Do You Bite Your Thumb At Me, Sir?

Yes, I do bite my thumb, sir, but I do not bite my thumb at you, sir.

Everyone needs a little Shakespeare in the afternoon.

So, I'm a food snob. I just need to accept this. I have gotten to the point where I wont even eat fruit if I suspect it was grown across the pond. I'd rather go hungry than eat something that will make me feel the bloat of processed sodium based foods. I've started leaving parties hungry. I never used to do that.

The greatest offenders:
5. Yogurt.

Dannon? Yoplait? I don't care what brand you slap on it all that stuff is gross. Even that Stoneyfield Farm stuff is creepy. Real yogurt is gloppy. That is the best adjective I can come up with. I will say it is just short of chunky. It needs honey or something in it to make it palatable. Really great yogurt is not creamy. Cream is creamy, yogurt is not.

4. Ketchup.

My hate for this is nearly shocking to my younger self. I used to eat it A LOT. I put it on eggs, burgers, really anything starchy. Now I prefer my eggs either fried or scrambled with local cheese and sausage inside and generous salt and pepper on top. Burgers are also better with local cheese and not much else. Sometimes not even a bun, I won't start on processed bread.

I sometimes still do eat some ketchup but largely I think the plastic bottled stuff tastes like metal. When you were a kid did you ever lick a bloody wound? That is what ketchup tastes like to me now.

3. Red Delicious Apples.

Not delicious. Local apples are the best thing that every happened to me. Fiance is tired of them. We've been eating them almost exclusively (save for a short pear season this year) since October. I could eat them four times a day forever and ever. Red delicious apples are mealy even when they're fresh. Even the smell of them makes me gag a little. It is sort of this cardboard aroma combined with what I'm sure worm guts smell like.

I could totally eat a local berry right now, don't get me wrong, but I am just fine with the fujis from Toigo.

2. Turkey bacon.

After college I lived on this stuff. I was so sure it was good for me. Then I read about how it is made. I won't even go into it, just google it if you dare.

Real bacon please, thanks.

1. Pizza.

I realize this is not a whole food but a group of other foods. It actually combines some of my snob-feelings of 1-4. Processed cheese, flavorless. processed tomato product, metal. Processed meat, pressed and not actual meat. The concept of chain pizza frightens me and frozen pizza is the biggest waste of money ever. Homemade pizza could not be easier.

There are few things I enjoy being snobby about more than saving money and eating well. Pizza wins.

All In A Day's Work

If you think you have a hard job, try being a butcher. If you're hungry and don't want to be, read about a guy who tried it for a while. The local food movement and the new conversation going on in the foodie community in general is all about how you should get closer to you food - how its grown and processed and how to prepare it. It has been suggested that one of the reasons people are getting more obese is because we don't take the time to prepare our food anymore. Basically, we've disconnected ourselves so much that we no longer value the food. Instead, we just shove it in the hole and run along.

Well I read the story about the guy who tried being a butcher. Then, I decided to put a wedding gift to use and grind my own buffalo. It is true that I used a home tool - one that connected to my standing mixer. So it isn't as if I used an industrial grinder that is probably more efficient. However, the smell is really unfortunate. It reminded me of the smell of my A.P. Anatomy class in high school when we dissected cats. Decaying flesh is really gross, in case you didn't know.

I would have taken pictures for you but my hands were really gross from the meat and also, I love you enough to spare you. I plan to eat the buffalo and I'm not giving up meat (although I'm eating significantly less of it lately) but I feel a lot closer to my food today - my sinuses, in fact, can't get the stench out.

Fried Things With Fried Things Inside. Also, cheese.

I love you Arianna Huffington. And not just because you're a Greek who married outside the clan.

Fiber + Sugar = Breakfast

I have no idea why it has taken me three weeks to blog. I have no viable excuse. Wedding planning does take up time but I've probably had time here and there to write. I will say that nothing has made me nutritionally angry recently.

Until last night. When I saw this:



Really? Fiber? Lets discuss the content:



Ingredient number one is sugar. Ingredient seven is hydrogenated oil. There are six coloring agents. The ingredients are obviously awful. But what gets me isn't actually the ingredients, yes they're horrible, but what really upset me was the advertisements for this product. At least they didn't have an actual doctor say that fiber 'makes your tummy happy'.

If you read this blog you might assume I hate cereal. I just think its a crime the way corporations are actively trying to pull the wool over the eyes of Americans when it comes to consumption.

Quality Over Quantity

I'm not going to use the F word or anything but I totally agree with the illegal-pizza-guy on the whole "family farm–killing, exploited illegal immigrant–built, fake cheese–laden, nutritionally void, race-to-the-bottom" food thing. And while he is discussing the value of his product I'd like to highlight the nutritionally void part. Michael Pollan says that you should eat as much junk food as you want as long as you make it yourself.

Again, the problem is the way we talk about the issue. Americans are obsessed with moving as quickly as we can for as cheaply as we can to the detriment of our health. Rather than spend time in the kitchen with our entire family we spend time rushing our family around from place to place and spend a minute with the microwave so our families can eat quickly before we shuttle them somewhere else.

I realize that as a childless adult I can't know all the details. Mothers work their tails off to keep their kids lives moving forward at all let alone making sure their kids eat perfectly all the time. Not that school lunch isn't also to blame for poor child nutrition. I wont discount the work of fathers either. But again, the problem is the way we talk about what we eat, how we eat and when we eat and the fact that we just accept the corporate line about this conversation. The illegal pizza guy highlights a problem that just furthers what I've said in the past. We have to stop supporting food that supports exploiting our farms and our people, even if they are illegal immigrants.

