As part of my summer I have been staying active with some "green" people and doing some reading on urban affairs. There is this rising thought trend that people are not "conscious" or not aware of the changes happening in their lives. Is it too much to ask people to be "conscious" of their decisions about some basic things? I think so. However, are our institutions failing us or are we failing our institutions? I think a bit of both. Let me explain using food as an example.
When I was growing up I never cared where I bought my items from and money was the only constraint that kept me from purchasing items. As I have grown, I have slowly turned my lifestyle topsy turny and it feels good and painful at the same time.
I feel that there is so much to change that I have to prioritize what I change. I have weened myself from meats and fishes. I have become more conscious of my vegetables and am careful of my milk. I try to supplement my milk drinking with soy milk. I have it with almost everything. I will only have milk if I think it will taste better in a recipe like Mac and Cheese. I have almost totally cut out junk food and replaced it with fruits and vegetables. While I feel good that I have made this progress, I still feel like I'm not doing enough.
I feel like I should be buying my produce from a farmer's market and my other stuff from a Whole Foods. I question whether Sendiks (the local supermarket) is good enough. I have no idea where some of the stuff comes from in the supermarket even though the store itself is local. I still shop there though because it's my most convenient option in Greendale, WI.
I want a farmer who is upfront with me about his or her practices and the butcher who knows exactly how his animals for slaughter are herded and processed. However, I feel like this might be too obsessive. Did we get away from this system because we didn't trust the farmer or we wanted more produce and meat? I don't know, but I feel like I want to begin to ween myself off of the supermarket.
As my discussion above shows, the transparency of food is a tedious matter. Almost as tedious as the transparency of the news. What's authentic, what's not? Should I not care if I don't get sick? Am I slowly but surely getting sick and I don't know? Is my only illness hypochondria? I really hope not.
I just feel like there are things that we can all do to change are diets for the better, but I think it will have to be in baby steps.
The scary part is that I feel that most people will not even take the baby steps. I think some people fear a life that doesn't include meat in every meal, find they can trust their supermarket, or their search for transparency is too hard. I would guess that each of these reasons and a few others keep people from changing their lifestyles.
Given that though I feel that people should be informed about their food, I feel it does not rank very highly on their list though. Which is sad. What is more essential than the fuel for your body? I guess I could make the same rant about the clothes on our bodies, but I believe a coalition of well dressed women would bring me down:)
So are we sleeping when it comes to our consumer purchases? If so, why? Give me your thoughts. I realize I just more ranted and touched on a bit of things, but I feel strongly about this and I know you all have thoughts one way or the other. Tell me straight if I have lost my mind:)
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I went to a Wal-Mart Supercenter yesterday for the first time. It was amazing.
First, the parking is underneath the store, so there is no waste of a huge parking lot. I don't know of any other stores that do this, and yet Wal-Mart takes a ton of **** for being a careless company.
Secondly, once inside the store, I noticed that things suddenly got darker. This was because a cloud had blocked out the sun, which was noticable because the store's ceiling was full of sky lights.
Third, the store was hue. It's about a mile from one end to the other. I definitely got my day's worth of walking in, even though I only ended up buying 5 items. 1/3 of the store is a grocery store, which has everything that Copp's has. The next section was a full sized clothes store. In the back was a full electronics section with most everything that Best Buy has. The drug section covers Walgreens. The housewares covers everything else. They have a full automotive section...
The point is, what is more environmentally friendly than doing all of your errands at one store? I think it's the American dream.
By the way, it's 5:30 AM and I've been up all night.
Wal Mart is bad for two reasons. One it takes away from the people element. If you buy something from them you don't talk to a sales associate. Secondly, WM makes things as cheaply as possible without worry of how they are made. Third, they take money from a community.
Wal-Mart has a nice old guy at the front door that greets me. Target/Copps/the farmer's market/some random local store doesn't have that.
Cheap = efficient. We need all the land we can get for ethanol, so it's important not to waste space on "organic" food. Last I checked, my "non-organic" oranges still came from a tree. And honestly, people shouldn't be eating oranges around here anyway due to the shipping costs. Maybe high gas prices will finally solve that. Give me some strawberries!
I'm not sure how they take money from a community. They give tax dollars, they give jobs to people who would probably be on Welfare if they weren't working at Wal-Mart, and after my great experience, I will gladly drive back to Monona to shop there again. Thus, the city of Madison is losing business because they DON'T have a Wal-Mart. They really should get one--although Copp's has lots of sales, which are fun.
Disclaimer: some of this might be sarcasm
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