MAINLAND-FOOD-AHOLICS ANONYMOUS: (MFAA)*

THE TWELVE STEP PROGRAM**

STEP#1: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable."  We admitted that we were unconscious about our eating habits and where we were spending our food dollar and realized this was harmful to our personal health and bad for the island’s economy.

STEP#2: "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Came to realize that the Highest Power had already amply provided for our food needs right here on Kauai

STEP#3: "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." (Emphasis in original.) Further realized that if we simply partook of these delicious gifts from nature our health, the health of our family and of our community would multiply manifold

STEP#4: "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." Therefore, for three days we made an honest inventory of everything we ate and…

STEP#5: "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." …Admitted to God (Akua, Great Spirit, or to Whoever we consider to be the Highest Power) and another human being the exact nature of the habits we are trying to change

STEP#6: "Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character." that and we prayed for the strengthening of our own willpower.

STEP#7: "Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."… Decided that we were entirely ready to make better food choices

STEP#8: "Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all." Noted carefully all the ways our health and vitality could be improved by healing our addiction to processed, irradiated, and expensive mainland food

STEP#9: "Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others." Started to get to know the local farmers and perhaps even started a garden ourselves.

STEP#10: "Continued to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." Continued to take a personal inventory of our food choices and, when we slipped up, promptly admitted it

STEP#11: "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out." (Emphasis in original.) That…and we paid attention to how much better we felt when we ate local and organic food

STEP#12: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles." We shared with others our awakening realization as our health and vitality increased.

*MFAA is a mentoring program associated with EAT LOCAL, LIVE LONGER

 

**The sentences in quotation marks are gratefully borrowed from the twelve-step alcoholics’ anonymous program.