I was miserably sick for about a week recently, and it really stunk. I didn't exercise, I ate a ton of "comfort foods" and was barely mobile for a few days. I went to the doctor and got diagnosed and treated for step throat. I don't know why they call it strep throat when you feel the pain from head to toe. As you may now notice, I also didn't have the time or energy to write for this blog. So I thought it appropriate to discuss getting back into a routine after being away from it for a period of time. Getting back on the horse, as it were. Interestingly, I found that I really missed my running routine. I find this particularly interesting because, for the longest time in my life, I really did not like working out. I found it to be too time-consuming and frustrating. As I look back now, I understand why.
Our society, with its immediate gratification orientation made it impossible for me to see the benefits of working out. I'd try to go for a run or go work out having completely unrealistic ideas about how far I should be able to run or how long and hard I should be able to work out, and with what weights, etc. I would get winded quickly, be VERY sore for the next few days and give up. Here was my mind set, "I'm young and fit; I should be able to do this." So, without any regard to the fact that I had never worked out or run on a regular basis before in my life, I would try to run a 5K or lift fifty pounds for twenty reps for three sets. When this didn't give me immediate results of fitness, it would reinforce in my mind that working out wasn't really worth the effort ,or that it was only for those people who were really out of shape and unhealthy, not me. Luckily, I know better now. When I was sure I felt well enough, I got ready for a run. I realized that, not having been out for two weeks, I should go for a shorter, more gentle run, and start working my way back up. I ran for about half of the distance I would have gone before and went more slowly and, guess what, it worked!! I struggled a bit, was breathing harder at the end and was a little sore the next day, but not discouragingly so. It was the feel-good kinda sore that lets you know you did well. I am now almost back up to two miles per run about three times a week and I'm still enjoying it. Can you say, "healthy addiction?"
As for eating comfort foods, getting back on that horse wasn't too hard, believe it or not. So, I ate a lot of carbohydrates while I was sick. Noodle soup, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, deep-fat-fried Chinese food… While I was sick, I didn't feel like cooking and I ate what felt good. Once I felt better, it was easy to switch back to eating more fruits and veggies, some leaner meats, and more healthful starches like rice and potatoes, and all in smaller portions.
I am finding that a lunch of a baggie of raw nuts (no salt), a sliced-up apple, a few pretzels, and carrots and a juice or water is really all I need most days. I even had a salad from McDonald's when the occasion arose to take my kids there. I normally really like to have the hamburgers there and since we don't go there all that often, I used to think, "What the heck? I won't kill me. At least not today…?" But now I have successfully broken that habit too! Can you hear me patting myself on the back?
And finally we come down to the writing I am doing right now. I am absolutely certain that if I never wrote another blog post again, the world would continue to turn. Nobody may even miss it enough to say, "Hey, you haven't written a post in a while!" And that would be okay if I had something more meaningful to do to fill this time. But I enjoy writing about my experiences and it is helping me stay focused on the fact that my health and life balance are very important to me. It feels good to do this and so I am finding the time. And that is the crux of it right there. Finding the time to do the MOST important things in life. Finding time for your own fulfillment and creating a sense of peace in your world and realizing that it is a long-term process. This is also a continual process. I'm finding I need to remind myself of the MOST
important things so that I do those instead of filling my time with other things that are simply being squeaky wheels at the moment. The squeaky wheel can get the grease, but not until I've finished my run. I wrote a post a while back that extolled the virtues of saying "no" (see post entitled Moms with Toddlers... yep, it's a problem.). This has also been a key to getting back on my personal wellness horse. Because I haven't taken on more than I could chew in a while, I was able to recover from being "out of the box" pretty quickly instead of feeling like I was really behind and having to pull an all-nighter to catch up. I feel like now, in general, I am only juggling about six balls instead of ten or twelve, and it feels much better. I am convinced that there is an optimal level of tension that we all should strive for. Without enough to do, or without enough things that are personally fulfilling, we tend to do nothing, ignoring our health and hence even the well being of our families. With too much to do, we create stress in our lives and forget to do only what's important in favor of doing everything that we are capable of doing. I have called this "the curse of competence" and I will write about it some time, but I bet you can already read the post in your head, no?
