I’ve been thinking a lot about food. More than normal, and not just the normal fantasizing about food because I’m always starving, because I’m producing milk for the ever-feeding-hungriest-baby-ever who nurses every 2 hours. I’ve noted that, for me and for many people I know … food has become problematic. And I want to help reverse this. The American diet has undergone a lot of changes, most of which aren’t good.

So, let’s begin with the basics. What do you eat? Are you a vegan, an omnivore? Something in between? Do you pay attention to the food you buy, or are you just blissfully sailing through the aisles at your local grocery store, unconsciously voting for the status quo? Do you snicker at the hippies buying the organic food? Where are you on the food awareness spectrum?

I ask because I’m looking for fellow agents of change. There’s a food revolution happening quietly. The Western diet is under fire. Some of the food we* eat is killing us or, at the least, making us less healthy while at the same time, bankrupting the American farmer and making a very few people rich. If your response to this is “Well, we DO have a free market in this country” then just move along and read someone else’s blog. Thanks! *waves*

Every time you purchase a product in the supermarket store to feed yourself or your family, you are voting. You are telling the producers of our food just what you want to be eating. And those food producers are more than happy to comply. Not because they’re good chaps, but because that’s just good business. The problem is that the business model for the American food production industry is broken.

The script that big multi-million dollar food producers are following says, in effect, “Make what people want. Make it cheaply. Continue to make it as cheaply as possible in order to get even bigger profits.” Our food has become industrialized, produced in factories, with little attention to quality, and mass marketed to you via commercialization and lies. Worst of all, we can’t even turn to the FDA as the beacon of truth about the safety of our food because it’s a puppet farm infiltrated by special interest groups and lobbyists. When you actually follow the dollar, it goes into the pockets of a small handful of corporations who control a vast majority of what we* eat.

So, what do you do about it? If any of this is at all news to you, the first step is to get informed. Don’t take my word for it. Do your own research. Find out what’s in your food and who profits. Turn off your TV and stop the marketing message from entering your house. Make up your own mind about how you want to eat, and stop being influenced by commercials and ads.

The next step is to start voting. Buy from companies that have a different business plan. Read ingredients and stop buying food that has questionable content. Consider buying a meat share from a local farmer. Look into community supported agriculture. Go here to find a participating farm near you. Get involved in farms and food companies that promote sustainable agriculture practices.

Try to find alternate resources for the foods you eat. Grow tomatoes on your back porch. Start a garden. Go to the Farmer’s Market. The prices will be higher, because they reflect the care and attention it takes real farmers to produce real food that really FEEDS you, food grown without chemicals and toxins. Beef fed in pastures instead of being fed indigestible food in disgusting living conditions. Don’t be the guy sucking down the $5 latte, complaining about the cost of a dozen eggs from free range chickens. Think about how you are spending your money.

Start reading articles from sources that aren’t being paid by the industry. Check out writers like Leah Bloom, the sustainable food examiner at the Boston Examiner, for things you can do on a small scale to make big changes in your eating habits. Read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food for eye-opening treatises on the food industry in America. For more info on sustainability, pick up a copy of Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainablity by Greg Horn. I don’t agree with everything Horn says about how to live “green”, but he gives some good basic information. Watch Supersize Me or Food Inc for more motivation. Finally, join the revolution and make some noise about it.

I like the way Pollan sums up how to eat. He writes in In Defense of Food that we should “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.”  To really solve the problem of food, we need to change from being a country of soda-swilling, fast-food horking, indifferent consumers of processed foods, and start thinking of how our food is produced, making sure it is worthy for our bodies, and using our collective power to effect change. Your dollars will tell the food producers what you want. The message you send will be clear: I want to eat food that is healthy and tastes good, produced with respect for the farmer. There is an ethics to food production that has been lost. And it’s time to find it again.

I have smart readers. You know that when Velma or Daphne removes the mask from the bad guy/gal in every episode of Scooby Doo, the villain always says that he/she would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those meddling/pesky/ kids. Stop letting them get away with it!

