And the secret ingredient is....
Most people don't have a clue what goes into their food. How many times have you picked something up at the grocery store, and actually read the ingredients before you bought it? Even if you have, chances are you couldn't pronounce a number of them, let alone, know what they are or where they come from. If you're anything like the typical American shopper, you just grabbed what looked good, took it home and ate it. Well, I tried that. Especially during the first month and a half of this year. I lost my job on 30 Dec., filed for unemployment and signed up for food assistance. With this food assistance, I actually had a higher grocery budget than I did when I was working because it specified more money directly to food. Because of that, I was (for the first time in my life) able to walk through the store, and buy pretty much anything and everything I wanted to eat. 'This is great!' I thought, until I realized (a month and a half later) that I had been consistently gaining about a pound a day. I had ballooned. Over that time I had also noticed that I was much more lethargic, had terrible digestive problems and I was waking up every morning with headaches. I had all kinds of problems and I didn't like them. It was only during this time of unemployment that I really had time to notice these symptoms. When I am working, I am too busy to feel them all. And now, in less than two weeks, I feel new! I am going to bed without gas, waking up feeling good, I have had energy to keep up with my kids. That is what truly inspired me, my kids. I realized that if I continued to eat all these terrible foods, that were full of toxins and chemicals that I may not live to see them graduate. That was when I started looking, really looking, at what I was putting into my body. I began noticing that there was a lot more bad in "food," than good. To help me understand what the stuff was, I followed the food chain... If you are unsure of what an ingredient is, or where it comes from, LOOK IT UP! Don't just walk blindly into the night, following the bright lights of consumerism. The internet can be a great resource for investigating this type of thing. I will be looking into some sites and trying to weed out the ones with misinformation, or inadequate articles, to help narrow your search. The FDA is not on your side. They are deep in the pockets of the American industrial food distributors, and work to pass laws and standards that protect the dissembling of food, and artificial nutrition. The idea that food can be broken down into nutrients, and as long as you have adequate quantities of each, you will be healthy; is a myth. People have eaten whole, in season foods, from local farms for thousands of years. Why do we all of a sudden (over the last century) hand farming over to scientists? And why? There is no reason that anyone should have to investigate in order to understand what is in their food. The mere idea seems ludicrous to me. Another interesting trend is the decline in the overall health of humans since this became the popular hypothesis. More obesity, more heart disease, more diabetes, more cancer. All of that being fed by more artificial ingredients, more dissembling and more marketing. These are things to think about, things to try to stir your pot, things that I want people to hear. Remember, I'm on here for all of us, vote with your fork, and "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
