Seattle Woman Vows to Eat, Drink Only Starbucks Items for a Year - East Idaho News
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Seattle Woman Vows to Eat, Drink Only Starbucks Items for a Year

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B 080311 Starbucks?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1357931254595Starbucks Corporation(SEATTLE) — When the new year rolls around, some people vow to spend more time with their family, others pledge to step up their Pilates routines. But Beautiful Existence — yes, that’s the legal name of a real person, not a philosophical question triggered by the new year — has another resolution for 2013:  To eat and drink only items from Starbucks for 12 straight months.

Based in Seattle — like Starbucks — Beautiful Existence, who’s  a wife, mother and veteran of the Year-Long Challenge (past resolutions have included her year of Goodwill hunting – that is,  shopping only at the famed thrift shop, and “taking on” Parents magazine),  is consuming only Starbucks’ products, which can now include Tazo Tea and Evolution Fresh, as the coffee giant recently acquired them.

The way Beautiful Existence sees it, it’s her duty as a “spoiled” American to test her mettle in such a way.

Not only is her goal to call attention to the plight of panini-free people, she’s also trying to make a feminist statement.

Jared Fogle shot to fame after losing 245 pounds in one year by eating only Subway products.  And Morgan Spurlock, whom Ms. Existence calls “Mr. McDonalds” in her blog, changed the way the world views fast food with his documentary Supersize Me.

But  Beautiful Existence laments, where “are all the women challenging themselves in the world? Where are the effects being shown on a woman’s culture? A woman’s family and children? A woman’s diet, weight, fashion, checkbook, community and world through challenges? Where is her voice on how an international company is directly or indirectly impacting everything from her waistline to her bottom line and every other woman’s, man’s, child’s, societies and planets world with their presence?”

(Actually, a woman named Christine shed 54 pounds in two years by eating low-fat meals at Taco Bell, but it is unclear whether this had any impact on other planets.)

Starbucks, for its part, is “honored” by the whole thing.

“We think it’s great,” spokeswoman Linda Mills told ABC News. “It speaks to the variety of food and beverage items in our stores…. We’re obviously very flattered that she would take on such an endeavor like this.”

So far, Ms. Existence has been enjoying her challenge, although steering clear of baked goods has proved a little tough. And she recently confessed to almost blowing the whole thing by licking a batter-covered spoon during an evening brownie-baking session.

Still, none of this would be worth it if there were no hurdles.  

That, after all, is what life is all about, she says.  “Things start out with reservation and hesitation, even fear, loathing, upset or ridicule. But it’s what that questioning leads to … the ideas, the engagement, the creativity, the expression, the involvement in life that make my questions, my challenges, my voice of only eating/drinking Starbucks for a year all the more sweet,” she notes.

“Because it is the question itself that brings us to what it is to be a woman, a mother, a blogger, an eater and drinker of only Starbucks for a year, basically… what it is to be a human.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

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