My NOBARDCODES blog is dedicated to empowering people everywhere who eat (all of us) to take my NOBARCODES challenge. It is about raising awareness of where real food comes from and just how easy it can be to opt out of the mainstream food supply, either entirely or at least in part. It is about taking back control. It is about evaluating our relationship with what we eat.
THE NO-BAR-CODES CHALLENGE
Eliminate as much industrially/commercially processed food as possible from your diet.
Eliminate food that comes wrapped in plastic, packaged, boxed or a bagged, bottled and canned.
Eliminate all food that is shipped from great distances.
Limit items with bar codes to just items you need for recipes such as yeast, sugar, and salt.
Take bread for example, instead of buying bread purchase wheat berries and grind your own flour (say in a coffee grinder or grain mill) and make your bread at home from WHOLE FOOD ingredients.
How does one take the NO-BAR-CODES challenge?
PURCHASE JUST RAW INGREDIENTS PREFERABLY FROM LOCAL SOURCES
AND MAKE ALL YOUR MEALS FROM SCRATCH
PROCESS ALL YOUR OWN FOOD AT HOME (ie make bread, make cheese, render lard, and slow cook beans)
EAT OUT AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE
AVOID BIG BOX GROCERY STORES, SHOP LOCALLY!
BECOME A LOCAL-VORE
Inherent in this challenge is to purchase as much of your food from local sources as possible to avoid purchasing food that has been shipped long distances and in order to support your local rural community and small farmers.
Tips and suggestions to help you succeed at this challenge
I suggest that you use a 90/10 approach to buying food. Try to limit the amount of food with bar-c0des to just 10% of your total food intake. That means 90% of your food will be fresh local meat, dairy, eggs, and veggetables! Now we’re getting somewhere!
- Shop at a farmer’s market before going to the grocery store. This will help you find food that is in season.
- Join a local CSA’s and a herdshare program for 100% pastured meat and dairy.
- Visit and purchase food directly from local farmers. Get to know who raises your food!
- Grow some food in your own home garden.
- Purchase bulk items when they are in-season like apples and berries for preserving so you won’t find yourself buying produce shipped from places like Chile during the winter! If you start to think about how many gallons of gas were needed to bring in that banana in January (or any time of year for that matter) you might consider forgoing them altogether.
So that’s it! The concept of FOOD with NOBARCODES. Of course in many instances you will need to buy something that has a bar code on it, but I think you get the drift. For some of the benefits to this approach to food read on….
Good morning, I am so impressed with this. I have been wondering in my own mind when you might start something like this. We will be working on Taking the NOBARCODES Challenge! This afternoon I will start emailing your link to my contact list….Way to go!!!!! M
Thanks!!
Valerie,
I’m very sold on eating sprouted grains and buy bread and tortillas made by Food for Life (http://www.foodforlife.com/) at the Boise (Idaho) Coop. (sorry – they have barcodes…) I dehydrate lots of foods and I’ve also been baking my own bread for last two years. But…I don’t know how to make my own sprouted grain bread. Where can I get directions for the full process: sprouting the grains / drying / grinding / and the bread recipe? Did you use one of Peter Reinhart’s books?
BTW – love your homemade dehydrator!
Hi Cathy Claybaugh! Thanks for posting your comment. I realize that many items that are whole ingredients are going to have barcodes. Don’t apologize of course, you get the idea! As for the sprouting wheat berries etc I have the whole process spelled out at my BREAD BLOG I am using Peter Rienhart’s Whole Grain Breads. Thanks again for posting! BTW, I love the cast iron you gave me, I use it all the time
Val, I am so impressed. I love this blog – your ideas are so thorough and well thought out! It’s a great place and has inspired me. I feel like I already eat primarily whole foods, but too much of my produce come from the grocery store. I need to re-source my foods. Since our move I have been struggling to find CSA’s and local meat – although Mike’s going hunting tomorrow – cross your fingers! I am going to check out Local Harvest and start sourcing some CSA’s – even if it isn’t until next spring that I can get in on it. Oh, what I have been doing here is gardening and I am reading this great book on winter harvesting. The idea is to extend the harvest through the winter with fall plantings (succession) of cool weather crops (lettuce/kale/beets). The book is called Four-season harvest it’s by Eliot Colman. I am gonna give it a try. I was going to start planting this week but we just got 2+ feet of snow – soooo, maybe in a couple days when it all melts. I think it would work in the moutains too – just need wind protection and sunlight – he has some very convincing ideas about latitude in his book. Thanks for the inspiration! I am on the No Bar Codes plan too!
Forgot to mention: Along with the gardening – composting!!!