So that's how I did it. I got back into the saddle by not having an overwhelming amount of things to do which would have made it easy for me to keep putting off my health. I then made conscious decisions and took deliberate actions to get back on the right track. In the book Seven Habit of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey points out that the word "responsible" can also be broken down into the parts response-able. We are all able to respond to outside forces in many ways. We can allow them to discourage us or we can make a plan to respond in a positive way. I got back on the horse!!!
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Revolt Against Food
The other day, I was making a dinner of chicken breasts, roasted cauliflower and rice pilaf when it occurred to me that many Americans, maybe even most of us, no longer know what food is. Per the dictionary, food is defined as "material, usually of plant or animal origin, that contains or consists of essential body nutrients…" The problem with this definition is that we now eat things that are often so far removed from their plant or animal origins as to be unrecognizable. Most products that come in packages these days are so stripped of their original nutrients that they are "fortified" with added artificial vitamins and minerals. Interestingly, the food processors and manufacturers, rather than apologizing for having to add back into their products the original nutrients, have turned the conversation on its ear through their marketing and made the addition of artificial nutrients a bonus! So it occurred to me that we need to re-examine what food is.
First let's look at what food isn't, or more appropriately, what isn't food. BHT isn't food. It is used in many packaged foods to preserve freshness. Artificial color isn't food. It is used to make prepared foods more visually appealing (or to make your kids think some foods are super-fun). I don't know how many people know this, but "natural flavor" isn't really natural. Depending on how a flavor is created, whether it is extracted from a plant or other source via solvent versus a chemical reaction, it can be labeled "natural flavor." If it is created by mixing a bunch of chemicals together, it certainly cannot be called natural, and it also certainly isn't food. When I read the label off a packaged loaf of bread at the grocery store, I feel like I should have gotten a PhD in chemistry just for getting to the end of the list. When my aunt makes bread it consists of yeast, flour, water, a little oil or butter, and a little
salt. That's it. If I actually force myself to pick up a box of Trix, or some other wholly repulsive packaged product, I am usually horrified by the litany of non-food ingredients. So I ask you, should we really call it food just because it's edible?
I happen to have a box of "goldfish" here in my house. The first and most striking thing about them is their shape. I've gotta hand it to the person who thought of creating a goldfish-shaped cracker from that weirdly orange dough. So think about it… wheat, mechanically pulverized into a fine powder, mixed with cheddar cheese that was colored with annatto, a "natural" food dye, some oils, spices and yeast products, all pressed into a cute shape, baked and packaged. I actually allow these into my house because they do not contain BHT, BHA, artificial flavor or colors (again, though, if you have to add color at all, is it really natural??), and no other unpronounceable chemicals or unrecognizable ingredients. But when I think about it more, I have to ask myself, "Why?" Why would I allow anyone in my family to eat these aberrations of food? Because I appreciate the marketing giants' creativity? No. The answers are the usual ones. They are extremely convenient, my children like them, and they are difficult to avoid since they are seemingly ubiquitous. The McDonald's reasons. None of which are good reasons. So let's look at how to change what we view as food. There are lots of movements out there in the food world to look to as a guide. Slow food, organic food, raw food, vegetarianism, veganism, caloric restriction, the Atkins', South Beach, Feingold, Mediterranean, Rotation, and Elimination diets… It gets absolutely dizzying if you are looking into it in order to figure out what is healthy to eat. But, as with most things, I believe there is a simple way to figure it out. I once heard someone say that if you can't pick it or shoot it, you probably shouldn't eat it. I think I like this concept the best. Apples are food. Pears, pork chops and peas are food. Rice, chicken and broccoli are food. Perhaps crackers and breads are food, but maybe they are a little further
away from the source than you want to be most of the time. One school of thought out there is that people have gotten so good at innovating, that we are outpacing our bodies' ability to adapt to the new foods we are creating. Plant hybridization was a fast way to evolve fruits, veggies and legumes to be more pest, drought and blight resistant. Gene splicing has out-paced that geometrically. Just what is a Grapple, anyway??? I have heard them called Franken-foods, by the way. I thought that was funny, in a wry kind of way. rBGH is not food and shouldn't be near your source of food, in my opinion. BHA and BHT, doubly so. If we're evolving faster than the foods we're creating, certainly it can't be a good idea to actually eat chemicals!! I think that if you wouldn't feed it directly to your children by the spoonful, perhaps it shouldn't be injected into their food supply. Another way to look at it is, if you wouldn't cook with it yourself, why is it in your package? Now, far be it for me to say that all packaged and prepared foods are poison; I don't believe this… entirely… But I do think we should really consider what is in the package or wrapper more than the marketing pitch before we buy. Forget the pictures and the commercials, read the ingredients.
