Junk Food and the Food Nazis

A ways back I started talking about food and how bad most of the pre-prepared, "quick-to-fix" stuff is. This expensive garbage takes up a lot of shelf space in the average chain supermarket, so it must be selling. The question is, why are people buying it?

With the huge popularity of the Food Channel and the hundreds of other cooking shows on TV, you would think that many people were cooking more at home, and yet the microwavable "something in a bowl" is the fastest growing retail grocery item. Have we become food voyeurs, getting off on great cuisine when it's on the screen, but settling for a culinary hand job in real life?

I think people settle for less than good when it comes to the food that they eat for two reasons. The first is that they haven't learned basic cooking skills. Maybe they feel that it's not interesting enough or too difficult. Yet most people learn how to drive a car or do some kind of job and isn't being able to feed yourself at least that important? And being able to have friends over for meal is certainly one of the great things in life. Yet many people lack this ability. I've even met quite a few people who are indifferent about food and a great many who are afraid to try anything new. This isn't just a matter of taste, it's a thing we learn from the people around us as we grow up.

The second reason has to do with advertising and the Food Nazis. The health establishment and the popular press have given us some very strange ideas about food and health. The most extraordinary ideas about what is good and bad for you have been put forth over the years; much of it contradictory and very little of it based on good science. (The basics of good nutrition really haven't changed that much over the centuries; it just doesn't make for exciting reading.) There has been so much of this because people want to hear it. We want some magic simple diet or pill that will make everything all right so we can live forever, even if we don't enjoy it very much, and the food industry and their ad agencies are more than ready to pander to that. The fact that people fall for this line of thinking on their own is bad enough, but now there are some who would like to make laws about what is good to eat. These Food Nazis say that not eating right kills more people and causes more expensive health problems than tobacco or alcohol, therefore they should be able to decide what you eat based on whatever popular scientific belief is in vogue at the time. For me that's just going too far. We need to get back to the idea of really taking care of ourselves and not expecting the government to do it all. We need to stop thinking of food as medicine and tell the Food Nazis we don't want them in our lives.

Take some time to stop and smell the pot roast! The major part of living well is learning how to recognize and enjoy the good things in life. Don't cheat yourself.