Living on Raw Foods

I hate bananas.  I don’t just mean that I dislike them intensely — I can’t even smell bananas under most circumstances without gagging.  This was the reason for one of the biggest hesitations I had in starting to become a raw foodist.  Unfortunately bananas is one of the cheapest and best caloric resources when you eat primarily raw fruits and vegetables.

I still hate bananas, but I eat 3 to 6 a day — mostly mixed with other fruits and flavors to distract myself from the banananess of it.  If it weren’t for the green smoothie, I might not have had the nerve to take the plunge into raw foodism.  I don’t hate bananas the way I used to, but I still gag when I try to eat bananas straight.

When I first started I bought pre-bagged bananas in lots of at least five.  Usually by the time I got to bag number five the bananas had started showing their age and then some.  I’ve cooled off of my major banana purchases since them, buying them more “as needed” since bananas are neither expensive nor difficult to find (though I do still tend to buy up a bit more if the bananas are very green).

The biggest thing that bothers me about the massive banana consumption that strict raw foodism requires is that I would rather eat more locally grown food.  I’d love to eat locally grown organic bananas, but as I don’t live in a tropical paradise…

I know that many will say that the benefits (both to myself and the environment) of not eating meat - or shall we say, greatly reducing my meat consumption - exceeds the damage done by constantly eating a fruit not native to the area I live.  But I still feel weird about it.  I’ve read about the things corporations do and have done to people and other countries to keep bananas cheap and plentiful, and I dislike being a part of it.  I’d love to eat organic bananas from farms in Hawaii, but organic bananas are not easily available in my area and the gas wasted driving to the other side of town to get to the health food store to buy organic bananas would surely derail any other benefits I intended.

It hardly breaks my heart — I eat avocados and pineapple and other tropical fruits without really considering that they are from an area I’ve never been to raised by people who might not have been paid anything near a fair price.  But as I read time and time again the admonishment to eat locally grown foods, it bothers me that my primary foodstuffs are anything but local.

I’ve made a number of adjustments to my diet to reduce my banana consumption and increase my local food consumption with enough success that for a few days when I couldn’t get bananas I didn’t starve.  Of course, I drank avocado milk instead of my banana smoothies, so it wasn’t a classic victory… but it was a victory nonetheless.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 am and is filed under Basic Raw Foods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.