Frankly, eating clean is not easy when you are ruled by instant gratification and a strong desire for bagels and cream cheese. Lately, I’ve been really making an effort to eat “clean”, meaning cutting way back on heavily processed items. If I want bread, I make it. If I want rice, I do it old school – no minute rice. In short, I force myself to make the junk food on my own and it takes a lot more effort than ripping open a box. I’ve been having home grown spaghetti squash roasted with chicken cutlets, whole garlic cloves, and yellow onion chunks drizzled in olive oil and served over a bed of fresh spinach. That really sounds Holy Healthy, a dish to make any food elitist sniff to herself and think herself all high and mighty. Luckily, it tastes darn good because no matter how elite a dish seems, if it doesn’t taste good I’m not having any of it.
But I haven’t gotten around to making my own bagels or cream cheese despite the fact I know how to do both.
And the ability to create healthy, fresh food does not in and of itself wipe away the desire to pop in a Stouffer’s lasagna and call it a night.
What is wrong with instant food?
Two weeks ago, I would have responded with, “Meh, anything in moderation.” But now I wonder if that is what is killing our nation. Because we *say* moderation but we do otherwise. Also, most importantly, we aren’t really eating real food anymore.
Blame it on Michael Pollan and his manifesto In Defense of Food. His motto: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Sounds easy, right? But it isn’t, if you really think about it. Farmer’s markets and “clean eating” is just coming into vogue; grocery stores still lure you down the aisles to tempt you with quick and easy meals that have very little real food in it. Read a label (I know you do anyway). But not the “nutrients.” Read that ingredient label. Like on a Sara Lee bread. Bread is really only supposed to be a combo of flour, yeast, water, and sugar (if you use milk, you wouldn’t even need the sugar). Sometimes eggs are tossed in for texture, salt for flavor, but that’s really is it. Now look at your bread.
What the heck is it? It isn’t bread. It is this science experiment engineered to give us maximum pleasure with removing untold amounts of nutrients in the process.
Getting to the meat of the matter:
The book blew my mind and finished shattering any confidence I have in taking any science at full face value. Especially nutritional science. One day we’re not supposed to eat eggs, then it is no bread, then it is more bran, then it is no butter but margarine but now margarine is going to kill us all.
Sigh. Aren’t you just tired of the nutritional world just NOT ADMITTING that they don’t know anything? It’s like the biology community stating as fact that they have discovered every last species on Earth and then discovering a brand new one the very next day. Of course, they don’t make those outrageous assumptions, but the realm of nutrition and food science does. They take whole, natural foods, make some ridiculous connection of some nutrient to heart disease (saturated fat), take it out of the food and replace it with something “better” (transfat), and then stand there and wonder why heart disease continues to increase. Oh, it is the transfats.
Whoops.
Well, I’m tired of the whoopsies. I’m ready to say “f-it” to every last piece of advice from any scientist who boasts that they have it all figured out. (Has anyone wondered why I keep throwing down the bullshit card each and every time a scientist announces that global warming is a human induced problem? GROWL!)
You know what probably won’t kill me? Whole foods. Foods from a garden, foods from farms that raise grass-fed cattle.
Ok: so what will I do when I go out and get myself a McDouble? Eat it, goddammit. Cuz I like me some plastic food sometimes.
But not for long. I’m not sure if it is too late for my eating choices to have an impact on my own health (i.e. has the damage already been done?) but if we do start a family my choices will impact our children.
Time for some tough choices.
It’s funny. I rely on the absolute truth of math, and yet I know sometimes 1+1 does not equal 2. I’m losing my faith in everything that I’ve trusted in. Does that suck, or is that an opportunity to inject more imagination and creativity and color in such a black and white scientific universe?
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