Food, It's not what it seems.

An image of an over-stuffed, over processed pantry prevalent in the American culture.

America, we've got a problem. The rise of highly processed and refined foods, use of chemicals and hormones on plants and animals to meet high consumption demands and monopolized industries producing wheat, corn and soy, are all minimizing the diversity of the human diet while leaving us nutritionally deprived of fruits, vegetables and healthy grains. We are addicted to sugar, caffeine and salt meanwhile making food choices based on instantaneous expectations. Heart disease, strokes, cancer, obesity and arthritis are just waiting behind the door of one more bad food choice, and it is truly killing us, America.

When we consider our unhealthy relationship with food, there are many different ways to view this, the impact it has on our own personal health, the chronic systemic issue dominating the American food industry, or the global understanding that there is enough food on the planet to feed our world, but while we go to sleep with over-consumptive food pains, 795 million people worldwide are starving.

"What does this have to do with us?" you wonder. When we have kitchens full of hundreds of items food and still complain that there is nothing to eat, that is a good sign that we are blinded to our privilege. I have lived in places where there is a severe sparsity of water, but when I return home this is not something I have to think about because every time I turn on the sink, water comes out. It's similar with food. If we can afford to fill up our pantries and go buy more when we don't have just what we want, we have nothing to compare it to, all we know is abundance.

Unfortunately, this is not reality for most of the world.

Not all of us will get the opportunity to travel and understand poverty in other nations but I can guarantee that there is a neighborhood in every one of our cities that would paint a sobering picture of lack, need and an under-privileged lifestyle. We can keep ourselves blinded, refusing to look at the impacts of our food consumption on our own health, on the health of the land and environment producing it, on the systemic industries exploiting field workers and taking over humble farm workers production. We can deny how our choices and lifestyles feed into the unequally distributed global food supply. Or, we can educate ourselves on a problem that we might be a bigger part of than we have ever known.

Ten diverse American girls in all different fields and stages of life have come together, unsettled with the disconnect between the norms of our culture and the message of the gospel. Together we want to inquire, learn, repent and grow personally, spiritually and with a global picture of humanity in mind. This month, we start with food, we look at our excess, and we fast from the control and blindness our food choices and lifestyle can have over us. We have each chosen 7 foods that will be our only ingredients for the next 30 days. This is not a discipline meant to be taken on our own, we are inviting Jesus to change our hearts through this, to be our strength in the midst and to move through the mystery of new empty spaces in our life.

May our hunger be filled with awareness, generosity and justice.

The 7- Experiment: http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2011/12/26/an-experimental-mutiny-against-excess
 The Hunger Project: http://thp.org/knowledge-center/know-your-world-facts-about-hunger-poverty/
Food Chains Film: http://www.foodchainsfilm.com/#the-problem
In Defense of Food: http://michaelpollan.com/books/in-defense-of-food/