I’m somewhat ambivalent about Earth Day. It’s not that celebrating the earth is a bad idea. But one day a year – or even one week – hardly seems adequate. After all, humans are completely, totally, absolutely dependent on Gaia – Mother Earth. But I fear that too many of us, from schoolchildren on up, join in the celebrations, listen to a speaker, attend an event; and then, patting ourselves on the back for our environmental awareness, unthinkingly go back to our old ways. Concerns about the health and well-being of our “Mother Ship” go on the back burner, or even in the deep freezer, until we dredge them up for next year’s Earth Day.

It’s like adult children who give their parents a special day on Mother’s and Father’s Days, and then blow them off the rest of the year. Or bosses who take their secretaries to lunch for Secretary’s Day, but are overbearing jerks in the office. Or people who are self-righteous because they go to church, synagogue, or temple once a week, but engage in immoral, unethical behavior the other six days.

Of course not everyone is like that – not even most people. Nor were Earth Day, Mother’s, Father’s and Secretary’s Days, or religious services created as excuses for lessthan-stellar actions and attitudes. But, especially in regard to Earth Day, it’s just too comfortable to slip back into habits that we didn’t realize were harmful to the environment when we acquired them; and perhaps even still don’t.

Awareness is the first step. Unless we know how our actions, and patterns of consumption affect the earth, we can’t make wise choices and appropriate changes. And nowhere is this more true than in the food we eat.

So in honor of Earth Day, I’d like to challenge you to find out – really find out – about the food you eat. It’s not a one-day activity, but an ongoing journey of discovery. Here are a few ideas to get started:

View everything you eat through the lens of sustainability.

Sustainability is defined as farm practices that don’t deplete the land and natural resources and that provide living wages to farms and farm workers. It can also include how food is transported, manufactured and processed.

Find out exactly what you’re eating.

“Eat food,” advises author Michael Pollan. Well, duh! But what Pollan means is eating actual food, not a collection of additives and chemicals. In other words, “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” Read labels. Are they mostly a bunch of gobbledy-gook? If you can’t pronounce it, maybe you shouldn’t be putting it in your body. Look things up – the Web makes it easy. Regardless, a lot of gobbledygook in a product almost certainly means that it’s been highly processed, using fossil fuels and other resources in the process.

If you have children, find out what they’re eating when they’re not with you. What’s their school lunch program like? There are increasing calls for school lunches to become healthier, using fresh ingredients sourced locally as much as possible. Unfortunately, that’s still the exception. The norm is highly processed food – much of it