Why, hello!

Welcome, dear readers!

This first post is where we tell you the who, what, when, where, why, and how of complicatarianism &c. Our core contributors are Hope, Jessica, and Micol. We each began our journey under a different label - a vegan, a vegetarian, and a pescatarian - and each began to notice that, despite making what we thought of as healthy choices, what we were doing wasn't cutting it. We were each feeling a bit run-down, catching colds easily, or experiencing other mysterious health issues one after another. After a few unsuccessful experimental attempts at throwing in a bit of gluten-free or dairy-free or fat-free or high raw or other-buzzword weeks into our current diets to no avail, it was high time to stop, focus, and make our health a priority starting from the ground up by reassessing our entire diets... via baby steps.

Evidence that the SAD [Standard American Diet] tends to have a detrimental effect on good health is plentiful, as are resources regarding the benefits of a plant-based diet. There's an especially informative and easy to digest article on YumUniverse that is definitely worth checking out - The Big Crash Course: Why Eat a Plant-Based Diet? Honestly, why not give eating simply and healthfully a try? Using as many whole food ingredients as possible and cutting out "the bad stuff"? Oh, right... taste! If there's something the three of us definitely love it is good food! So there's a label we can share: "foodies". Beyond that, it gets complicated. Different things work for different people, and so when Jes coined the very appropriate term "complicatarian" it stuck! But guess what? The shocker is whole foods taste amazing. Sure they take a little more forethought than pulling up to a drive-thru window but it's worth it. And that's what this blog is all about.

It's the last week of July and we began our journey just in the first week of June, so we are still beginners. Join us as we share our experiences, recipes, informative links from other like-minded bloggers, and fun things happening around town. Why label? Just enjoy.