A celebrity gourmet by the name of Jamie Oliver has started a movement called the Food Revolution taking aim at people's typical eating habits. I think it is brilliant and horribly overdue, and I also think it is a shame. A shame that we have strayed so far off the path of good eating that we actually have to revolt against the fast and packaged food marketing machines in order to get ourselves back on track, but so be it. Dump the Flamin' Hot Cheetos into the disposal while eating a peach. Power to the people!!
First let's look at what food isn't, or more appropriately, what isn't food. BHT isn't food. It is used in many packaged foods to preserve freshness. Artificial color isn't food. It is used to make prepared foods more visually appealing (or to make your kids think some foods are super-fun). I don't know how many people know this, but "natural flavor" isn't really natural. Depending on how a flavor is created, whether it is extracted from a plant or other source via solvent versus a chemical reaction, it can be labeled "natural flavor." If it is created by mixing a bunch of chemicals together, it certainly cannot be called natural, and it also certainly isn't food. When I read the label off a packaged loaf of bread at the grocery store, I feel like I should have gotten a PhD in chemistry just for getting to the end of the list. When my aunt makes bread it consists of yeast, flour, water, a little oil or butter, and a little
salt. That's it. If I actually force myself to pick up a box of Trix, or some other wholly repulsive packaged product, I am usually horrified by the litany of non-food ingredients. So I ask you, should we really call it food just because it's edible?
I happen to have a box of "goldfish" here in my house. The first and most striking thing about them is their shape. I've gotta hand it to the person who thought of creating a goldfish-shaped cracker from that weirdly orange dough. So think about it… wheat, mechanically pulverized into a fine powder, mixed with cheddar cheese that was colored with annatto, a "natural" food dye, some oils, spices and yeast products, all pressed into a cute shape, baked and packaged. I actually allow these into my house because they do not contain BHT, BHA, artificial flavor or colors (again, though, if you have to add color at all, is it really natural??), and no other unpronounceable chemicals or unrecognizable ingredients. But when I think about it more, I have to ask myself, "Why?" Why would I allow anyone in my family to eat these aberrations of food? Because I appreciate the marketing giants' creativity? No. The answers are the usual ones. They are extremely convenient, my children like them, and they are difficult to avoid since they are seemingly ubiquitous. The McDonald's reasons. None of which are good reasons. So let's look at how to change what we view as food. There are lots of movements out there in the food world to look to as a guide. Slow food, organic food, raw food, vegetarianism, veganism, caloric restriction, the Atkins', South Beach, Feingold, Mediterranean, Rotation, and Elimination diets… It gets absolutely dizzying if you are looking into it in order to figure out what is healthy to eat. But, as with most things, I believe there is a simple way to figure it out. I once heard someone say that if you can't pick it or shoot it, you probably shouldn't eat it. I think I like this concept the best. Apples are food. Pears, pork chops and peas are food. Rice, chicken and broccoli are food. Perhaps crackers and breads are food, but maybe they are a little further
away from the source than you want to be most of the time. One school of thought out there is that people have gotten so good at innovating, that we are outpacing our bodies' ability to adapt to the new foods we are creating. Plant hybridization was a fast way to evolve fruits, veggies and legumes to be more pest, drought and blight resistant. Gene splicing has out-paced that geometrically. Just what is a Grapple, anyway??? I have heard them called Franken-foods, by the way. I thought that was funny, in a wry kind of way. rBGH is not food and shouldn't be near your source of food, in my opinion. BHA and BHT, doubly so. If we're evolving faster than the foods we're creating, certainly it can't be a good idea to actually eat chemicals!! I think that if you wouldn't feed it directly to your children by the spoonful, perhaps it shouldn't be injected into their food supply. Another way to look at it is, if you wouldn't cook with it yourself, why is it in your package? Now, far be it for me to say that all packaged and prepared foods are poison; I don't believe this… entirely… But I do think we should really consider what is in the package or wrapper more than the marketing pitch before we buy. Forget the pictures and the commercials, read the ingredients.