*by “we” I am basically pointing to the average American consumer. And my mother.

If you are what you eat, last Monday I was a can of spinach. Yesterday, I was a bowl of gloopy instant mashed potatoes with rivulets of melted butter. I’m certainly not the Bradley Diet or the FDA’s nutritional guidelines for pregnant women.

Trying to manage nutritional needs in a woman’s first trimester of pregnancy is akin to juggling starving weasels. Someone’s going to get bitten. Yes, women who find they are the mother ship carrying a new alien should certainly try to eat well. But when just eating… anything proves difficult because of nausea or vomiting, finding what will stay down is the key.

I have a friend who could only eat saltines and lime popsicles for the first few months of her pregnancy. Her daughter is now 7 and is not only healthy and beautiful, but she’s also not green! I couldn’t stand the THOUGHT of chicken when pregnant with my first, and yet I somehow made it through my pregnancy without chicken or beef, subsisting mainly on vegetarian sushi, tomatoes and avocados.

You make the best choices you can. You take the prenatal. You try to manage the nausea. You wait for that time in pregnancy when you CAN manage your diet better.

I’m closing out week 10, and here is the list of foods I want to eat: sweet gherkins, instant mashed potatoes, cinnamon toast w/apple butter, grape tomatoes, broccoli, the ubiquitous coffee ice cream, chocolate milk, fresh fruit, orange juice, Chipotle’s vegetarian bol, Subway’s spicy Italian sub with banana peppers and oregano, Panera’s pecan twist pastries, and almost anything from ** my friend Sierra‘s stash of leftovers! I’m in the cravings stage now, moving OUT of the nauseated phase. When I get something in my brain that I want to eat, it’s very hard to switch tracks and accept eating something different without triggering those feelings of nausea.

After doing a little research, it appears there is still little known about women’s cravings and aversions during pregnancy. There are cravings that may possibly be influenced by a lack of iron, and then there’s the great unknown. Most cravings are linked to, big surprise, a pregnant women’s emotional/hormonal imbalance. Of course, science has been baffled by women’s issues for centuries and subscribe anything mysterious to our hormones and emotions. Why do some women eat baking soda and dirt during pregnancy, that feared pregnancy disorder called pica? If it’s NOT mineral deficiency, a mental disorder is diagnosed. That’s science for you, in a nutshell.

Maybe when I get a hysterectomy, my hysteria levels will decrease and the scientists can breathe a sigh of relief.  In the meantime, I have crazy cravings, and I and my peace-loving husband try to find ways to meet them. Because it’s GOOD to want to eat. It’s happy-making to fill my belly with foods that make me smile and NOT feel nauseated.

Managing to eat, eating to feel better, managing to escape nausea — these are issues pregnant women have a lot of anxiety about. One look through the October 2009 discussion boards on Babycenter.com brings an alarming number of posts from women concerned about what to eat/what NOT to eat. For every google search on “effects of nausea-induced starvation on a growing fetus” there’s a women in her first trimester, sitting in front of a computer and biting her nails off in fear that she’s harming her baby.

Find something, ladies! Take your prenatal right before bed on an empty stomach with a small glass of OJ (not calcium enriched) so that the iron absorption is optimal. Eat popsicles if you have to. Fruit, crackers… just get through to the time when you can open up your food choices and get a little closer to those recommendations.

Most importantly of all, surround yourself with friends who are supportive and understanding, who will indulge in your weird Chipotle cravings and meet you for burritos and good conversation. Or who open up their fridge and say “what can I heat up for you?” Or the understanding friend who gets it when you’re late picking up your kids from a playdate because the only Subway in town is actually two towns over down mysterious twisting streets that the GPS finds baffling.

I’ll be back next week. So if you see a large pickle with fabulous hair and a protruding belly walking around Davis Square, give me a wink!

**Sierra blogs over at www.childwild.com. Check her out!