lie, for the past few weeks I've been choosing to hit the snooze button rather than hitting the running trail in my Nikes. I've been choosing to take the easy and usually less healthy route when it comes to food. Sure I have excuses: I've been busy, I've been sick, I don't like showering twice in one day, I don't like waking up early, I had guests, I had to bake for the blog...

forgive me for going in a completely new direction, but that right there is something I've been struggling with. I love baking, and I love the baking blog. but I'm beginning to question if it's really the right thing to be pushing "love and butter". there is nothing wrong with butter. I love butter, real butter. and in moderation, there is nothing wrong with eating it. I love taking old family recipes and making them my own. I love creating things in the kitchen. I love hearing that people make and love my recipes. I love the scents, the smiles, and the photographs.

but what I don't love is the feeling that I'm contributing to a larger problem. America is not healthy. and I think a huge part of the problem is that under pressure to be thin, we make poor choices. in an effort to make up for a missed workout, we skip a meal. but that deprives our bodies of the nutrition it needs to function! and makes us hungry later, when we are more likely to snack on something bad. fad diets and sketchy weight loss medications are insanely popular, but hardly ever work. in an attempt to be thin, rather than healthy, we make things worse.

most people don't think about what they eat... and when they do, they think in terms of cost not quality. a Big Mac costs a tenth of the price of an organic grass-fed beef burger! no wonder the poorest segment of our country is also the most obese. but even those of us who can afford to eat healthy don't always do, sometimes because we simply don't know better. the corporations who produce junk food are some of the wealthiest in our country, and they make sure to inundate us with advertisements that confuse and mislead us. high fructose corn syrup is not healthy because it comes from corn! our relationship with food is warped.

there are people out there trying to raise awareness, trying to make people see they need to change. go watch SuperSize Me, King Corn, Food Revolution. and I'm telling you to make cake pops and strawberry jello pie! true that I'm not encouraging you to make these things every day, or to eat every single crumb of what you make... but maybe I should be doing something different. something with less sugar, something with less guilt.

I want to do what I love, but I also want to do what's right.