I've never understood Americans who don't live their life in a way that allows their values to shine right through their actions. And, no it isn't possible only because I live in a dual income household and it isn't always easy but damned if I'm going to be one of those people who will shove whatever comes past my nose into my mouth just because. And I agree, if you're willing to let your values stop at the oven door, you deserve your nutritionally void food.

Why We Don't Have the Number One Health Care System in America

This story begins a few days after we left off in the story of the stumped cholesterol patient.

"Hello. Doctor's office."

"Hi. I came in a few weeks ago and had some blood taken and got conflicting information on the results. One letter I got said my blood work was fine and one said my cholesterol was off."

"That's weird. The doctor will call you."

"Thanks."

Later that day.

"Hello?"

"Hi. This is Doctor _______. I got a message that you don't understand your test results."

"Um. It isn't that I don't understand them. I got one letter from you saying they were fine and another letter saying my cholesterol was off."

This back and forth continues while she gets more and more angry and intimates that I am clearly stupid and was raised by apes.

"Well I guess I will just have to go look at your chart."

Stunned silence while I think about the fact that she hadn't actually been using facts throughout this conversation.

"Okay, your results say your urine is fine." Didn't give you any of that but whatever. "Your Vitamin D is fine, you aren't anemic . . . oh. Um. Hmmm. It looks like this cholesterol test is not part of your results."

"I'm sorry, what do you mean?"

"Uh, I think someone in the lab stapled another patients results to yours. Sorry. No reason to worry. Glad everything checked out."

"Great. Thanks."

LOUDEST CLICK POSSIBLE ON A CELL PHONE WHILE ON A BUS TRYING NOT TO MAKE A SCENE.

What Goes In and Out the Mouth

Marion Nestle of Food Politics did a fantastic job of highlighting Michelle Obama's speech to the Grocery Manufacturers on Tuesday. What Mrs. Obama said is essentially that these producers need to stop acting like they aren't part of the problem and start providing more healthful food to children as well as packaging and advertising their food differently. I think there is a ground swell of attention in the media on nutrition and fitness although that could be because it is something I pay attention to but we can't deny the fact that almost two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Even if you aren't so sure about the ground swell the proof is in the pudding (or on our thighs).

While I think Mrs. Obama should be commended for speaking to (pointing the finger at) part of the corporate problem, I think she has failed to highlight the root of the problem of obesity in America. Our country's problem with obesity is only partially what we choose to put in our mouth. The problem is also what comes out of our mouths (or what is in our media). The way Americans talk about obesity and health is not productive. We live in a society where the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic admits he discriminates against overweight people and doctors across the country avoid the topic entirely.

Our country is great at sensationalism. We live in a world where reality television reigns and cable news personalities are more than just journalists. Beyond just the way we package and consume information there is a whole new world of food blogs out there (I love them too, don't get me wrong) and every major news source has a restaurant list of some kind. You could say this points to the fact that we live in an information age where we can know exactly what we want to hear when we want to hear it. Replace 'information' with 'food' and 'know' and 'hear' with 'eat' in that last sentence and you've explained the true problem of obesity in America: a total lack of reality.

We live in a food age where we can eat exactly what we want to eat when we want to eat it.

The Washington Post commentary on weight gain during pregnancy is a great example of the lack of reality. Jennifer Larue Huget (a journalist, not a doctor or scientist) published an online article where an actual gynecologist said, "I realize that all of this information is super-depressing. I'm basically telling you that if you're already heavy, you're just going to get heavier when you're preggers, and then stay that way forever" in response to a new book on eating when pregnant.

The comments are even more telling. For instance, sigmagrrl wrote, "Jesus. We're never going to get a break, are we? WHAT DOES IT MATTER THAT SOMEONE IS FAT?!?! Criminy, stop JUDGING each other!!!" Lets look past the fact that sigmagrrl seems to have been blinded by rage and forgot to make a legitimate factual point and note that first of all, a physician used incredibly demeening language when discussing pregnant women. Preggers? This person is allowed to use a speculum. (At one point she refers to overweight women as, 'bigger gals'.) I'm guessing that this particular gynecologist did not take Bed Side Manner 101 or is one of the doctors discussed in the Times article on doctors who avoid the topic of weight with patients because its awkward.

Moving away from the medical community and its break from reality in terms of obesity - our schools are also giving our children a skewed view of reality when it comes to eating. Mrs. Obama is right that children get the impression that dessert is an everyday food and that we need to entirely change the way corporations advertise for food but we also need to start talking differently about the entire world of nutrition, obesity and even how we treat one another with regard to these issues.

Yes, people discriminate against the overweight but the answer is not to condition our society to stop this behavior but to think critically about ourselves and our habits. Leave everyone else to their own problems and start taking action in your own life to support healthy habits. I don't just mean eat salad from Subway instead of McDonald's cheeseburgers for lunch. I mean that we all have to think critically about what we buy at the grocery store and what grocery store (or farmer's market if you can). Think about the foods you buy when you go there. Don't just buy some meat because it is on sale. I wont even bother to say that I think Americans need to start fighting big-ag or that everyone should buy CAFOs free meat because honestly every consumer needs to go out and educate themselves on what they want to eat and how they want to live. It isn't because I feel bad for the piglets or the farmers but that we live in an age of information NOW and food NOW and it is killing us. Slowly but surely our kids are getting fatter and our life expectancy is getting shorter.

We like to pride ourselves on being a country that clings to our beliefs and we like to talk a big game about freedom. Want to be really free? Stop falling in line with the corporate BS and be free of what corn and beef subsidies are shoving down your throat and start thinking for yourselves.