Joy of Plenty (eBook)

The First Act

Action expresses priorities.
Mahatma Gandhi

Imagine a world where everyone could buy organic food (food grown or raised in harmony with the earth) for about the same cost as conventional food. A diet of uncontaminated, vibrant food shouldn’t be only for royalty and the wealthy, but that is how it is for many people now. Take my friend, Grace.

Ten years ago Grace was eating like most of my friends and neighbors. She tried to make healthy choices by purchasing organic foods when they weren’t too expensive. But going to the grocery store several times a week was becoming a dizzying chore of overwhelming choices, and high quality food was often financially out of reach. Her cupboards were messy with half-open, half-eaten food, her freezer full of numerous unidentifiable frozen objects, which I nicknamed UFOs. She threw away too much food— mysterious leftovers rotting at the back of the refrigerator, wilted lettuce, stale crackers, and jars with expiration or sell-by dates that had snuck up on her. The thought of sorting through all that clutter to plan and cook a meal at the end of a long day was so unappetizing that picking up some takeout, ordering a pizza, or making a pit-stop at the grocery store to get ready-made, processed food seemed like an easy alternative.

Now Grace visits the grocery store no more than once or twice a month. She’s reduced the cost of her food by about 40% by joining with family, friends, and neighbors and learning how to source directly from wholesalers, local farms, and food artisans, so she can afford the most delicious, highest quality food available on the planet. Her beautifully organized pantry is packed full of nutrient-dense, whole superfoods. Since wholesalers, farms, and food artisans often sell foods that aren’t available in retail outlets, a brand new world opened up to her. There is a sense of discovery and adventure in this.

Food isn’t drudgery anymore and has become a truly joyful part of Grace’s life. Imagine these benefits for yourself and your family, friends and neighbors.

When you do the Plenty Method, the whole subject of food becomes so much easier because great food stands alone and doesn’t need much “do” to prepare. Your pantry is like a good friend. It helps you whip up simple, wonderful meals or snacks on a moment’s notice, so you don’t need to pick up takeout or dash into a store on the way home. An organized, well-stocked pantry makes answering the question “what’s for dinner” or “what should I eat” less of a problem. Cooking can become more fun and less complicated because a well-stocked pantry encourages you to create recipes with ease. Unexpected guests or sudden weather emergencies won’t be an inconvenience anymore because you have extra food to tide you over. You have very little food or packaging waste, and your cupboards stay clean and organized. You cut loose from the buy it-use it-toss it-run out cycle that the stress of on-demand food purchasing creates.

The Joy of Plenty’s Mission

The biggest surprise, however, will be when you discover that eating clean nutrient-dense whole foods leads to a heightened state of awareness. Food goes from being just something to eat to a joyful act of self-love because you experience more of the heavenly sensations that living in a warm, soft animal body offers. Once you’ve tried the Plenty Method, “regular” food pales in comparison, and you can definitely tell the difference. This is something that must be experienced firsthand to fully understand. It’s like trying to explain to someone how an apple tastes. And the health benefits – these can be summarized in four words: radiant aliveness and physical peace.

You can experience this transformation with the Plenty Method. It will mean more joy, less stress and better health for you, your children, our pollinators, and our planet.

The standard industry perception is that the most flavorful foods are out of reach for the average person, reserved for the upper-crust gourmet elite. But good food should be for everyone. The Plenty Method will help people access this exceptional food without paying a fortune for it.

What’s for Dinner?

Many of us know about the increasing adulteration and contamination of our food chain. But how many people can afford to eat a diet that consists solely of nutrient-dense, organic food when good food is so expensive? Add to that the difficulty of making choices when highly processed, poor-quality, chemical laden food and cheap carbohydrates are everywhere.

Also because high quality food is financially out of reach for most people now, so many of us buy food on demand and don’t have plentifully stocked pantries. This leaves us dependent on time-consuming, constant trips to the grocery store as we go up and down the aisles, lost, wandering, and hungry while trying to figure out “what’s for dinner.” And we think this is convenient (I can’t wait to show you another way). We hope that the small supply of food we keep at home will tide us over in the event of an unforeseen situation, whether that is unexpected houseguests, a power outage, a natural disaster, or political problems.

On the Road to Dietary Freedom

It need not be this way; in fact, it doesn’t have to be even with soaring food costs. I have spent the last ten years developing the Plenty Method so royalty and the wealthy won’t be the only ones who can afford to eat well. Throughout the project’s long gestation period, I lived in nine households over a period of three years, went to prison, and lived on the razor’s edge for three years with almost no financial resources. Even though I was stripped of all my material possessions, my vision of radiant health for people, pollinators and our planet through affordable organic food sustained me. My sincere desire is that you will be uplifted by the words you read here and feel encouraged by the introduction of new possibilities.

This book will show you how to affordably buy organic food so you can eat extraordinarily well and pad your pantry with a generous supply of extra food. I still struggle to adequately describe how much my health and quality of life has improved after transitioning to a diet of mostly organic food. You can experience this transformation too when you use the Plenty Method to add value to your food dollars.

Improving Planetary Health

This book will also show you how to do your part to improve planetary health. Our food system is in a severe crisis. By 2050, our population will have grown by 40 percent to around ten billion. Humanity must produce as much food in the next four decades as it has since we first began farming thousands of years ago. Climate change may make this task more difficult. The world is running out of fresh water. Aquifers that took thousands of years to fill are running dry. Glaciers that supply water to many of the world’s great rivers such as the Ganges, Mekong and Yangtze are melting rapidly. One third of the food our planet produces goes to waste and much of it ends up in landfills. Our food supply is under enormous pressure.

In addition, overuse of agricultural pesticides is making people, pollinators, and our planet sick. Synthetic toxic agricultural chemicals are found in water, soil, and human bodies all over the world. More and more pesticides are applied to crops every year to achieve diminishing returns. The residues of these pesticides are frequently found in our food in amounts considered unsafe. Many studies have shown that a diet heavy in food produced with pesticides causes negative health benefits. For more in-depth information about this subject and links to the studies, I recommend that you read my short book Supercide Me, available at www.thejoyofplenty.org.

Collective Power

I can hear you saying “There’s nothing I can do about any of this, so what does it have to do with me?” A lot! Together, we can decrease pesticide use and conserve water to increase the supply and demand for organic food. When organic food becomes more affordable, it can compete with conventional food. Right now, only 4 percent of agriculture is in organic production. If we can increase that to 10 percent, we will gain the momentum necessary to make organic food the majority of food produced.

Our individual and collective food-buying choices wield great power. Since agriculture leaves the biggest footprint of all our activities on Earth, how we grow our food greatly influences our planet’s health. If we choose to buy organic food, we reduce some of the pressures on Earth’s systems. The Plenty Method gives us a way to improve our planet’s health while enhancing our own health and quality of life.

• The Plenty Method will show you how to do the following:
• Continue to eat well despite rising food costs
• Create a backup food supply that can tide you over in the case of unforeseen needs or emergencies
• Multiply your food dollars so you can buy organic food for about the same cost as conventional food purchased at grocery stores
• Access wholesale and local farm-direct food sources at lower cost than retail so you can eat like you are a farm-to-table chef
• Reduce your exposure and your children’s exposure to pesticide residues
• Improve your health by transforming your pantry into a nutritional powerhouse stocked with superfoods
• Release yourself from the chains of formula recipes and constant shopping
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