Plastic and Clean Eating: A Conservative Christian Yogi Environmentalist’s Perspective

4/9/22 Details

Confession:  I, Natural Kate, drive the people around me absolutely batty with my goofy ways!


As life would have it, I have gravitated to take up my environmental cross, in a unique area: my personal consumption of plastic.  Yes, you read that correct.  I see and feel the overuse of plastic all around me and I can’t help but want to fight it.  To me, that which has become so typical as plastic laundry jugs, mattress bags, food containers, packing material inside packing material, and the list goes on, it sticks out like a sore thumb and feels very unnatural. This product, which I didn’t much notice until recently, is eating away at my sensibilities and hurts my heart for God’s creation.


I don’t intentionally put my burden onto other people, but since using plastics is something negative to me, by default it’s affecting change in those around me. If a friend reaches for the plastic straw, they glance at me for approval. “What?”, I shrug and shift my eyes. To use the implement for 30 seconds, just to dump it into the trash forever, isn’t for me, because I envision it sticking out of the nose of sea turtle that’s struggling for life.  My friend just looks at it as a convenience. When those around me observe my refusal of most things plastic, it offers them room to pause and question.  “What are my eating and buying habits and why?” How is my relationship with food glorifying God?


Guess what comes in plastic?  Nearly everything.  Pick up a box of breakfast cereal and the contents are bagged.  Most boxes of food that I pick up off a shelf, at any given store, not only have a hideous list of ingredients, but have a hidden treasure of plastic inside.  Go to the meat bins and nearly all the meat is packed in plastic, styrofoam, or cellophane.  Need some rice or quinoa?  It’s prepackaged in plastic bags.  What about some soda for the big game?  Plastic, plastic, plastic!


The unintended consequence of my not wanting to purchase food in plastic means that I eat REALLY clean.  If I carry my own plastic bags to the produce section, the only items I can purchase are fresh.  I can ask the meat department to wrap in paper instead of grabbing out of the bin.  I can buy nearly everything including oils, spices, teas, snacks and shampoos in bulk, using my own containers.  Guess what’s not in my grocery cart?  Chips, individually wrapped candies and most junk food. Clean eating is ingredients in your food which you can read without needing a chemical engineering degree.  It’s about consuming food the way nature delivered it, or as close to it as possible. It is not a diet; it’s a lifestyle approach to food and its preparation, leading to an improved life.  


Everyone has a different reason for creating healthy eating and has their techniques that are inspiring those around them:  diabetes, weight loss, keto, fasting, leaky gut, IBS, energy, illness, disease.  The list goes on.  If you live in community with family or friends, your commitment to being healthy will rub off on them, especially if you’re the one making the meals!  Be the change that moves those around you to eat better. What is your idea of healthy eating and why?  


Remember:  You are NOT what you eat.  You are who God made you to be, You are aware of whole health and learning how to glorify Him, even in your food choices.  We enjoy the inheritance into the kingdom of light and we can feast.


 The Sole to Soul Colorado team is busy preparing a healthful day in the Rocky Mountains for the community of women we’ve come to know as our Jesus Yogis. (J’ogis).  I was so inspired in our last planning meeting, listening to Denise, Kat and Lorie tell of their food journeys and why God brought them to their places of clean eating and what that means to them in context of whole health. We all have a story to tell about how God is bending our ear towards glorifying him, even in our eating.  It’s fun learning about whole health and how we can serve the temple of the Holy Spirit, our bodies better.

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