The politics of omnomnom
I) The food we eat is killing us
I used to believe the hype behind “healthy eating” products. I consumed Omega 3s, slurped down calorie-reduced yogurt by the packageful and if the packaging said it was good for me I’d be sure to stuff my face full of it.
Sadly, I was misinformed. As I’ve grown older – and more informed about food – I’ve come to realize how poorly children are taught about nutrition. The Canada Food Guide is a laughable POS; there’s soda and snack machines in our schools just spitting out candy in solid and liquid forms.
These kind of eating habits, without proper education, will lead to the hambeasts mowing down pedestrians in their motorized scooters (otherwise known as the Tea Party).
The food we eat is increasingly processed, sugared and sodium-ized. Gushers and Fruit Roll-Ups, delicious kid’s snacks continually advertised on children’s programming, are the fundamental problem with modern eating. Kids shovel that shit (as I did when I was their age) into their mouths because it’s fruit-flavoured sugar. They aren’t food, just refined sugar in different forms.
Our body doesn’t handle refined sugar too well. And it’s in everything in all sorts of ways. High fructose corn syrup is in bread, sodas and pretty much everything now. The ultimate irony behind Vitamin Water is that it’s flavoured with HFCS — and therefore super-unhealthy. Read this study to see some effects
And people wonder why diabetes and high blood pressure is on the rise.
II) Our ancestor’s diets should be ours
Let’s back up for a second and take a biological viewpoint here. Truly healthy eating is in a lot of ways similar to what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate: leafy veggies, berries, nuts some whole grains and a teeensy bit of dairy and meat.
There’s nothing wrong with that – a delicious meal can be made from with just that. Salad avec cashews, orange slices, cheese and chicken.
This link has a good example of what we should be looking for when it comes to eating.
III) Poor people are hardest hit
Food and eating are going to be huge issues moving forward, especially for the impoverished. Diabetes is quickly becoming a disease affecting the poorest people and the reasons are so sadly simple – lack of access to high quality fresh foods. In fact, the largest risk for type 2 diabetes is living in poverty.
Sadly, the reasons why they can’t access fresh food are depressing: it’s too expensive to eat well. Highly processed food is less expensive than buying fresh fruits and veggies. In some poor areas, like Jane and Finch, it’s actually much pricier to get healthy food than the average.
That’s a fucking shame.
The reason? Lack of economic access, which could be improved by increased transit access – like the dead, dead, dead Transit City plan. Another reason is the lack of competition in grocery stores, especially in immigrant families who can’t afford to drive and comparison shop that way, as stated in the TorSun article.
These problems aren’t easily ideologized into neat little policy platforms, though if they were actually tackled we could easily reduce health care costs. Sadly, it’s not sexy to help poor people — just stopping them from drinking from gravy trains or whatever.
IV) We can do something
That’s why I’ve made the effort to learn how to cook. It’s the first humble step to healthier eating. Just by taking the time and effort to make your own bread – with whole grains or unrefined, unbleached flour – can help. It’s cheaper than eating out, though definitely not as cheap as eating ramen or canned chili.
Let’s bring up an example to further prove my point. I made homemade mozzarella sticks over the weekend and I’ll argue strongly they were far more healthy than the ones crafted by Heinz.
Lookit how many ingredients there are!
What did mine have? Fresh, springy mozzarella cheese. Eggs. Panko bread crumbs, a healthy, sodium-light alternative to seasoned bread crumbs, and high-quality grapeseed oil for frying (note: the amount of oil used was approximately about a teaspoon for all the sticks). A half teaspoon of kosher salt and garlic powder.
And they were, in the words of mozza stick aficianado Sheena Goodyear, “the best fucking [mozza sticks] I’ve ever eaten.”
By cooking, we can remove the high processing going on in food factories around the world. It’s not as convenient, but more and more convenience is killing us. And what’s more, we can make them infinitely more delicious.
