I bought organic cheerios yesterday.
Really, Elizabeth? Organic cheerios? As if breakfast cereal could actually be healthy anyway. Two years ago I would have shaken my head in disgust at this. Organic was for pretentious people with money to burn. I actually cried at the thought of going into a Central Market because I found the whole thing to be a pretentious and intimidating show. Seriously, I cried.
And yet somehow it happened. I became that all-natural-craving mama who wants to petition her subdivision to change its rules to allow residents to raise chickens. I'm buying natural bug block bars and quizzing local farmers on how big of a deep freeze I'd need to store their grass-fed meat and perhaps I'll try my hand at making my own vanilla extract while I'm at it and oh you say there's a webinar on culturing your own dairy products? Sign me up!
I suppose it was a natural progression, from NFP to breastfeeding, to cloth diapers and alternative vaccine schedules and a host of other crunchy choices. And then if you're being so careful about what you're putting on and in your baby's body and she's about to start eating the same food as you, of course you have to reanalyze that! And somehow I slipped from being the skeptic who was going to research everything first to eagerly browsing the grocery store's organic aisle. Slow down, sister!
It's just that the little bit of reading I did made a lot of sense. Without time to do further research in the hustle and bustle of moving, I decided maybe we should play it a bit safer. And trust the research that people like Katie of Kitchen Stewardship do, seeing as she has a similar worldview and approach as I do (ie, she's an NFPer who researches the heck out of everything before she does it).
That doesn't mean I'm sprouting grains or making my own cleaning products or completely ridding the house of sugar. I haven't gone completely overboard. I suppose what it does mean is that my skepticism has shifted.
And as long as those organic cheerios are on sale, we'll have them in our pantry.
Until I replace all our breakfasts with homemade yogurt and soaked oatmeal, that is.
Related:
How One Woman Became "One of Them"