For me, one of the things that was so great about being pregnant was that you could eat a lot. While pregnant, I worried some about what I should or shouldn’t eat; this was not the time of our mothers, when smoking and drinking were the norm in pregnancy. It’s amazing we all turned out as well as we did. My daughters were born a little over twenty years ago, and public awareness about what to eat while pregnant was beginning to take hold. We knew not to eat too much fish and not to drink alcohol. With pesticide dangers, arsenic in chicken, and the latest warnings about early puberty being linked to hormone disrupters from food and skincare products, the hyper-awareness of parents today is so important. It reflects a pervasive danger for our unborn children, and for ourselves in the nation’s food supply.
While in college, I became a vegetarian for political reasons after reading a book called Diet for a Small Planet, by Francis Moore Lappe (she and her daughter have a new book, Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet). Now I am a vegetarian because I feel it’s not safe to eat most processed food. Why should we support a system that not only perpetuates inequality in the world’s food supply, and also pollutes our children’s bodies?