Guest Editorial from Food Shed Co-op Owner-Member Mary Bartnik
January 2026
What if you DO live to be 90?
What might the quality of your daily life look like?
Will you be sitting in a wheel chair in a hallway somewhere…waiting, watching life pass by?
That was my most startling thought the day I turned 50. Have you thought about this?
I went back to school at 50 to find out what it takes to make and keep the human body healthy, long into the golden years. Basic anatomy and physiology classes blew me away! The complexity AND simplicity of our human systems and processes are truly incredibly selfhealing.
Why are we not taught this? Why are we bombarded with advertising and profit directed limitations on our health choices?
Diagnosed with cancer at 28, I’d already made the changes to living the natural way rather than SOP medical; juicing carrots and vegetables, eating raw, organic, nourishing foods, eliminated those foods and products that contain toxins and health hindering ingredients, clearing out mental and emotional clutter, and always researching.
All the helpful changes I experienced fed my hope and my curiosity. It is exhilarating to know that we DO have control over things that help us and hinder us. Simple choices, made intentionally, from good information can transform one’s life. Often quickly.
70 is now in sight, with no illness since 1999.
I am grateful to be a beneficiary of the dedicated, diligent and persevering work of the volunteers, staff, board, and participating members who gave their all, who believed in the idea of Food Shed Coop and bring us the best, healthiest, most nutritious real foods and products available.
Just like our own lives, the work is never done. Our own health and wellness is dictated by our choices, day by day. The success and joy of our tomorrow is laid today in the choices we make and the actions we take.
Today, more than ever before, the phrase ‘put your money where your mouth is’ is imperative and relevant to the human condition.
The food and man-made products we take by mouth can help or hinder our health and well-being, and yet, we often dismiss this fact in favor of the pleasure of our taste buds, familiarity of our comfort zones, or our desire to believe an ‘expert’ without doing our own research.
The words we speak from our mouth are words of life or death, positivity or negativity, hope or hopelessness; propelling our actions that feed our health and well-being in the direction of those spoken words.
Food Shed Coop offers community rich in possibility with helpful support and connection for all our purposes, inspirations, and intents.
Yet, so many of us are still asleep at the wheel, doing the same habitual behaviors we’ve always done…while complaining of getting the same results we’ve always gotten.
Are you sitting on the sidelines wanting or needing something more, different, or better for yourself?
Sometimes we forget that waiting or not doing anything is us making that choice.
Walk with us, or stay where you are. Either way, tomorrow will come, with you in it, or not. With you stronger, healthier, or not. The outcome of your choices affects more than just you.