On Food

So while at the Cod (which is what my niece used to call the Cape) I picked up a Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingslover. I'm now half-way through it, and it is flying by. I've been meaning to read this book since it came out, but the waiting line at the library is 10 people deep. So when we had a slow, rainy day on Saturday, I went to the local bookstore and picked it up (great store, by the way...).

I've been a believer in local food. I've been a believer of organic food. But this book has served well as a heavy reminder to not slack off... Go read it. It's an easy read. I've found that books with this much information in them tend to read like text books, and are very preachy. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is not. Nor is it solely about local food. It's a good, easy read. Put it on your summer reading list. It's an adventure.

So with this book in mind, I've just run across an article on CNN's website, which left me shaking my head. "FDA Urged to Ban 8 Food Dyes" describes how a consumer advocacy group is urging the FDA to ban these food dyes because they increase hyperactivity and behavior problems in kids. Great. Fine. But the issue I had in the article is this: the REASON these dyes are IN kids foods in the first place is to make them more colorful so they will be more appealing and appear like healthier choices. It suddenly became very clear to me. Why do we need to ban the DYES? Are the dyes really the issue here? Shouldn't we be more concerned with the absence of any actual nutritional value of these foods in the first place? Ban the dyes? Are you kidding me? How about we just ban these crappy foods that we are tricked into feeding our kids? How about we ban marketing campaigns directed at children (who aren't able to make decisions based on nutrition - mainly because their parents aren't able to either)? High fructose corn syrup is NOT a vegetable. Anything that requires a dye to make it more appetizing should be a GIANT red flashing light- if we have to trick our eyes into thinking "it's colorful, it must be good" then maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be eating that crap. Apparently, these dyes are also injected into fruits to make them more appetizing. WHAT? How about we stop trying to hide how unhealthy the factory farmed produce is?

So my sister & brother-in-law recently bought a vacation cottage on the Cod. This is great - they'll rent it out sometimes, and they'll use it sometimes, and we'll use it sometimes. It'll be good. They have a ridiculous amount of money. Range Rover, Volvo, horseback riding lessons (don't own a horse YET), my BIL has a Harley just for fun. They are rolling in it. But the house is full of sodas, yodels, those little apple pies that come in individually wrapped packages... BBQing involves char-burned hot dogs and tasteless hamburger patties than come preformed in a shrink wrapped Styrofoam package wrapped in plastic - with the little pieces of paper in between the patties. I watched my 8 year old niece single handedly devour an entire tin of brownies, and no one said a thing. Basically, the cheapest, least healthy food money can buy. And it occurs to me... if you have enough money to buy a vacation home, shouldn't you have enough money to feed your family decent food? Why is they kind of car you drive more important than what you feed your kids? What could be more important than what you take into your body and forms the foundation of your health and life expectancy? Why is it that the more affluent someone is (generally) the more they eat convenience foods filled with dyes, artificial sweeteners and partially hydrogenated oils? How is this progress? Why is it that no one cares?

And we wonder why we have a health care crisis. Come on people.

Why buy your kids the best of everything only to feed them the lowest common denominator of food? Why send them to a good school while ensuring they have a shorter life span than that of your generation? It makes no sense... I'm baffled.