Corn Free July 2018

Happy Corn Free July again, everyone! I appreciate you checking back after such a long hiatus. A few things have inspired me to get back to the blogging game. The first is, of course, that it's that time of year again and,true to form, I've spent July 1st hungry, confused, and wishing I had planned ahead a little better.

For those of you new to the site, Corn Free July was an experiment I tried in 2011 after reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, to see if I could eat in a way that was slightly kinder to our animal friends and to the environment. For more details on the diet challenge, check out how it all started, or check out the recipe list.

One of the other reasons that I decided to come back here today is that, a few months ago, I had a pretty scary health crisis. I've been lucky enough to be in good health and to not struggle with my weight for my entire life, and so the health part of dieting, for me, has always been maintenance, or insurance against the future. I got a serious wake-up call in January when the future became now. On my first grocery shopping trip after that, I saw John Mackey, Alona Pulde, and Matt Lederman's The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity. I had never heard of it before, but into the cart it went without a second thought. There is some amazing science in these pages giving concrete evidence that our Western diet is killing us. There wasn't much that I hadn't heard before, but I was due for a reminder.

If you're interested, The Whole Foods Diet is for sale on Amazon, I'm sure, because oh my God can you even believe Amazon owns Whole Foods now? One of its features is a 28-day meal plan complete with recipes, and since I finished the book the day before yesterday, I decided to fold it into Corn Free July. This diet advocates for a 90% plant based diet, which will be an added challenge for me, since that isn't something that I typically focus on, but I think it's worthwhile to try. I hope you'll join me!