Are Your Blinders Off?

I was once food ignorant and didn’t really think about the food I ate. I was a vegetarian so I figured I was healthy and eating good stuff. As a vegetarian, my diet was likely healthier than most American’s as I didn’t eat at fast food restaurants or eat a lot of junk food. I ate plenty of “healthy grains”, a ton of vegetables, tofu and meat alternatives. For me, those meat alternatives were the most processed food in my diet. They were not grown in the garden or raised on a farm; they were processed in a lab with ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce. They were not what I would consider to be real food.

Think about the food we give our kids, the so called chicken, in the shape of a dinosaur, that is more filler than meat. Why does chicken contain water, corn flour and sugar? In my book, chicken should not need a label in the first place. Chicken should only contain – well, chicken! Fruit Roll Ups that are made of God knows what that can be stretched and pulled. The first 3 ingredients on the label are all different names for sugar.

I am just beginning to scratch the surface of understanding the food industry and its dirty little secrets. I have learned enough to know that if I truly want to keep my kayak heading towards health than I better keep learning and applying what I learn to improve the quality of the food I put in my mouth.

When I started reading books on food, listening to podcasts and trying to improve my health; the blinders came off. Once you take the blinders off, you can never really put them back on again. Our food system is broken. It is hopelessly off course and I imagine it will take a miracle to correct it.

Farmers are paid not to produce crops.

Pesticides are dumped on essentially everything we put in our mouth.

Large scale farmers are paid a subsidy to raise corn. How much corn can we really eat? I guess that is why corn is added as a filler to processed food.

Small scale farmers who essentially are raising organic food are not able to afford the cost of using the “organic” label.

Our government has a list called EAFUS which the industrial food companies exploit to add all sorts of crazy fillers into our food without telling anyone. EAFUS stands for Everything Added to Food in the United States and you can read a bit about it here.

Food companies do not exist to help us reach our health goals. They exist for profit. They create processed food like substances in the lab, not in a kitchen. It is designed to be addictive, to make us crave more so they can make more profit. Do you know what is lurking in your kitchen?

I know I sound like a lunatic but think about it. Read your labels. Do you know what you are eating? Here are some ideas to help take your blinders off, so food ignorance can be replaced with knowledge. Pick one or two that resonate with you and give it a try. My 2020 goals include two of them!

• Read food labels – better yet eat food that doesn’t have a label because it is easily identifiable
• Buy organic when available to avoid pesticides
• Eat real food not food from a box or a can that has a scary long shelf life
• Get to know the farmers who grow your food by joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) or shopping at the Farmers Market or local farm stand
• Start or expand your own backyard garden and swap food with your neighbors and friends who do the same.
• If you eat meat, get to know the farmers who raise the animals that you eat. Buy local meat that comes from animals raised humanely on a diet that they were born to eat.
• Advocate for the small farms that raise their animals humanely and grow their crops without harmful pesticides but can’t use the “organic label” because it is too expensive to obtain.

My blinders are off and I am no longer food ignorant. It is too important of an issue to not be aware of. My health is incredibly important to me, your health is important to me. I don’t care what you eat, that is your choice. It isn’t important to me if you eat Vegetarian, Vegan, Paleo, Meditarannean, or Pegan. It is important to me that we all eat food that we can all agree is actually food. Take back your kitchen and eat REAL FOOD!

Lake Girl