A celebrity gourmet by the name of Jamie Oliver has started a movement called the Food Revolution taking aim at people's typical eating habits. I think it is brilliant and horribly overdue, and I also think it is a shame. A shame that we have strayed so far off the path of good eating that we actually have to revolt against the fast and packaged food marketing machines in order to get ourselves back on track, but so be it. Dump the Flamin' Hot Cheetos into the disposal while eating a peach. Power to the people!!
Snacks vs. Treats
I see commercials that offend my sensibilities very often nowadays. I get offended when a spokesperson tells me that a drug, along with a sensible diet, will help me shed pounds faster. How about instead I just use the sensible diet, start exercising like I should have been my whole life, and take my own sweet time losing the weight so that I can really understand what it takes to keep the pounds off and eat healthy. I get offended when cereal companies tell me that sugar-frosted-carbohydrate-bombs can be "part of a nutritious breakfast," because they can't. Denatured, extruded grain sludge mixed with three different kinds of sugar can not be part of anything nutritious, especially not breakfast. A healthy breakfast is a piece of fruit or some berries, a cup of all-natural yogurt and a handful of nuts or an egg. A bowl of sugary cereal and a glass of orange juice is the stuff that insulin spikes and crashes are made of. No wonder everyone is out getting a giant coffee to get through the morning and an "energy drink" for the afternoon. But the other day I saw a commercial that really got me mad. A cereal company thinks that it is a good idea for you to eat cereal as a snack during the work day. Now, if you are eating healthy, truly healthy, you may need snacks during the day. Again, your snacks should be nuts, fresh or dried fruits, yogurt (all natural here, please), cottage cheese, a small snack of lunch meat and hard cheese, fresh snap peas… things like that. Anything, and I mean anything, that has sugar as one of its first four ingredients is a treat, not a snack. This includes 99% of all "granola" bars, by the way. If you're eating granola bars thinking that they are a good, healthy snack, you should just go ahead and opt for the Snickers and at least not be fooling yourself. If your "trail mix" has chocolate in it, it's a treat. If your cereal has the word "frosted" in the name, it's a treat. I don't care if it is "all natural," "organic," "healthy," or "fat free," it's a treat.
Now, before you get mad at yourself, or, worse yet, at me, I think we shouldn't blame ourselves too much for succumbing to years of hard marketing. After all, many of these packages have the word "snack" printed right on them! But it's time to stop believing everything you read, call a spade a spade, and realize that most of what Americans ingest today is essentially a dessert. Some form of sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup (heaven forbid), fructose, brown sugar, brown rice syrup, lactose… is in every packaged and prepared good you can find in the grocery store. Sugars have invaded most of our breads and lunch meats making even your lunch sandwich into a dessert. Now, I hear some of you saying, "But fruits have lots of sugar!" Yes, those marketers want you to think that a granola bar and a peach are interchangeable. Let me tell you why they are not, hopefully without boring you too much.
