ContraCrop

I've started this blog to record my thoughts and research about food and health: how we grow our food, what we eat, the nutrition debate, food distribution, food sovereignty and environmental impact.

My life started down a new path after I read an article a couple of years ago in the New York Times magazine. I became fixated on learning all I could about our eating habits, the way our food is made, and the effects that the industrial food industry has had on our culture and our lives - physically and mentally.

This blog joins an ongoing discussion and is a place to voice interest, intrigue, and discovery. This is not a podium for lecturing, so please extend grace to each other if anything is found to be erroneous. Counter-arguments are encouraged with respect, empathy and compassion for other perspectives.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

The American Preference

Bravo to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution! If you haven't watched season 2, and you have netflix, watch episode 4 - it will astound you. His passion is inspiring, and his message of fresh, healthy and affordable is urgent. Everyone who cares about changing our current food industry is important, no matter what the intricacies of each person's view may be (whether pro-grain, contra-carbs, vegan, carnivore, etc.).

There are too many emerging and proven connections between the American diet and poor health & disease to be ignored any longer. Fresh, local and non-processed produce, dairy & meat have been touted as a luxury that only the wealthier can afford, but that doesn't have to be the case, as Jamie showed us in this episode (price of meal from fast-food: $31, price of meal cooked at home: $23). We will overcome these diet-related illnesses if and when consumers take action and work to make changes - the industry giants won't do it for you. It is appalling to watch the Food Revolution show and have to sit through commercials from Stauffer's about its new "healthy" lasagna. You are not a machine... why would you eat food that is made by one? The system of earth is set up to supply its organisms with food, in self-sustaining cycles.

The American preference for fast food is unnatural. We have been convinced, through countless hours of advertising, marketing and corporate influence that processed food tastes better than the real thing. The catch is that it is no longer food when it is stripped of nutrition and then "fortified" or artificially enhanced with "nutrients" in a manufacturing plant.

A piece of beef should taste like a cow, not like salt and oil - that's all I'm sayin'. A carrot should come with a bit of dirt on it so you know it hasn't been tampered with. What are those slimy, smooth, itty bitty, tasteless, bright orange things you buy labeled "baby carrots" in the store anyway?

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