If there’s a single hour in the week that’s going to dictate the quality of my diet, it’s the hour I spend shopping for groceries. In that hour, the choices I make can mean the difference between good and bad eating for seven days. Sixty minutes, spent wisely, can set me up to succeed in my quest for a better life.

If I can zoom through the frozen goods section and only have eyes for the frozen peas and mixed vegetables … and if I can buy my washing detergent in bulk so I don’t even have to go down that aisle in my regular shop (and use this trick with all non-perishables), I can spend the bulk of my time in the fruit and vegetable department. Fruit and vegetables come in glorious colours. Their textures are fascinating and the tastes range from the familiar to the exotic. We can’t all get to farmers’ markets, but even in a supermarket we can all find real food.

It doesn’t always go to plan, does it? Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. The world shifts, and you have to simply do your best in a changed situation. You’re tired. Stressed. Falling behind with your work.

That’s when you need, more than anything, not to drop the ball with regard to the kind of food you eat. You have to pay more attention because you need good nutrition just to get through the day, the week, the year.

In emergency situations you can survive on bread, cheese, tomatoes and cups of tea—even for a week at a time. But when the emergency is over and the long haul of getting used to a changed life is in front of you, that’s the time to pay especial care to your eating habits.

Lots of vegetables cooked together is a good option. Lots of fruit, raw and eaten singly, is another. This is a time for simple preparation but food full of goodness.

And when you’re eating well, life’s not so depressing after all.

Sometimes we despair. We doubt our ability to make the changes we know we must make. We feel like we are fighting against ourselves, our natural desires, our very DNA.

I think that one of the problems is that we want to be perfect all at once. We want to wake up on Monday morning and find that it’s all easy. Our food cravings will simply disappear. We’ll naturally make better food decisions and the naughty foods will magically stop calling our name.

My solution to this impossible dream is very simple: I accept where I am today. And I add at least one nutritionally rich food to everything I eat. Want chocolate? Have a kiwifruit as well. Toasted cheese sandwich? Eat it with a side salad sprinkled with chia seeds and sunflowers. In this way, I can make big improvements to my diet while not creating a situation where I am constantly feeling conflicted about food.

Someone looking at the huge strides I’ve made might still see many, many areas where I could improve. So what? If I’m on the right track and I’m always improving my diet, I’ll get to a stage that perfectly satisfies me, and it will be worlds away from where I started. This way, I can enjoy the journey. Enjoy being better, making improved choices, learning new ways with food, the next small improvement. Revel in taking back the power. Me having power over the food I eat instead of the other way around.

Big bold strokes work for some folks. Sometimes they work if you’ve had an epiphany or a fright about your health or that of someone you love. But mostly we succeed fastest when we do things more slowly. It seems paradoxical, but think for a moment of someone who wants to get up an hour earlier in the morning. If they do it one minute at a time, one day at a time, it takes 60 days and they have painlessly succeeded. if they do it all at once and fail a few times, they may lose hope and never try again – or even do it sporadically and end up tired all day – how did doing it fast work for them?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in big changes. I believe they can be done as a leap of faith. But the biggest change you can make is a mental shift. This is the catalyst for action – any action, as long as it’s taking you in the right direction. It doesn’t matter how small you start, as long as you do something. You have to walk before you can run. And if it’s a case of having to crawl before you can walk, that’s okay too.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

These words have been attributed to Abraham Lincoln. I call it his you-cannot-improve-something-by-destroying-its-opposite speech. (The quote starts with the words, “You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.”)

Lincoln was clearly a believer in the power of individual responsibility. How could that translate to the subject of the food industry? Perhaps we will discover that it is not so hard to take back initiative and independence even in the face of the overwhelming power wielded by governments and large corporations.

We always think we have to change the world. But do we? What if you and I can do something, right now, that can be just as successful? That would mean that if you’re not a crusader, you don’t have to crusade. You don’t need to close down multi-national companies that are pushing GM food or selling dangerous pesticides. You don’t have to rail against supermarkets that buy substandard food then hawk it to you as quality fare. Simply put, you take control of what food you are putting in your mouth and where you source it. You can work quietly and calmly, in an ordered manner, to give yourself the better food choices you need for optimum health.

It might take prodigious thought and a change in perspective which will gently translate into a change in day-to-day life. You may need to spend considerable time gathering the knowledge required so you are able to garden for yourself or at least to source better quality food.

But it can be done without fanfare; without creating a stir of any kind. What this will create, if enough people take responsibility for their food choices, is a groundswell. Small vibrations at first, then an unstoppable wave that can truly change the earth.

For me, these are aspirational thoughts. I’m definitely not there yet, although at least I’m thinking about it. And I’m taking the concept of personal responsibility seriously by doing my own cooking instead of grabbing takeaway, by preparing meals from fresh fruit and vegetables, by researching meat and grains, eggs and dairy, legumes, nuts and seeds. How good are they for our health? Should we eat meat? Is dairy good? What is the hallmark of good quality? Where can I find the best food?

We can source our fruit and vegetables from growers who don’t use dangerous pesticides. We can grow our own, if only for some of our requirements. If we lack the knowledge and the skills, we can find them in many different places and we can make it our life’s mission – at least in our spare time – to learn those things and put into place a lifestyle that will give us health.

Yes, these things take time and effort. They require a sense of responsibility, of looking after the self rather than expecting someone else ‘out there’ to do it for us.

I don’t think we need to worry about the corporations and governments and others who are making less than great choices with the food industry. As long as we have enough of a democracy that gives us the right to make our personal food choices, our individual actions can be incredibly powerful.

We don’t need a revolution. Remember the typewriter? There was no revolution to oust it from our offices. We didn’t have burn-the-typewriter marches. It’s just that something different came along and from individual to individual, office to office, country to country, we embraced it. The company which was most famous for the typewriter had to either change or wither, because people weren’t buying typewriters any more. (It changed. IBM is still in the marketplace today.) Other enterprises started. The world went on. We needed different knowledge to use the typewriter’s successor. But gradually we skilled up. And the world, for better or worse, is definitely a different place because of it. So it can be with the food we eat.