It’s like the other side of the argument for limiting consumption. How much
fuel is used to haul trash? Trash being useful – improving soil quality – i.e. you get more nutrients from the food you grow.
There are so many benefits – more if more people do it.
Did you know that it takes oxygen to compost things? Yes, so those compostable items we put in the landfill don’t compost (no O2). But they do in a compost heap.
It’s easy and if it’s done right it doesn’t smell.
I’ve been doing it now for 6 months. It’s an experiment, but I have black rich delicious soil for the spring ready and waiting for seeds! One method I used was a plastic tumbler – it yielded rich, black, earthy-smelling dirt. I love it!
Hi ya Annie, another very important aspect of building soil is adding the right balance of MINERALS to the soil. I recently finished reading Price’s book, Nutrition and Physical degeneration and the chapter on soil depletion really caught my attention. I went online and started looking around for what has been achieved in this field since Price wrote his book in the 1930′s. I was really surprised to find that not much research has been done on depletion of minerals in the soil we grow animals and vegetables on. We all know how widespread the use of fertilizers is but how little is known about soil minerals. I found a website http://www.soilminerals.com and read through the entire site. I recommend it to everyone, check it out b/c there is a LOT of important information on the site and I don’t want to go too indepth on a subject I don’t know much about. Good luck with the winter garden!
Hi Valerie-
I like the “nobarcodes” twist you have hooked the idea of local food to. It’s a catchy phrase.
People who source their food locally are building security as they do so. community, economic, and food security all at once.
I’ll put a link to this blog at soilminerals.com and hopefully send you some new readers.
Michael
Thank you Eric! I like to think we are building food security by connecting with local farmers and ranchers. We will only buy meat now from people we know. Wild elk we hunt is our meat of choice. From what I have learned about soil depletion I am glad we have access to rocky mountain elk cause they are eating some of the best grass there is. We only eat fish we catch (river trout). We source our lamb, pig and beef from local ranchers. In order to enhance our food security we are the drop point for a local CSA, actually an online farmers market, and the drop point for a local raw milk dairy. I sleep better at night these days knowing we are so connected to these important people in our valley.
Thanks again for the comment, maybe the NOBARCODES message will catch on!
[...] Take the NOBARCODES Challenge! [...]
This is on the same subject I think. For growers: no paper! That is no “license, permits, certifications, etc.” Easier said than done, but so far I’ve done it. The reasons follow the same line of thinking on bar codes, but perhaps most instructive is the definition of license – Permission from a competent authority to do something which would otherwise be illegal. Let this definition rest on your mind and then think of food. Also instructive are the many economic benefits as it relates to the broken & flawed monetary system. I leave the remainder and more complete explanations to better writers! Denny
Hey very nice blog!!….I’m an instant fan, I have bookmarked you and I’ll be checking back on a regular….See ya
I am in love with your blog. I recently watched Food, Inc. and am determined to change the way my family lives and consumes. Thanks for adding fuel to my fire!
Thank you! You comment inspires ME! May I encourage you to check out http://www.westonaprice.org/Health-Topics/
All kinds of wisdom about reclaiming the old ways! Good luck in your pursuit of a healthier you and family. Also, check out another favorite site at
http://www.nourishedkitchen.com WOW!
Hi! We jumped on the eat local bandwagon after getting frusterated about how much packaging was in our trash at the end of the week. Our huge family garden provides lots of fresh veggies all summer, we are so lucky that we live in the peach, apple, and grape growing area of Colorado. We also bought a half of a cow from a local rancher to freeze for the winter. We also found eggs and honey right down the road. The one thing that is missing is my dairy. Man, there are some HUGE restrictions about getting fresh cows milk to make yogurt, cheese, etc. Any tips? Seems like there is just no way to get local milk that is organic.
Hi! Thanks so much for the post! You have accomplished so much! How long ago was it that you got started opting out of the mainstream food supply? Good for you! You are composting too? I struggle so with growing food and composting, I wish this was a more suitable climate for these endeavors, I am so challenged!
Have you tried checking http://www.realmilk.com/where.html for raw milk? Please, would you let me know what you find out? If you let me know where you are located I can ask our raw milk dairy here if they know anyone in your area. Also, check to see if there is a Weston Price Foundation chapter in your area, they can help too!! We just started one here in Crested Butte. Check this link: http://www.westonaprice.org/chapters/index.php#co
Thanks again for posting!! I look forward to hearing that you found raw dairy.
Love your site.
[...] all your own food you shouldn’t eat! I recently read a blog post entitled NO BARCODES Challenge (http://nobarcodes.wordpress.com/opt-out/about/). Now the idea behind this is great – be aware of where food comes from and eat local whenever [...]