I sat on the freshly mowed grass of our backyard on a relatively warm day in May, many

months since I had properly been able to appreciate the weather. My family worked hard at
work in the garden my mom and dad had spent so many springs to make perfect. Neatly lined
rows of small plants filled the raised beds in the sunniest portion of our yard. I helped my Father
water the plants and longed for the day they were big enough to eat. As the days got longer and
the heat became almost unbearable suddenly our garden was ready. My young eyes peered at
the bright colorful patch of tomato plants growing along our fence as I never really understood
how lucky I was to grow up with the access to fresh produce.

My mother is a doctor and has always taken great interest in her family's health, we took
long bike rides and walks around our neighborhood and always had a full crisper drawer in the
fridge. There was always a fairly fresh bowl of fruit on our table with small gnats circling the
produce. As a child my family always ate healthily, we had a mandatory salad with dinner and
rarely ate canned or microwavable meals. I had somewhat seen it as a burden, as an
eight-year-old I didn't want to eat my lettuce, or green beans. As I grew up my mom began to
work more and my siblings and I had taken up an active schedule with soccer, swimming,
hokey, and baseball. My brother, sister, and I were left alone over the summer and after school
and that's when more processed food came into our lives. As we got older and more
self-sufficient we began to make more choices for ourselves, whenever we wanted mac and
cheese or white bread we had the ability to feed ourselves. Don't get me wrong I loved fruits and
vegetables, I would eat whole containers of berries and bags of grapes, but I never saw them as
something that was good for my body. It was hard for us to utilize all the things that we had like
an abundance of fresh produce and nutritious food.

As this went on my mom saw what was happening, she stopped buying pasta and hid
the candy for when we were only really good. That's when more diets were incorporated into our
lives, my parents would read articles online and buy paleo cookbooks. It was always something
new, sugar-free, keto, or just a juice cleanse altogether. We were all reluctant to do so but it was
enforced. Around the time I was 11 or 12 that's when I began to have a lot of issues with what I
was eating, everything upset my stomach and it was hard for me to get much food down at all.
We went to the doctors and tried everything to fix it, though nothing seemed to work, that's when
my food became completely regulated. I wasn't allowed to eat sugar, or gluten, anything
processed was out of the question. As a child this was hard for me, I didn't understand it was to
help me. I was only upset when I couldn't eat cake at a birthday party or popcorn with my family
at movie night. It was really hard for me to grasp the concept that the food I was eating was a
gift even if I didn't appreciate it. Going to a place like Nature's Oasis was a whole new thing to
me. I loved it there everything seemed so much purer than the things at City Market. I always
wanted to go not understanding my family couldn't afford the five-dollar apples and fourteen
dollar loaves of gluten-free bread. I felt like a burden with my food issues and always felt bad as
my mom cringed at the cash register. As I grew older I began to transition back into more
regular foods because of the price issue involved.
 Now that I am older I feel like I have a more cohesive grasp on my understanding and
relationship with food. I can appreciate what I have and be grateful for it. I still have so much
more to discover about my food ethic and how I can personally live a healthy balanced lifestyle.