Chaos, then clarity

So my work year doesn't officially end until tomorrow (with 10 days worked in over the summer), but I have my sanity in enough check now to surface and post. It's amazing how a little fuller schedule can knock you off track!

I have to admit, part of my drowny feeling was due to all the reading and learning I'm doing. It just seems that the more I know, the more I worry about what I'm eating, the more I try to do about it, and the more overwhelmed I feel. Organic? Local? Vegetarian? Grass-fed beef? It's so much. I really identified with this post by my favorite blogger (warning: a little profanity and a lot of funny). Basically, I get on this empowered high and want to make and eat everything just perfectly, but that's exhausting and my resolve and energy start to crack, and then I find myself eating Hershey's All-Corn-Syrup Chocolate Nibs alone in the closet.

Okay, so not that last part, but you get what I mean. It's a lot to take in.

I found some clarity this week, though, when I picked up Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (what's with the manifestos and the food movement?) at the library. I haven't gotten too far into the book just yet (I keep falling asleep again), but the simplicity of his message is really resonating with me: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

The gist of his argument is so far is that scientists and food marketers have made eating much more complicated than it needs to be over time. That the discovery of the micronutrients such as carbohydrates, protein, and fats led to people focusing on one more than the others at certain points in time and calling them out either as the enemy or our friends. South Beach Diet, anyone? He says we've gotten ourselves to the point where we're relying on those scientists, food marketers, and the occasional nutritionist to tell us what to eat when it's really quite simple: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. His argument is that if we will surround ourselves with great fruits and vegetables and other whole foods and try to prepare things our grandmothers would recognize, we'll be a lot better off.

I can buy that. (Literally.) It made me feel a lot more clear on what I need to do and what I need to focus on, and I think I can continue this. Whew.

A couple of resources for you:

I saw this extraordinary video on the Organic Authority feed on Facebook and just have to share it.

Also through Organic Authority, I found a link to the Environmental Working Group's top sunscreen recommendations. Totally no shock here, but it turns out that many sunscreens either don't protect you well or have harmful stuff in them, or both. Great. So, check out their recommendations. I've never heard of 90% of them, but I'm definitely going to check them out with my fair-skinned crew heading to the beach next month!