Eating Local, Eating Raw: Easy Steps to a Conscious Diet

I’ve been interested in raw and organic foods for a very long time. Though I’m not currently a vegetarian, it wouldn’t be much of a leap to call me a flexitarian: I’m mindful about what I eat for both moral and health reasons.

Long story short: my interest in real food is part of my personal history. In some ways, it’s been one of the touchstones of my adult life. So when we were planning our retreat program here at Dancing Deer and someone suggested we do a raw foods component, I threw my support in right away. I understand the personal power that new knowledge can bring and, in many ways, that’s what our retreat program is all about.

Even if you’re not interested in making the complete lifestyle change to total raw food diet, we’re teaching some skills that many people will find life-changing. It’s about not only coming to terms with the fact that you can eat in a more healthful and earth-friendly way, but that sourcing and preparing the foods you require needn’t be as daunting as it might at first appear.

And even if health were not an issue, the level of consciousness required to making and eating even a partially raw diet can change your outlook entirely. Take, for instance, this New York Times piece from a few days ago.

For the second time in three years, food prices began to soar in late 2010. Some food experts thought the increases could have been a factor in the unrest that swept the Arab world in early 2011.

In 2008, food riots broke out in developing countries around the world, as the prices of staples, particularly rice, jumped sharply. Good harvests and a drop in demand due to the worldwide recession eased those shortages in 2009.

Prices began rising steadily again in the summer of 2010.

These are frightening facts. Articles like that can make you feel despair. Perhaps they even should. But they can also make you reconsider the way you’re eating right now. It seems to me that there has never been a louder call to a local diet that consists of whole foods: and all of that is entirely in keeping with a raw food lifestyle.

We are so lucky in this region: everything we really need for a healthy diet is grown pretty much within a 100 mile radius. That is to say that, if it isn’t grown locally, you probably don’t really need it. Think about that the next time you reach imported strawberries in your local market. Think about all the fuel it took to get them to you and, in some cases, the political repercussions on local economies that send all of their food away.

Eating locally is not a radical thought. It’s a sensible one and, in some ways, it’s the very easiest.

You can get more information on the Dancing Deer raw food retreat here.