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Nutrition

It was several weeks ago that I first began my conversion to a healthier diet. It has been a slow process. In July a typical day of my food might have looked like this:

Breakfast: Slept until 20 minutes before work, skipped it.

Lunch: (I’d probably feel light-headed and ravenous by the time I ate) Cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and onion with ketchup and mayo on white bun, order of fried onion rings dipped in honey mustard dressing or ketchup, 20 oz. Diet Dr. Pepper.

Snack: Super-processed cookies or crackers from a snack machine and another diet drink in the afternoon.

Dinner: Very sweet iced tea with George-Foreman grilled large chicken breast in honey mustard marinade with 1.5 cups of couscous and 1/2 c. of (also marinated) squash, zucchini, and onions cooked in lots of olive oil.

Dessert: 2 or 3 brownies (from a box mix) with ice cream and a glass of conventional skim milk if someone had made dessert (I would start out with one but always go back for seconds or thirds, even if it was an hour or two later); 3-5 store-bought cookies with milk if someone hadn’t made anything

I read Fast Food Nation which grossed me out of eating fast food anymore. A later reading of The Omnivore's Dilemma confirmed my decision. Videos and articles demonstrating conditions inside horrifying factory farms and animal processing plants further deepened my feelings on the issue; you don’t have to be an animal rights activist to be disgusted by animal abuse and to be horrified by how surrounding communities and the environment are affected by those places. Once I learned the truths about factory farming, buying meat from animals raised and/or killed in those conditions would make me feel like I was complicit in a Michael-Vick-&-friends style abuse of animals. I committed myself to cooking only meat from animals raised in humane conditions.Then—as I had continued my reading on healthy foods, healthy environment, and other cancer/health/healthy planet factors— I...