Most fruit and vegetable sugar is glucose, a monosaccharide or simple carbohydrate with a single-sugar molecular structure. Single-sugar molecules do not need to be further digested, and are readily absorbed as a nutrient. Glucose is, of course, the main energy source for your rain when you are eating carbohydrates (your brain can also use ketones when you are starving, on the
Atkin's Diet, or use coconut as your main sugar source as in some remote areas). Disaccharides and polysaccharides are complex carbohydrates, and they need to be broken down by enzymes in your intestines in order to be available as an energy nutrient. These include table sugar made from beet or cane, starches like grains and grain flours, and other natural sugars like the lactose in milk products.
So taking the peach as an example, very little of the peach is going to end up as body fat or waste. Unfortunately, the FDA does not currently require companies to distinguish between simple and complex carbohydrates, but from a nutritional facts website (here's a good one http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1990/2), I found that, aside from the 17.3 grams of carbs, which again are mostly single-sugar, the peach has only about 70 calories, 0 fat, is full of Vitamin C, Vitamin A, phosphorus, potassium, fiber… Holy cow, you'd think you couldn't find a healthier food just looking at the nutritional info. Plus, it is as filling and a regular-sized muffin, I'd say. Let's look at the muffin, shall we? Let's ignore the obviously ridiculous Cranberry-Orange favorite from your local coffee house that has 410 calories, 53 grams of mostly complex carbs, and 20 grams of fat, and use an average, plain muffin made with 2% milk. Calories, 169, carbs, 23.6 grams (here, mostly complex carbs), fat, 6.5 grams. There is some nutrition in this one, for sure, but a lot of it is locked up in the stuff that is going to end up as waste, because, if you're having this as a "snack" you're body is already getting nutrition from other sources. Your body will, however, be inclined to store some of the excess nutrition as fat so you can get through lean times… like recessions. I wonder how many families switched from pizza to beans during the last few months… hmmmm, if only…??? Anyway, I know I didn't delve into the really biomechanical factors of why simple carbohydrates are better for you than complex carbohydrates, but you can research it further if you'd like. In the meantime, you should look at anything that has complex carbs in it as a treat, not a snack. So KISSS (Keep It Simple-Sugar, Stupid) your food, and enjoy better health.
Now, before you get mad at yourself, or, worse yet, at me, I think we shouldn't blame ourselves too much for succumbing to years of hard marketing. After all, many of these packages have the word "snack" printed right on them! But it's time to stop believing everything you read, call a spade a spade, and realize that most of what Americans ingest today is essentially a dessert. Some form of sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup (heaven forbid), fructose, brown sugar, brown rice syrup, lactose… is in every packaged and prepared good you can find in the grocery store. Sugars have invaded most of our breads and lunch meats making even your lunch sandwich into a dessert. Now, I hear some of you saying, "But fruits have lots of sugar!" Yes, those marketers want you to think that a granola bar and a peach are interchangeable. Let me tell you why they are not, hopefully without boring you too much.
Most fruit and vegetable sugar is glucose, a monosaccharide or simple carbohydrate with a single-sugar molecular structure. Single-sugar molecules do not need to be further digested, and are readily absorbed as a nutrient. Glucose is, of course, the main energy source for your rain when you are eating carbohydrates (your brain can also use ketones when you are starving, on the
Atkin's Diet, or use coconut as your main sugar source as in some remote areas). Disaccharides and polysaccharides are complex carbohydrates, and they need to be broken down by enzymes in your intestines in order to be available as an energy nutrient. These include table sugar made from beet or cane, starches like grains and grain flours, and other natural sugars like the lactose in milk products.
