The catalyst that started me thinking about what I eat was a series of thought-provoking essays in Barbara Kingsolver’s (one of my favorite authors) book, Small Wonder, which I read back in 2002. Her essay “Lily’s Chickens” clued me into the high cost of transporting our food around the country and the world and other aspects of the industrial food complex that I was unaware of.

At home, we try to eat as mindfully as possible, thinking about where our food comes from, geographically and otherwise. We try our best to eat seasonally, to support local agriculture (sometimes organic, sometimes not), and, when we eat meat, to think about the lives of the animals before they got to our table. This means that we have strived to eat meat that comes from farmers we have met, from animals that have been cared for humanely. We’re not always successful, but we’ve done better and better as time goes by.

If you are interested in eating more mindfully, here are some books that I recommended: