The LifeCo Blog

It’s hard to travel without your pockets full of money, but at the same time it can be an adventure.
You constantly have to be creative in the way you travel - that means being creative about what to eat, were to sleep and how to get from one place to another. Another challenge is if you want to be healthy at the same time!

We made our way to Santa Barbara and got a base here for a little while. From Santa Barbara we will be taking the next step in our permaculture adventure.

After being in Lost Valley, where all of the meals were organic and vegetarian, it was a really big problem for me to find something healthy to eat and drink while travelling around. Everywhere we went there were only food and beverage chains like McDonalds, Burger King, Denny’s, Jack in the Box, Burrito Boy and Starbucks. It was really difficult to find an organic farmers market or an organic health store near by. I was constantly thinking it’s no wonder that Americans are so overweight. People buy food that is easy to find and cheap at the same time. I get really angry when I think about how much money the people behind these companies make. We are talking about millions here.
Many of the food chains have also found their way to other countries. For example Istanbul - how many Starbucks are there now? And why? They don’t make good coffee, actually they make really bad coffee. What about opening a Turkish coffee place instead? Turkey has its own very famous coffee, so why buy coffee from Starbucks?
We do not need coffee from Seattle or burgers from California.

So I simply stopped drinking coffee, because I didn’t want my money to benefit Starbucks. Instead I bought some organic tea from an organic health store and carried it with me everywhere. Healthy and cheap!
I had to solve my food problem by buying the most necessary in organic health stores. I bought basic food like crackers, fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds and raisins. With this kind of food I didn’t have to starve until we had the chance to find a new organic health store.
That’s why I just want to point out how important it is to not support these unhealthy food and beverage chains like Starbucks and McDonalds. Cause if we don’t buy their things, they will be out of business soon and that would make room for more healthy, organic and local business to open up. We must all know by now, to stay healthy is the key.

Dilek Turan

Filed under: environment, health, organic, awareness, inspiration, city living, food, travel, America, business travel on November 30th, 2007