This is the first of several excerpts from what could loosely be called the conclusions section of "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book about her family's locavore year:

Did our year go the way we'd expected? It's hard to say. We weren't thinking every minute about food ... If our special way of eating had seemed imposing at first, gradually it was just dinner, the spontaneous background of family time as we met our fortunes, one day ... at a time. It caused us to take more notice of food traditions of all kinds — the candy-driven school discipline program, the overwhelming brace of covered dishes that attend a death in the family. But in the main, our banana-free life was now just our life. [Page 341]

I relate to this in two ways. First, I have also drastically changed how I relate to and interact with food, in ways that sometimes make peoples almost recoil when I tell them. But it really is no big deal. Change is very often dislocating, but then it is no longer new and you just go on. It seems standard-issue human to have trouble with, to avoid change at all cost, even if we can observe that the outcome is beneficial and unfamiliarity's sting fades before long.

The other is that, even after a couple of decades eating the way I do, I still am finely aware of all the ways food, and especially junk food, is at the center of our lives. In a couple of weeks, we'll have the refined-sugar bacchanal of Halloween, not to be confused of the refined-sugar bacchanal of Valentine's Day or any of the all-food bacchanals in between. When the kids win a big game, we take them out for ice cream. When the office completes a big project, we send out for pizza. When our child's music teacher is leading the circle in "Rock, Rock to Grandma's House," and asks for suggestions of what we should get at grandma's, every parent suggests not only a food item, but a sugar-and-flour item.

No one likes a scold, least of all me, so I try to keep it to myself, but ask anyone: I could do better on that score.