So taking the peach as an example, very little of the peach is going to end up as body fat or waste. Unfortunately, the FDA does not currently require companies to distinguish between simple and complex carbohydrates, but from a nutritional facts website (here's a good one http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1990/2), I found that, aside from the 17.3 grams of carbs, which again are mostly single-sugar, the peach has only about 70 calories, 0 fat, is full of Vitamin C, Vitamin A, phosphorus, potassium, fiber… Holy cow, you'd think you couldn't find a healthier food just looking at the nutritional info. Plus, it is as filling and a regular-sized muffin, I'd say. Let's look at the muffin, shall we? Let's ignore the obviously ridiculous Cranberry-Orange favorite from your local coffee house that has 410 calories, 53 grams of mostly complex carbs, and 20 grams of fat, and use an average, plain muffin made with 2% milk. Calories, 169, carbs, 23.6 grams (here, mostly complex carbs), fat, 6.5 grams. There is some nutrition in this one, for sure, but a lot of it is locked up in the stuff that is going to end up as waste, because, if you're having this as a "snack" you're body is already getting nutrition from other sources. Your body will, however, be inclined to store some of the excess nutrition as fat so you can get through lean times… like recessions. I wonder how many families switched from pizza to beans during the last few months… hmmmm, if only…??? Anyway, I know I didn't delve into the really biomechanical factors of why simple carbohydrates are better for you than complex carbohydrates, but you can research it further if you'd like. In the meantime, you should look at anything that has complex carbs in it as a treat, not a snack. So KISSS (Keep It Simple-Sugar, Stupid) your food, and enjoy better health.
Good Food Gone Bad
Hello. My name is Jackie Verrilli and I'm a packaged-food-aholic. Since everyone says that recognizing the problem is 90% of the cure, I figure I'm almost there. But every day is hard. I am a mom who moves at the speed of light, doing laundry, checking e-mails, and getting the swimming and baseball gear together, all before having my morning coffee. I buy birthday presents, send e-mails to the PTA committee I serve on, and set up play dates for my kids
before noon. I fold and put away the laundry, drive my kids to their play dates/activities/doctor appointments, call my parents, grocery shop, pick up my kids and play Legos with them before dinner. It shouldn't surprise anyone that I am a packaged-food junkie. In a world gone mad with immediate gratification, I can't resist the ease and satisfaction of a toaster pastry, the seduction of a drive-through lunch, or the utter simplicity of a microwaveable bag of green beans, a pre-seasoned turkey breast, and an easily opened and dumped out box of flavored rice. This is how we eat today. This is mein kampf. But I know the solution, I have come to terms with it, and I have even gotten therapy from an expert, and so my struggle continues as I learn how to THROW AWAY FOOD!! There… I said it. That is what we all need to learn to do. It's the only way out.
If we look back into pre-history, our hunter-gatherer forebears ate a lot of meat or fish, fruits, vegetables and nuts. And pretty much nothing else. This is, what… maybe twenty thousand years ago? When every individual in the group had to learn to hunt. They all worked together so that the group could survive. Then about ten thousand years ago, civilizations got organized and individuals started to farm land, domesticate animals and store food. Everyone knew how to grow food in big plots of land and everyone tended the animals and everyone learned to make cheese and cure meat. Then, it all started to go downhill. Once someone figured out that they could farm chickens by themselves in large numbers and trade the excess eggs and meat to people who could butcher hogs or mill wheat. That's when it became "every man for himself." Make no mistake… technology and greed killed the clan.
