Nutritional Gatekeepers GET REAL!
Like many of you, I am passionate about food and have been working in professional kitchens more than half of my life. After a quick tour visiting families and putting a ton of miles on the car, I wanted to share just a few oddball observations of my road trip through southern Ontario to the southern states.
When we first stopped for gas there were absolutely NO choices for “real” food only noisy, mega fast-food chains. No independently owned mom and pop places. “Real” is the operative description for something that has not been processed in any way shape or form. Driving through the mountains I conjured up images of some fresh fruit , but my dreams were dashed seeing perfectly uniform apples shrink-wrapped with the heaviest plastic, gasping for air. The gas station/food store/restaurant/lottery stop was full of brightly colored food pix everywhere. It almost gave me the sensation that there might be some real food around! Since becoming vegetarian I’m wide-eyed and looking for more than soggy pasta with fake alfredo sauce.
There were so many food choices but it wasn’t real food at all! It was all some sort of mechanically produced, engineered, edible product. I opted for the grilled cheese on pseudo panini. I asked for an addition of jalapenos but was told by my hostess they didn’t have any real food there….this was in full sight of my pre-prepared cheese sandwich emerging from a vacu-wrapped plastic bag. It was then flattened on a plastic grill with an ear deafening timer. I asked about the egg and cheese sandwich on the menu and she told me that wasn’t real food either that they just nuke a perfectly shaped egg-type cylinder and pop it on the bun. She said it as plain and calm as could be. She suggested i ask the restaurant at the next counter.So I asked “are their eggs real?” and she replied “absolutely darlin’ they actually use real egg whites out of a can and just add some yellow for color”.
Ugh… if that isn’t enough to make me stop eating. After inspecting my purchase (cheap education included) I decided to fill my environmentally friendly refillable water bottle while in the loo but the tap water only ran warm at 15 second intervals. Barely even enough time to wash the chemical cheese from my hands….
On the road again, we spent the night at a hotel somewhere near the Virginia border. Big chain, highly recommended by friends and family, rates were barely competitive and we were tired of trying to find a room for the night.
Checking in we were offered 2 coupons for 2 carbonated beverages in a cardboard glass filled with ice. Yuck. Our lovely clerk with a southern drawl told us we could come down anytime, day or night, and their “kitchen cupboard” was stocked with everything we’d find at home. Wow – it seemed amazing to me since my kitchen cupboard has a quirky selection of odd packages and way too many spices in triplicate. Besides the fact that I wasn’t hungry, I had the option of raiding their “kitchen cupboard” in the middle of the night.
I awoke anticipating a great breakfast before driving for another day thru the Appalachian mountains (really beautiful drive). Remembering the super invitation the night before I wondered if they might have good coffee. To the kitchen cupboard I went, thinking about all of my breakfast possibilities. And there was the coffee… not surprising it was from a package that included the obligatory disposable cup. Not even the option of using a real cup…
Breakfast and snack choices were all displayed in the “kitchen cupboard”, but no real ones. Everything sealed in perfect plastic bowls with bright colored pictures (for those that can’t read I suppose) and catchy names. It was a food fest of plastic! All required a microwave and that even included a long disclaimer with warnings on operating it. Reading those food ingredients would take hours or days to decipher plus a background in chemistry. What is that s-t-u-f-f? Little did I know that my holiday would include a difficult search for real food on the road. I didn’t want to eat a bowl full of chemicals – I wanted something recognizable. My holiday now had to include grocery stores with an organic section. Who would think eating well would be so difficult?
So, I am what I eat. I strive to be real. I can make a choice every time I go to the check out. You can too. Make good choices and then tell your friends too. There is nothing good in prepared food except the enormous profits that mega industrialized food companies make. If it has more than one ingredient it is processed in some form or another.
If you can, just for ONE day, ask where your food comes from. Is it farm-raised outside eating grass, or has it ever seen the light of day? Did that chicken enjoy the sunshine or was it fed a diet of industrialized corn in a stinky coop with no windows? Corn makes chicken grow fast, so fast in fact that it cannot stand up after one month because it’s been engineered with military precision to be that uniform plastic package in the meat counter. Think about that the next time you chow down on a plate of engineered chicken wings. Or consider the farmed raised salmon that’s raised in a chemical bathtub and fed color to look “real”.
If you wonder what food industrialization looks like then watch Michael Pollan’s “Food Inc” and you’ll have a front row view of where mainstream food comes from. Two other suggestions are “Our Daily Bread” (no talking, just the sounds of the machines). Another one is called “The Rave” (independently produced). It stopped me cold in my feet. It had a profound affect on how I can change my global imprint by making sustainable choices in the food I eat. It just takes one person at a time.
Educate yourself. You are your own nutritional gate keeper, and even more so if you have a family.