Food Callings

A few years back I knew no one that had what I like to call “food issues”.  Now I am related to 3 ½ vegetarians (yes, someone is just a half!), two gluten-free dieters, and I have two milk-free persons as well as some other fun stuff.  Not to mention my other friends who are eating “clean” and/or completely organic.  I like to call this “holistic”.  In fact, I have a friend that believes quite strongly in providing completely organic and whole foods for her kids.  Though this might have changed now, when I visited her last year and her kids were toddlers, neither of them had ever ingested anything that wasn’t organic or homegrown. 

Let’s start with the family vegetarians.  It all started when my sister-in-law read a novel that contained some material about the treatment of animals at a chicken farm, I believe.  This so captured her attention that she read up on this issue.  And she came to the conclusion that the best thing for her to do was to protest this inhumane treatment by becoming a vegetarian.  I respect this decision, as I do others who have made a similar resolution for the same, and different, reasons.  Though I have not personally been convicted of this myself yet.

So, onto the organic guru.  She is a wonder to me.  When I met her, she burned soup out of a can.  Now she cooks everything from scratch, and I do mean SCRATCH.  I think she’d plant her own wheat & grind it if she could.  She is definitely willing to spend money to get the best food for her family.  And she’s willing to spend time researching food.  She’s the one that told me that pickled or fermented foods are very good for you in moderation.  Important, in fact.  And that foods like corned beef are fermented.  But she didn’t want to buy already corned beef.  She wanted to buy organic, farm raised brisket at a local co-op and do the work of fermenting it herself.  Amazing!  Would never have occurred to me, I can assure you.

Food issues are becoming more & more common.  Some people are forced into making these life-altering changes.  But some people are called to it out of a conviction they have about their food & where it comes from.  (I recently read a book called "Everyday Justice" that gives a lot of insight into where our food comes from, what's in it, and how our food affects other countries.)  Most people who have food issues have to pay a higher price because of them.  So it intrigues me when someone is more than willing to pay this price. 

What price are you willing to pay?  Have you been convicted of any food “callings”?