If you read my post called "The Food for Our Food", I talked about what I learned from author Michael Pollan about corn-fed cattle. I had recently watched his documentary called Food, Inc., and as well as explaining why we should only eat grass fed beef, it helped to answer a question I have had for many years. "Why it is cheaper to eat at a fast food restaurant than to buy whole, fresh food at the grocery store and cook it at home?."
The answer is government subsidies. The way I understand it, the government started paying the farmers to grow as much corn as they can. Because of this, corn became so inexpensive and so plentiful, that it was necessary to find more things to do with it. That's when the chemical companies became involved. If it's not in the box or the bottle, it is part of the box or the bottle.
They managed to turn this single golden crop into hundreds of food additives. It became much more than a grain that could make porridge, tortillas, bread, and polenta. It became a sweetener called high fructose corn syrup. It became a thickener called corn starch. It became a substitute for wheat gluten called xanthum gum. If you go to
http://www.ontariocorn.org/classroom/products.html
you will find "A Zillion Uses For Corn". It also said that out off 10,000 items in a typical grocery store, at least 2,500 use corn in some form during production or processing. More recently, based upon the success of feeding corn to livestock, it is even becoming food for farmed fish.
Whole grains are supposed to be very healthy, providing fiber and other important nutrients. Whole grains are considered a crucial part of a balanced diet, but how balanced can our diets be if there is so much corn in everything? How wrong is it that the obesity epidemic is blamed on the eating habits of the obese individual when the food manufacturers are hiding corn derivatives within the labels of their processed food?
Growing up right around the time a fast food giant hit their billionth hamburger, I remember that going there to eat lunch was a treat we got once a week on the day we went grocery shopping. The rest of the time my mother cooked from scratch. Then, slowly, our meals began to change, and I started learning how to cook by reading the back of a box.
If we continue in this direction our children may find themselves eating nothing but nutrition bars with additives made out of nothing but corn and sucking desert out of a plastic tube. Oh wait...they are already doing that.
I am a single parent, and I totally understand how difficult it is to work full time and take care for your family. Now, I am a grandma and I still work full time and babysit on my days off. There is nothing I would rather do than stay home full time and give them the care they need and deserve, but there are bills to be paid to keep a roof over our heads and to feed and clothe everybody.
There was about a year in my life where I wasn't needed to help any of my kids. Everything was calm, everyone was working, the grandkids were in day care or finally in school. I only had to feed myself. I found out that eating can be a very simple process. Most mornings I had a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries. In the afternoon I liked to eat a large sweet potato, moistened with orange juice and sprinkled with cinnamon. I usually ate a large salad in the evening, because I heard somewhere that it's best to eat the salad last because the roughage helps push everything out that was eaten that day. Of course I also managed to have some snacks 3 or 4 times a day.
My point is that every meal doesn't have to contain every nutrional element listed on the food pyramid. Your kitchen isn't in the back of a restaurant, and I figure if kids can "survive" on having a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a bologne sandwich and a bag of chips for lunch, they don't need a dinner that has meat and potatoes, vegetables, soup or salad, and apple pie for desert. If we simplify our dinners maybe we can spend a little more time making breakfasts and lunches for them from whole foods, not just more corn out of a box. Let's end this obesity crisis. Let's get back to eating whole foods.
Michael Pollan explains that, "It is no coincidence that in the years national spending on health care went from 5 percent to 16 percent of national income, spending on food has fallen by a comparable amount — from 18 percent of household income to less than 10 percent." If this is the case, doesn't it make sense that by spending more on food we will spend less on health care? That is something I am willing to take a chance on.
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