In the 1960's the phrase, "better living through chemistry" was as top-of-mind as "I'm lovin' it!" is today. Before preservatives and mass quantity food production techniques, it used to take hours to prepare meals. That's what women did with their excess creativity in the 1950's, they cooked. A lot. If you look at a pre-1960's cookbook, you will see elaborate sauce recipes and multi-side-dish meals. Now we watch such meals being prepared on television after we've fed the kids a frozen pizza for the third time this week. This is not an indictment, people, it's a cry for help. I used to cook a lot. I liked to cook. Until my kids finally beat me into submission and I just started serving chicken nuggets, fish sticks, frozen pizza, and hot dogs in a monotonous rotation. We moms used to baste a turkey for hours, make green beans almandine, and whip the mashed potatoes with the new-fangled electric mixer that was such a time-saver. Now, the time-saver is a petro-chemical, a high-tech irradiating or freezing process, or a dielectic heating appliance (microwave oven, a.k.a. nuker). These things were invented to save time, but alas, they were too far ahead of their time, and so, Prozac was invented. Yes, as we moms gained more time to sit and either melt our brains with soap operas or think about our lives post college, we realized that, without a use for our creativity, we got depressed. But no need to worry, chemicals to the rescue!! Yes ladies, I believe that packaged food is a cause of depression, however indirect.
But heavy-duty food processing all started before my time, so I thought it was just the natural order of things to be able to nuke a meal or to store goods in a pantry for weeks before I used them. Before I knew it, I was addicted. "Using" allowed me more time to Facebook and make connections with people I don't really care about. But wellness intervened and now I know that pre-prepared, processed, packaged, chemical-laced, super-refined-sugar-infused foods are simply bad for me. Our once-good foods have turned bad because you can't buy meals in a package that don't have sugar, chemicals or extra fillers in them. Luckily, I had a good friend, a vegan (the aforementioned expert), who told me how to let myself off the hook. "Jackie," she said, "good food goes bad, and when it does, you have to let it go." I finally understood what she meant when I began to throw away spent fresh broccoli. It was soooooo hard to do. I had been taught that throwing away food was a sin akin to murder. My parents never threw any food substance away. They also never signed me up for ballet, gymnastics and piano in the same week. As a matter of fact, they never signed me up for anything and I still went to college, got an MBA and have a successful marriage. WILD!! They also ALWAYS cooked. Nothing had time to go bad because we were always home for dinner, so a week's worth of groceries was gone in a week. FREAKY!!
I have kids that have activities, and they are spoiled beyond all recognition of the old school. I would go for a "fix" whenever they complained. "Yes, I'll make you some mac-n-cheese," even though I just slaved over coq au vin and brown butter orzo. But with my intervention behind me, I am once again cooking for my family when I can. Simpler meals that the kids still don't always eat enthusiastically, but with the bribe of a packaged cookie at the end, they will manage to choke down. Every week, I buy a week's worth of groceries, but since I don't always get the chance cook, every week I end up throwing something that was fresh but that became putrid in the fridge away. I still feel sad when I do it, but I know that it is important for my family's health to have the fresh food available at all times. I believe that I will learn to plan better and so waste less over time. I also have promised myself to buy a composter within the next year. But they tell you not to make too many other changes while you're recovering, and so I'll just have to be patient and forgive myself when the tomatoes get black spots, the raspberries get soft, and the zucchini grow fuzzy. I'm taking every day as it comes and I have internalized the fact that good food goes bad, and that that is okay.
before noon. I fold and put away the laundry, drive my kids to their play dates/activities/doctor appointments, call my parents, grocery shop, pick up my kids and play Legos with them before dinner. It shouldn't surprise anyone that I am a packaged-food junkie. In a world gone mad with immediate gratification, I can't resist the ease and satisfaction of a toaster pastry, the seduction of a drive-through lunch, or the utter simplicity of a microwaveable bag of green beans, a pre-seasoned turkey breast, and an easily opened and dumped out box of flavored rice. This is how we eat today. This is mein kampf. But I know the solution, I have come to terms with it, and I have even gotten therapy from an expert, and so my struggle continues as I learn how to THROW AWAY FOOD!! There… I said it. That is what we all need to learn to do. It's the only way out.
