Every now and then, I am reminded that most people do not eat like me. Not only do I enjoy eating local, organic and unprocessed foods, my body misses it when it’s not available. Therefore, we choose to live in communities that support this lifestyle. It has to be easy to find these foods in the local markets as well as restaurants. When we are looking to move to a new community, we look at the cost of living, availability of affordable local, organic and unprocessed foods, and of course natural beauty. Sometimes we even go into stores and compare prices. It is that important to us. Therefore, we end up living in a bubble, surrounded by our favorite things, where it is easy to forget that our lifestyle is not the norm – though I believe it should be. Recently, I was reminded how hard it is to get unprocessed food let alone healthy local produce in other communities.

Last month, my mom broke her hip and went into the hospital. Of course, I flew down to Florida to assist my mom before and after surgery as well as take care of my dad. It was a very stressful time as I was spending 8-10 hours a day in the hospital advocating for and supporting my mom. Some days, I was lucky enough to get a break to pick my dad up and bring him to the hospital so he could see my mom. After I left the hospital for the night, I would shop, clean and do laundry. The emotional stress far outweighed the physical stress and I knew it was important to take care of myself so I could be available for everyone and not crash.

The first line of defense against stress is a good night’s sleep. Well, that was simply not going to happen, as I am generally not a good sleeper and had far too many thoughts running through my head to shut them down for the night. Therefore, my next line of defense was to eat nourishing food. Of course, exercise and a break here and there would be great but my time was limited and I needed to spend as much time with my mom as possible and get things done.  Since I had to scratch sleep and exercise off my list, nourishing food needed to get the job done and keep me healthy.

Please keep in mind I spent most of my time in the hospital. They had a fairly extensive cafeteria but I can bet nothing from local farmers. Unfortunately, I have seen and read too much about factory farms to know there wouldn’t be much nourishment in the meat selections, so meat was not an option. I believed my best bet was the salad bar, which had a good assortment of fresh vegetables. Funny, they had a nice fresh spring mix, spinach and iceberg option; most of the customers went for the iceberg. Personally, I do not see any nutritionally redeeming qualities to iceberg lettuce. Nevertheless, I was there to feed my empty tank with high-octane fuel. Therefore, I ate as many different vegetables as I could get my hands on.

One evening, I picked up dinner at Aruba Beach Café, a local restaurant; I thought I was ordering a plain grilled portabella sandwich until the waiter asked me how I would like it done. I was confused and asked him how he normally grills mushrooms. He explained that he was referring to the burger not the mushroom. I was awestruck, because normally I can barely finish a grilled portabella sandwich, let alone on top of a burger. He was nice enough to offer me a simple grilled portabella sandwich (which wasn’t on the menu) sans burger. It was HUGE and I ended up only eating half anyway. It was delicious and I was happy to eat the second half the following night. For the rest of my stay, I simply ate salads or went to salad bars. During shopping trips, I picked up lots of fresh fruit and Greek yogurt for my dad and myself. I even brought my mom’s favorite Greek yogurt along with fresh fruit to hospital for her. She was not eating very much and also needed to keep up her strength by fueling her engine. After all, she had to learn to walk and move her new hip around which takes a lot of energy.

It is so amazing to me, that you would think Florida with such a long growing season, there would be an abundance of fresh local produce, but that is simply not the case. Times like these make me appreciate that I live in a community with choices, by design of course. I am not sure I could maintain my health in a community that has such limited options. Perhaps this speaks to why there is such an increasing number of people suffering from obesity, heart disease and diabetes. It must be so difficult to thrive in a world of stress and limited nutritional choices.

What are your thoughts? Please share and I will continue to share.