The back story

    Let me start with a little back story, I am 29 and live in Oklahoma City. Although I do not have any children as of yet, I do have 2 cats 1 dog and 2 jobs that keep my days long and busy! I work retail by early morning and am a hairstylist by day as well as evening. My retail jobs wakes me up at 4am and styling hair keeps me as late as 9pm sometimes. I love my busy life and honestly wouldn't want to have it any other way.

 

For the past few years I have been some what healthy, limiting the obvious bad choices such as soda, fast food, and junk food. I take plenty of vitamins daily, cook most of my own meals and made what I saw as healthy choices per society. I have enjoyed studying holism at times and had been integrating this to my life wherever I felt convenient. I would purchase vitamins suggested for certain things as well as occasionally buying organic produce when I thought about it.

 

A little over two weeks ago my life changed. I watched two different food documentaries the first documentary was Food Inc.. This started the change in my life. What the government passes as healthy for humans to ingest and how so called "farm animals" are treated and fed is beyond me. I could not believe what I was seeing. I was a meat eater, before this documentary my signature phrase was, "It's not a meal if it doesn't have meat". I can tell you I haven't eaten meat since I watched this movie. I have had no withdrawals and am happy with my decision.

 

I am no stranger to farming, I feel I am the perfect mix of country meets city. I have grandparents in northern Missouri who own a century farm. I spent the greater half of my childhood summers experiencing life on the farm. I have bottle fed calves, seen the cows getting milked, etc. I spent many days in the combine on the fields or planting seeds learning how things are grown and where Americas meals come from. I never saw what really goes on in factory farms until watching these documentaries.

 

The second documentary I watched was Genetic roulette. This one changed my life the most. About genetically modified organisms (GMO's). I didn't even know these existed, as I assume most Americans don't. In short a GMO is the result of laboratories taking genes from one specific species and putting it into another species that wouldn't usually mate such as a spider and a goat (yes this happens) in order to get a desired trait. A company named Monsato (also known for making agent orange during the Vietnam war) owns 90% or US agriculture where they make genetically engineered crops the two largest crops are corn and soybeans. They use a virus or bacteria to inject the seeds making the plant able to with stand being sprayed with pesticides. They call these "round up ready seeds" and was started in the 1990's. When a bug takes a bite of the plant it's stomach will explode. Sounds really appetizing and safe for humans. You can read more about this at http://www.nongmoproject.org/learn-more/.GMO's are banned in Europe and multiple other countries shouldn't that be a red flag?

 

After watching those documentaries I couldn't sleep at night, had nightmares, woke up in a frenzy, I couldn't believe what the government was allowing in our food. This is why so many diseases as well as obesity are so rampant in our country. We believe we are making healthy choices when in actuality we are writing our own early death sentence.

 

The very next day I cleaned out my pantry and went to the extreme. I shared the events that I will be writing about in the future with a friend/client. She suggested I write a blog about my experiences to come after changing my food intake.  Thus "Organic Girl in the City"!