It’s 12:01 a.m. here in Michigan, and at this moment I am ringing in the new year with some of my closest friends. Obviously, I wrote this post a few days ago and scheduled it to be published right now.
Though we rarely live up to them, everyone thinks about some resolutions for the next 365 days. They might be goals we want to achieve, or problems we want to solve.
I do not want to be in the business of telling you what you should do. One of the recent mistakes we have made, as a society of eaters, is believing that there are definitive food experts who know exactly what we should and should not be eating.
My personal preference, and what I argue for in this blog, is for food decisions that encourage the consumption of natural ingredients produced through sustainable, ecologically-friendly methods. I am not asking you to agree with me; I think that having the discussion and increasing awareness about what we eat is a huge win in itself.
If this blog has changed the way you think about food over the last year, I would love to hear your story. You can always e-mail me at dave@eatingrealfood.com.
I know I said that it’s not my place to tell anyone what their resolutions for 2011 should be. BUT, I think my resolutions are fair game:
- 90% of my beverage consumption will be sourced locally. I will leave the definition of local to be vague, as I believe it varies a bit by the type of beverage. This shift in consumption will mean less fruit juice and more Michigan beer.
- No more bottled water.
- 50% of my snacks will be prepared at home. This means cookies, sprouted lentils, etc.
- 50% of my meals will be prepared, from scratch, in my kitchen. This means fewer deli purchases, less eating out, less cereal, etc.
- Between May and October (6 months), 50% of the ingredients in my home-prepared meals will come from local farms, farmers markets, or a CSA.
- To help reach these goals, I will rigorously track what I am eating and drinking with a food journal.
Writing these down is the easy part. As I read through them a second time, it is entirely possible I met some of these goals in 2010. I cannot be sure, because I did not maintain a meticulous set of notes. In 2011, I will fix that.
Happy new year!
