Chard grown at Washington University by Burning Kumquat, a student-run organic gardening collective. Photo courtesy Burning Kumquat.

Nearly three years ago, I started to get serious about applying my spiritual philosophy to my food choices.

I’ve slipped a little lately, and am hoping to get serious again with the help of a movie or two this weekend. Both Fresh: the Movie and Tapped are showing in town. Slow Foods St. Louis and the the Burning Kumquat (Washington University’s student gardening collective) are hosting “Fresh” this Sunday, Nov. 15, at7 p.m., in Brown 118, Danforth Campus, near Forsyth and Skinker. It’s free, but donations will be accepted.

“Tapped,” a documentary about the bottled water industry, is showing Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m. and Friday, Nov. 20, 2:30 p.m., at the Frontenac 1 as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival, along with a slate of other environmental documentaries.

I’m hoping to recapture some of the eco-spiritual fervor I had after reading  The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Those books had me determined to get back to the garden. And the local farmer’s markets. I realized that if I truly believed the Earth is sacred and the body of the Goddess, I had to start making choices across the board that reflected that belief.

It was an easier when I started. I had a roommate and ridiculously low rent. I was in a spiritual study group with people even more hard-core than I have become.  People who raise their own chickens and vegetables in Chicago backyards. People who only eat organic and local and don’t even know what coffee, bananas and chocolate taste like anymore. People who have gone vegan right down to their clothes and hair dye. So I had the means, the information, the motivation, and the support system.

The apotheosis of this phase was the organic, free-range, heirloom turkey I bought for a post-Thanksgiving dinner party. I happened to be shopping for it on the day I had designated as “Observation of Choice” day, a bit of homework assigned as part of the study course I was taking with Thorn Coyle. I stood at the freezer case in shock at the price of that turkey. I was raised to buy the cheapest turkey, the ones that came for pennies on the dollar with the purchase of a week’s worth of groceries. This turkey cost almost a week’s worth of groceries on its own.

But it was Choice Day. The day to examine the choices we make, and to realize that we make choices in every moment. And to think about how our choices impact others. I saw choosing the cheap turkey as a vote for factory farming, water and land pollution, unwise use of natural resources, heavy fossil fuel consumption–everything I’d come to think of as unethical and a crime against the planet.

So I bought the free-range turkey.

I know that for many people, making that choice is beyond their means. It shouldn’t be. Fresh, wholesome, locally-produced food should be a right, not a privilege. The movie Food, Inc. is now available on DVD, and examines some of the reasons behind that.

I’m excited to see “Fresh.” It focuses on the ways in which individuals and communities are working together to make local, fresh food more available and affordable for as many people as possible. The movie will be followed by a panel discussion.

Both movies show that a lot has changed since the first time  I bought a week’s worth of organic food. It was 18 years ago.  I’d just read Diet for a Small Planet, or maybe it was Diet for a New America. Something that told me my food might as well come with a skull and crossbones label on it.

At the time, I was aware of exactly one health food store in town. And my husband and I couldn’t afford to triple our weekly food budget in the interests of avoiding an untimely death. I reasoned we could just wash things thoroughly. Besides, he was a smoker and doomed no matter what he ate.

I still held out the all-organic diet as the ideal for myself. I tried to convert my father, an avid gardener and home canner who supplies much of my produce. I bought him beneficial insects to control garden pests. He loved the Christmas gift, bragged about it to all his friends and co-workers. He put out the eggs in the spring. I was home for the first prayers of the tiny green mantises.

A week later, they were all dead. Dad sprayed pesticides as usual.

Meat was even more complicated. The Carnivore’s Dilemma. After my grandparents quit raising livestock, I was forced into buying supermarket meat. I could taste the difference, and still can. It’s as though the miserable lives the confined animals lead taints the flavor of their meat.  In just the past three years, I’ve seen a growth in sources for the kind of meat I grew up with. And not all of it is a great deal more expensive than supermarket meat, especially if you’re buying direct from the farmers.

I have fallen a bit short in my efforts. I never did cut out coffee and chocolate, and have no intention of doing so. But I have cut back, and buy fair-trade organic. I also continue to eat more processed foods than I think is healthy. I’m not perfect.

And, there’s the price differential. Yes, it does cost more to eat in the way I think is the most healthy, and my income is down from this time last year. So sometimes when I weigh conscience against cost, cost wins.

I also know how blessed I am to have a choice at all.

So, I’ll be at the screening of “Fresh,” and rededicate myself to eating as fresh, organic and local as possible in the Midwest in November. It’ll be the locavore version of a tent revival for me.

I like to think that Gaia, my scale, and my arteries will thank me.