'Edible Food-like Substances'?
Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 20:42 What in the heck is an ‘edible food-like substance’ and why should you care?
Let me put it this way, the gains made in longevity in America are due to surviving childhood, childhood diseases, and the advent of medical technology - lifesaving procedures - and NOT because our food supply has gotten better or more abundant.
Does that fly in the face of what you thought you knew?
In fact, since WWII, our food supply became less abundant. Oh, sure, there are more edible food-like products out there, but they are comprised of just a few components - primarily heavily subsidized components like corn - in hundreds of different guises, disguised as food.
Think Pringles. Think chicken nuggets. Think bottled salad dressing.
Why did you think that Americans surpass the world - and particularly the pre-industrialized world - in rates of diabetes, heart disease and cancer? Despite our supposed wealth and smarts?
There was nothing diverse in a Swanson frozen dinner or a meal at McDonalds. It was all about heavily subsidized industrialized farming. Beef or chicken, potato and maybe corn. In other words, an industrial protein and simple starches. Now, there’s a balanced diet.
Take a look at the yogurt aisle of the dairy section. Unless you’re shopping at a store like Whole Foods, it’s hard to find a really good plain yogurt. But you can find plenty of faux yogurt, flavored with every sort of nonsense on the planet, plus loads of sugar, stabilizers and such. Good foods like yogurt have become synomymous with substances more akin to ice cream and candy. Don’t believe me? Take a look at stupid stuff like Clif Bars.
Clif Bars (and all the so-called energy or nutrition bars on the market) are probably fine nutrition, if you’re climbing the face of El Capitan. But as a substitute for sitting down to a sensible meal, they’re crap. And expensive crap, at that. You’re paying a premium to be deluded that you’re eating well.
Sigh.
I spend a lot on groceries, I suppose. Perhaps, more than I have to. But I’d be willing to bet that dollar per dollar, I come home with more real, high quality food and less crap than most. Out of a grocery shopping trip, there might be one or possibly two items in the entire thing that are more than themselves. The cabbage is the cabbage. The eggs are just the eggs. That sort of thing. The yogurt is milk and the bacteria. The grains are whole.
Nothing more, nothing less.