The world of Whole Foods, Fairway, Costco, Local Natural food stores such as our esteemed Perelandra in Brooklyn Heights does not come at a cheap price. Grant it with any new undertaking there is a general expected increase in spend due to new recipes and condiments however, the premium is a little higher with the Clean Program in my POV. By the way, Stephanie and I are bonafied Virgos and if you haven’t been formally introduced I am the quintessential Virgo in the family. Therefore, when the deciding question – local vs organic or farm raised vs wild caught are asked – without a doubt I am going to commit to the higher quality even if it hurts the budget and the Whole Foods Fish guy is trying to save me a few dollars by choosing farm raised. We see it as a long-term investment on our health and a commitment to the Cleanse. The fact is this has always been the goal but throughout the past 2 years, concessions have been made to meet the bills. For example, I will say one area that I will not be able to address for us during this Cleanse – and trust that I am still in the middle of my research – is the decision on a water filtration system. You see, Junger believes in pure water but Brita doesn’t fit the min requirement. In the interest of timing and the fact that a water filtration system involves “heavy duty” installation and monetary spend – I have decided this is out of scope. Our water intake for this period will consist of sparkling, seltzer; Brita filtered water, coconut and bottled water. I have taken personal note that in my future apt/home – this will be addressed.

When we began I didn’t think we were far off from the world of healthy nutrition. We were knowledgeable but made poor selections by choice, knowing the consequences. And now on Day 5 I feel as though we didn’t even scratch the surface on true nutrition. We are all well informed that we are nutritionally deficient Americans and could truly learn practices from many of our third world countries. The amount of education that I have gained from the last 2 weeks has been astounding, so much that the vegan culture seems so appealing and ultimately a goal. Evidently, our former way of eating was “healthier” then the average American diet makeup. But again who wants to be compared to that? That is not the proper benchmark. Unfortunately, this dream is harder to achieve due to the deception that we all have been victims of in the food industry, true to the American culture.

I started a conversation with Stephanie (which we still have to finish) about the costs related to eating better and really began the discussion stating how are low cost families expected to reap the benefits or for that matter begin a Cleanse like the Clean Program? Call it positive thinking or side effects of the Cleanse but I woke up today hopeful that change is possible for all Americans. Yesterday, I spent the better half of the day with 90 local gardeners from Brooklyn and Queens where the representative majority includes West Indians, African Americans and Latin-Americans that live in low-income sectors of the boroughs and my conversations really empowered the fact that this change is truly possible. I spoke to a lovely lady Sabriya from the Garden of Eden in Queens and she schooled me on some naturopathic options and how she has been eating locally for decades. I also met a strong activist, Yolanda from a Brooklyn Garden near Bushwick, Jon the Baptist, that shared with me a program she is working on to teach the community nutritional recipes via an outdoor cooking space she is installing at the garden. These ladies were quickly added to my iPhone address book.

In short, there have been real gains in a matter of one week. I am grateful for this journey and experiencing it with my lil sis and looking forward to the whole month of April.