Everything is bad for you

This post is about food. Recently, non-GMO campaigning has sprung up, the organic section has gotten larger, and all the while companies have been making more chemical-filled food faster than you can say "That's bad for you."

Before I got married in 2010 my mother got cancer, so I began an endless search for what was healthiest for her, what possibly helped her get sick in the first place, and what I myself could eat to keep from getting cancer as well. A few years later and I've tested being vegan, started buying mainly Non-GMO Project verified foods, USDA organic foods, chemical free beauty products, made a compost bin, recycled heavily, and lots more. I believe because of that effort to learn and follow through with as healthy a lifestyle as we could manage, my mom survived two different cancers and all the health problems I've ever had have gone away.

I hope to apply all I've learned toward raising a healthy son - and so far so good. He is very healthy, in the 95th percentile for growth, and has been hitting development milestones that are months ahead. Soon he will be eating his first solid foods, which led me to research the best commercial cereals. After I narrowed it down to one oatmeal cereal (and after reading much on the subject of arsenic in rice) I then found a few places that told me that the oatmeal cereal I had narrowed it down to was not actually organic because the "organic" algae was raised on genetically modified food, and that it could be harmful because of x, y and z. UGH.

Then I typed in "Why can't I just make my own infant cereal?" Grind up some oats and call it a day. Seriously.

But I don't want to half-ass my child's nutrition.

Those thoughts led me to researching first foods given traditionally in multiple countries and that America is doing it wrong. When my brain finally reached its limit on conflicting, seemingly pointless inquiries and debates, I decided I'm just going to fed my baby egg yolk as his first food (highly recommended by other people that did more research than I did) and slowly introduce other things like banana, avocado and liver. Yes, he'll get his oatmeal and some quinoa, but I'm definitely going to breastfeed as long as possible and let him lead the way with food, because... jeez. Everything is bad for you, it seems.