If we look back into pre-history, our hunter-gatherer forebears ate a lot of meat or fish, fruits, vegetables and nuts. And pretty much nothing else. This is, what… maybe twenty thousand years ago? When every individual in the group had to learn to hunt. They all worked together so that the group could survive. Then about ten thousand years ago, civilizations got organized and individuals started to farm land, domesticate animals and store food. Everyone knew how to grow food in big plots of land and everyone tended the animals and everyone learned to make cheese and cure meat. Then, it all started to go downhill. Once someone figured out that they could farm chickens by themselves in large numbers and trade the excess eggs and meat to people who could butcher hogs or mill wheat. That's when it became "every man for himself." Make no mistake… technology and greed killed the clan.
In the 1960's the phrase, "better living through chemistry" was as top-of-mind as "I'm lovin' it!" is today. Before preservatives and mass quantity food production techniques, it used to take hours to prepare meals. That's what women did with their excess creativity in the 1950's, they cooked. A lot. If you look at a pre-1960's cookbook, you will see elaborate sauce recipes and multi-side-dish meals. Now we watch such meals being prepared on television after we've fed the kids a frozen pizza for the third time this week. This is not an indictment, people, it's a cry for help. I used to cook a lot. I liked to cook. Until my kids finally beat me into submission and I just started serving chicken nuggets, fish sticks, frozen pizza, and hot dogs in a monotonous rotation. We moms used to baste a turkey for hours, make green beans almandine, and whip the mashed potatoes with the new-fangled electric mixer that was such a time-saver. Now, the time-saver is a petro-chemical, a high-tech irradiating or freezing process, or a dielectic heating appliance (microwave oven, a.k.a. nuker). These things were invented to save time, but alas, they were too far ahead of their time, and so, Prozac was invented. Yes, as we moms gained more time to sit and either melt our brains with soap operas or think about our lives post college, we realized that, without a use for our creativity, we got depressed. But no need to worry, chemicals to the rescue!! Yes ladies, I believe that packaged food is a cause of depression, however indirect.
But heavy-duty food processing all started before my time, so I thought it was just the natural order of things to be able to nuke a meal or to store goods in a pantry for weeks before I used them. Before I knew it, I was addicted. "Using" allowed me more time to Facebook and make connections with people I don't really care about. But wellness intervened and now I know that pre-prepared, processed, packaged, chemical-laced, super-refined-sugar-infused foods are simply bad for me. Our once-good foods have turned bad because you can't buy meals in a package that don't have sugar, chemicals or extra fillers in them. Luckily, I had a good friend, a vegan (the aforementioned expert), who told me how to let myself off the hook. "Jackie," she said, "good food goes bad, and when it does, you have to let it go." I finally understood what she meant when I began to throw away spent fresh broccoli. It was soooooo hard to do. I had been taught that throwing away food was a sin akin to murder. My parents never threw any food substance away. They also never signed me up for ballet, gymnastics and piano in the same week. As a matter of fact, they never signed me up for anything and I still went to college, got an MBA and have a successful marriage. WILD!! They also ALWAYS cooked. Nothing had time to go bad because we were always home for dinner, so a week's worth of groceries was gone in a week. FREAKY!!
I have kids that have activities, and they are spoiled beyond all recognition of the old school. I would go for a "fix" whenever they complained. "Yes, I'll make you some mac-n-cheese," even though I just slaved over coq au vin and brown butter orzo. But with my intervention behind me, I am once again cooking for my family when I can. Simpler meals that the kids still don't always eat enthusiastically, but with the bribe of a packaged cookie at the end, they will manage to choke down. Every week, I buy a week's worth of groceries, but since I don't always get the chance cook, every week I end up throwing something that was fresh but that became putrid in the fridge away. I still feel sad when I do it, but I know that it is important for my family's health to have the fresh food available at all times. I believe that I will learn to plan better and so waste less over time. I also have promised myself to buy a composter within the next year. But they tell you not to make too many other changes while you're recovering, and so I'll just have to be patient and forgive myself when the tomatoes get black spots, the raspberries get soft, and the zucchini grow fuzzy. I'm taking every day as it comes and I have internalized the fact that good food goes bad, and that that is okay.
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