New Thing #105--It's a Challenge!

One of the coolest parts of this project has been the other bloggers I've "met". My blogroll contains people whose thoughts I really enjoy reading. While I have other blogs I read on a semi-regular basis, I check for new posts on the blogroll every day.

Wednesday the author of Blue Collar Crunch wrote about eating less food to lose weight AND to reduce her share of global food resources. I've read the stories in the newspaper about food problems (along with riots in some places) in Egypt, Haiti, and Senegal. It's scary to think about, and it offends my Christian and spiritual principles to think that people in the world could be so hungry.

Today Blue Collar Crunch issued a challenge. It's about eating simply so that others can also eat. I accepted her challenge, and joined the Diet for Global Hunger Action

Here's a summarization of the rules for her challenge. If you want more details, you should read it at the source.

1. PUT DOWN the fake diet food. Ditch Lean Cuisine meals, diet sodas, low-carb bread, and 90-calorie "meal replacement" bars.

2. Similarly, opt for "real food" whenever possible - cheese instead of Cheez-Its, apples instead of apple-flavored Jolly Ranchers.

3. Eat as locally as you can. Restrict your sources to this hemisphere, or just North America, or go for the full-on 100-mile diet, whatever, but try to make an improvement from where you are right now.

4. Eat as low on the food chain as you can. Organic/"happy" meat is better than factory-farmed meat; adding in vegetarian or vegan meals is even better than that. Again, just try to improve from where you are right now.

5. Check out the USDA food pyramid site to find your recommended daily calorie intake, based on your age, gender, and activity level. Try not to exceed it.

6. If you are carrying "excess" weight and would like to lose some, you can choose to stay under a stricter calorie limit.

7. Do one thing every day to take action on the global hunger crisis.

Some of the Things I've done have been designed to be one-time activities; some I write about one day, but continue incorporating into my life each day. This is one of the long-term changes I'm going to attempt to work on for a long time.