You are what you eat.

Today I have been moved to discuss life.

Scientists propose the basic building blocks of life can be made by chemical reactions between heated and electronically charged protein mixtures containing what they have deduced was the primordial soup of the early earths surface.

Yet with all their research and all their studies they have never actually created single unicellular organism; not one plant; not one animal. The spark of life remains elusive. Life surrounds us and makes us up yet we are powerless to its comings and goings.

For every thing you consume there was something that was once alive but now is dead that drew energy from the sun or other creatures or plants.

Each beat of your heart is fueled by these sacrifices. From the first flutter when you were a fertilized egg growing into a fetus till the last faltering heartbeat at the end of your life.

        So today you ate a cheeseburger and fries and a milkshake. Pay homage to the cow that was raised to make the burger the fields of grain harvested for the bun the tubers; bursting forth from the ground by a farmers plow, the milk that was borrowed from a hungry calf somewhere and the sugar from the canes growing in their fields. The pickle that was once a cucumber and the cherry  was plucked from high on its tree's branches.  You ate it mechanically tasting its familiar blend of flavors. And why not?

In todays world so many of us are so far from our food sources. :

     The beef was raised shoved in a feedlot with thousands of others, forced hormones and antibiotics to allow for such confined unhealthy living. The single burger contains meat from dozens of individual animals, some of which were sick or crippled or diseased and blind. They were old retired dairy cattle and exotic breeds like longhorns, brahmas, and zebus. There were huge aged bulls weighing over a ton each and half starved week old dairy calves. They are herded into mechanized slaughter houses where machines slaughter and ground the least valuable cuts into that 85 percent lean 15 percent fat mixture called the misnomer "hamburger" - ground beef. Then this was further blended with preservatives and is some cases soybeans and other additives to make it preserve and cook evenly. There are also dyes, sugars, salt, and chemically produced  seasonings added  for the correct color and flavor for the now compromised mix. They come to the store in frozen smashed uniform pre-shaped patties ready for the grill , untouched by human hands until they reach your mouth.

The wheat for the flour is harvested by huge combines out of huger fields of pesticide and herbicide treated grains, additional chemical fertilizer is added to spread the growth. It is then ground up and bleached with more chemicals to make it fine and white and palatable. Once again preservatives and flavoring agents are blended in. From field to oven human hands never touch the dough or the flour or the buns until they are ripped open to receive a bun.

The cheese is a blend of extruded vegetable oils and dairy byproducts, salt and waxes emulsified and colored to look like the real cheese of our ancestors. This mix is barely digestible and lacks nutritional value.

The potatoes too are a genetic hybrid harvested months before and dropped over and over again through sorters and from bin to bin. They are hauled from the mid-west and processed into frozen, crinkle-cut bland starchy shapes that are devoid of flavor until seep fried and salted and dipped in ketchup.

The dairy from which the ice-cream and milk came from for the shake is  antibiotic dependent cesspool of mismanagement that can be smelled from 3 miles away. They push for production and submit their animals to all sorts of pain and inhumanity. They cruelly separate and destroy young calves piling the dead bodies in the back filed. They euthanize sick or injured animals and sell them to the rendering plant. Their processes are industrialized. The cattle produce 7-10 gallons a day and never nurse the calves they churn out year after year.

These ingredients are combined and sold for $4.99 or $549 if you supersize the combo. They are handed in a paper bag and Styrofoam containers that outlive their ten minute usable life by 150 years or more.

We continue to buy and use these "cheap" meals. We let a clown and a redhead and a star sell them to us. Our children eat them and it changes them forever. The hormones, antibiotics and poisons leaching in from the pesticides, herbicides, and plastics are causing us all manor of cancers and unnatural growth and premature biological maturity , not to mention building up  the immunities to antibiotics of the parasites and bacteria that will one day attack us.

Life is all around us. We cannot make it but it makes us. We are responsible. You can make a difference. Take a minute and appreciate the calories you consume, Examine their source - is it sustainably raised, is it free of as many chemicals and processes as you can get it? Food that is unprocessed is healthier , more nutritious and have less of a chance of being screwed up.

Think an apple off your neighbors tree. It has spots on it and is small and not shiny. It is pure as nature put it there. Now think of the apple at the grocery store all red and shiny, sealed in wax and pesticides , it was harvested 6 weeks ago , green and ripened in transit. Now think of apple sauce its ground up apples in a machine with sugars and preservatives added , colors and flavors. It is sealed in a can and kept on a shelf until you buy it at the store. Now think of apple filling in a pie at the deli. Its mostly a gel made to look and taste like apples with a few tiny slices of highly preserved and highly seasoned apples.

Your neighbor's apples are far better and better for you. Plus if you buy his apples he will in turn maybe buy your turnips or your cucumbers or your ….
The point and purpose of this posting is to attempt o influence you all, urban rural, rich or poor to appreciate the buffet of choices that are available and weigh each meal on an ethical, and sustainability scale - because your health, your childrens' health and the health of the worlld depends on the choices we make when our stomachs tell us its time to eat.Choose wisely.