“Eat This, Not That”

While the headline sounds familiar and somewhat overused, I am not going to write about specific foods, rather some food and eating concepts. My purpose is to bring awareness about some of our eating habits and food choices that do not support our health and wellbeing.

1. Making your own meals:

Preparing your own meals puts you in control of your personal dietary choices. You know exactly what to put in them (I’m yet to find a recipe calling for ‘Potassium Benzoate to protect taste’ or

‘Butylated Hydroxytoluene for freshness’); you adjust salt, sugar and other condiments to YOUR taste and need (they are often added in excess as preservatives); you may wish to choose leaner cuts of meat or poultry, use less processed oils with higher smoke point (like avocado oil) to avoid formation of carcinogenic elements. You are better off using Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen EWG lists to avoid heavily contaminated with Round-up (leads to cancer by the way) produce (those are best organic) and choose the safest conventional options without splurging.

You take responsibility for your food choices, as opposed to leaving it up to someone else, who (like the Big Foods conglomerates) do not have your best interests (of health and wellbeing) in mind.

You don’t let anyone else choose your perfume or hygiene products, do you? Or choose your house, car, partner, outfit? Even if you buy premade items, you choose them carefully to fit your need, quality requirements and style. Than why let someone else (other than occasionally gourmet chefs or nutritionists) choose ingredients for your meals that fit THEIR budget, taste beliefs and health considerations, or lack of thereof?!

2. Fast Foods and other Take Outs:

Do you know how businesses succeed? They make a lot of money when they sell goods they produce at a very very high margin. In order to create a very very high margin, they make sure their initial cost is very very low. So, when fast food manufacturers produce their foods, they use the cheapest ingredients – including meat, wheat, and other stuff. They also add taste enhancers and meticulously calculate fat and sugar ratios to make us want more and keep coming back. If you ever compare an ingredient list on some commercially produced foods (cookies for instance) and an actual recipe for make-at-home version – they differ significantly, mostly by featuring a lot more items on the packaged stuff.

I’m not here to villainize any foods or meals, I believe there’s time and place for them to be in our lives too (like when we travel or when a hurricane hit), however in controlled environments – as with having access to grocery stores and cooking facilities (yours or someone else’s kitchen) – it is easy to make healthy, balanced, fresh and satisfying meals that nourish your body by delivering nutrients it needs and avoiding excessive consumption of not so fresh and healthy meals.