About ten or so years ago I held vastly different notions of what real food was but I believed I had an awareness. I drank A&W root beer because it had no caffeine. In retrospect I see this like my father's logic when he drank Coors beer.because it had no preservatives. I had not yet developed a consciousness around HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) but I did know about caffeine. I ate industrial chicken before I knew the reality of industrial meat. Since that time I gave up chicken because it appears to be the worst of all the industrial meats. Free range organic chicken costs too much and often the term free range is a misnomer. Most free range chickens have only a few square feet to "range." At least cows see the light of day but their condition is not much different.
As far as my meat supply went I am fortunate enough to live in area where I can hunt and at the same time have the luxury of buying quality meat from local growers if I choose (just in case the hunting doesn't work out). I decided long ago that I would not partake of the swine. Seeing how hog waste pollutes most waterways of the Midwest I gave it up for environmental reasons. Plus I figured that two major world religions couldn't be wrong. Both the Jewish and Islamic faiths strictly ban pork. This taboo comes not just from religious superstition. Historically pork was known to be a primary cause of trichinosis. More recent research indicates that your body reacts to pork ingestion in the same way it reacts to other carcinogens.
Salads have always been a staple of my lunch and dinner. I used to drench my spinach in ranch dressing or something similar. One day I started reading the labels of those dressings and I was shocked to find....you guessed it...HFCS. I gave up dressing or just made my own from yogurt or balsamic vinegars and olive oil. I reached a certain point in my salad eating evolution where I just gave up dressing altogether and started to enjoy the natural subtle flavors of the raw vegetables and greens.
The greatest stimulus to actively pursue more knowledge about what I was putting in my body actually came from observing the people in the school environment. Almost every coach I have ever seen sports a huge belly that would make any Billy Bob proud. Teachers, because of their hectic schedules and their frequent indulgence in school lunches battled obesity. But it was the swelling students that caught my attention.
I have been running high ropes courses for more years than I can remember now. The conventional wisdom (back in the day) was that any person in average shape could participate successfully in the course. In the last five or so years i have noticed that an increasing number of students could not even lift their own weight once. They simply had too much body mass!
When I talk to most members of my boomer generation, almost without fail they can remember the one or two obese kids in their class. A young man who looked at a class picture from the '70s exclaimed that everybody looked so skinny until a boomer informed him that that's just how kids looked back then,
With all these observations and experience swirling around the whirlpool in the deep blue lagoon of my mind,
I just started asking questions. People a lot smarter than me have been asking better questions for quite some time now. Authors like Erich Schlosser who wrote "Fast Food Nation" and films like Food Inc. spurred my quest for knowledge.By far the most thought provoking book I read was The Omnivore's Dilemma . There are quite a few films and books out there now exposing the industrial food machine for what it is.
These days the little meat I consume is organic and raised in an ethical, respectful and responsible way. I wish I could afford all organic vegetables but I can't so I buy a mix of both. I eat a lot of brown rice and fresh fruit. And I must say I look pretty damn good for 49.
When I walk into different environments and observe the food habits of my friends and coworkers I try to balance education and compassion. One man, who recently quit smoking, consumes energy drinks and Slim Fast. I remember when I tried to lose weight and tried the Slim Fast approach. Only later did I discover it contains HFCS.
Health in America is going to have to be an evolution. The nation of teletubbies that we have become has been fifty years in the making. Let's hope it doesn't take that long to reverse it!
No comments:
Post a Comment