By Luke Wilson

It’s true, I have a sweet-tooth—cookies, cinnamon buns on Saturdays, ice-cream, chocolate bars are my favorite snacks. Now, this was not so much of a problem for me, until two things happened in the last few months.

First, a good friend from church told me about a book called, “Wheat Belly”. The book is all about the evolution of wheat’s nutritional value and the side effects of gluten (ie. A transformed sugar). It is written by a medical doctor and it caused my wife and I to re-think the amount of wheat/gluten that we consume; we have drastically reduced the amount of wheat we eat and we became more critical of the wheat we do eat.

Second, I had a pretty bad (really bad) visit(s) to the dentist last month. It turns out that not flossing much until age 26 is not a good idea.

Until both of these events, I only cared to a certain point about the food I consumed. I considered myself a healthy young adult—eating veggies, soups, salads and fresh/local meat every so often. Yet, these two experiences have made me reflect on how I take care of this body I was entrusted with. The questions began to roll from my mind: is there a parallel between caring for my body and the earth? Will future Wilson generations be impacted by my level of care? And how do I begin to understand the complexities of our food system?