Is that really FOOD?

Aghk. I just dived into Michael Pollan's The Omnivores Dilemma. What we as a population eat is disgusting in more than what meets the eye. If you buy a boxed item of food, very little of that is anything but corn. Corn is part of why we are in this economic mess, it is a huge part of why we Americans are so unhealthy. It is just awful what we have allowed our government to do to us. This obsession with corn as a nation is our downfall. We no longer trust or know how to grow our own food or even cook it. We don't have time to eat and we are so obsessed with having to get it done yesterday we forget to live in today. We wouldn't be heading towards a population crisis if it weren't for corn.

Do you know that it is legal to feed our beef cattle parts of themselves?! They are herbivores! They eat grasses and have a stomach that helps them convert grasses into needed nutrients. WHAT THE $%#** ARE WE DOING TO OURSELVES! I sure hope I can find some grass fed and finished beef. I am going to stick to making my food from scratch. Okay I am not a hunter so I am not going that far and I am a novice Gardener. But I am definitely trying to get my food from as close to the source as possible.

Actually since I started cooking from scratch my family health has improved. When I became pregnant my obession with good wholesome food was kicked into gear. Most of the pregnancy literature out there emphasizes how important it is to feed yourself good wholesome food to help the baby develop properly. They talk about avoiding certain foods due to mercury content, while encouraging you to eat fresh products due to higher nutrition content. Good simple food goes so much farther for us than those crazy complex boxes of food.

Eating basic pronounceable ingredients tastes way better than anything in a can or box. I remember my first stint at a restaurant. It was a Thai place after the initial conversation with the chef the Chef Owner gave me a can of Coconut water. I could taste the horrible preservatives. I grew up drinking and then eating the coconut. My family would go to the ocean for the weekend and on the way home we would stop at this little gas station and have chilled coco then snack on the coconut meat. After a day in the mangroves playing in the salt water there was nothing better.