What is a Guilty Granola?

granola: (noun.) a person that eats healthy food, supports the protection of the environment, and cares for the health and well-being of the planet and people through sustainable practices. May also be known as a hippie.

guilty granola: (a more specific noun) a person with intentions of eating healthy food, protecting the environment, and making the right choices for the health and well-being of the planet and people through sustainable practices, oftentimes suffering nagging guilt upon the occasional digression and not being able to save the world.

guilty: (adjective) when preceding granola: a lighthearted term for the characteristic emotional response occurring when granolas digress from sustainable practices due to a number of totally forgivable reasons, stemming from financial, situational, personal, resource, knowledge or time constraints, to name a few.

So, are you a guilty granola?

I hope so! Let me tell you why I love guilty granolas.

• Because perfect is so… unattainable. unapproachable. unwavering. un-exciting! un-growing.
• Because guilty granolas are sympathetic. empathetic. in tune. They are good people, trying to be even better.
• because when you’re a granola, guilty isn’t heavy. It’s lighthearted, because it comes from a place of goodness and love and desire to save the world. It’s a baseline that gives a glimmer of hope for improvement. And we’re all about improvement. We know we want the best for the world, so our shortcomings, when they happen, are just opportunities to improve.
• because its an alliteration and any group that has an alliterative name is at least starting off on the right foot. amiright?

“Guilty Granola” pokes fun at the extremism and off-putting associations society has about folks that are interested in health and well-being, both personally and planet-wide. “Is that chicken cage and hormone free?” “Oh, I can’t eat that. It’s not organic.” “All my clothes are second-hand and I haven’t worn deodorant in months because it has carcinogenic toxins in it.” <— (this is true by the way.)

We’re really very supportive of all of that here! So go ahead. Celebrate your wins, stick to your sustainable guns, but feel free to feel guilty (for a hot minute) about your use of plastic bags, the number of flights you took this year, the new summer outfits you bought yourself, etc. Just don’t get weighed down by it all! In a perfect world, we’d be perfect. But it isn’t a perfect world, is it? And you don’t have to be perfect here.

Sustainability is hard. Eco-friendly choices are not always the easy ones. Green practices can take time, effort and planning. But the more we try, the more we learn; the more we talk together about what we want to accomplish, the more we will improve and the easier it gets.

Guilty granolas don’t expect to be perfect, even though we feel bad when we aren’t. But the best thing about guilty granolas? We don’t let perfect get in the way of better.

‘On! On!’ friends.