Food Schmood

The time has come for me to stand atop my soap box and preach to you about the disgusting things I learned about food over these past few weeks. I have been deeply engrossed in Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser’s exposé that reaches far beyond your Big Mac craving and delves into the ways the industry has shaped our society and the way we get all food today. Because the book was not grossing me out enough, I decided to also watch Food, Inc., a movie that Eric Schlosser also helped produce.


That did it.

(A word of advice before you watch this, don’t eat baked chicken breast -or anything for that matter-while viewing it. Bad idea.)

Now, before you begin to condemn me for becoming an ultra-hippy, please know that I pondered reading Fast Food Nation for years before I chose to actually read it. Being the foodie that I am (let us not forget my candid blog about being the Fatties Fo Life Founder and President), I, like many of you, kept telling myself that ignorance is bliss. However, this mantra only gets us so far.

Ignorance is bliss if you don’t mind supporting conglomerate food industries that focus more on deregulating factory standards than making healthy products. Ignorance is bliss if you don’t mind supporting an industry that recruits Mexicans to illegally immigrate to the US, only to turn around and call the feds on them – but they only deport fifteen at a time so as not to affect company productivity. Ignorance is bliss if you don’t mind eating meat that’s made up of thousands of different cows that were raised standing in their own feces. Ignorance is bliss if you don’t mind eating chicken injected with antibiotics and growth hormones, which make them grow so large that their legs can’t even support them. This results in them sitting for much of their short life and living in their own feces, much like our friend the cow. Oh yeah. One last thing - ignorance is bliss if you don’t mind dying from e coli.

Do you need me to continue telling you how blissful our ignorance is? Just think of all that guilt and feces resting on your tongue.

These are the practices we support by simply putting food in our mouth. We are so disconnected from the source of our food, that we choose not to care about what’s being fed to us. Ignorance is not bliss if you value your health to any degree. The USDA, the FDA, and the food industry want you to revel in your ignorance. That is how they are able to bring you such dietary staples such as the dollar menu or the $5 foot long. They cut corners to fatten their wallets and to fatten your belly. 

But really? The USDA and FDA are in on this too?

Unfortunately, yes. Many of the execs that run the organizations meant to protect the health of the American people are now in it to protect the businesses that profit from destroying the health of the American people. Those that run the FDA and the USDA also ran food conglomerates or industrial farms/slaughter houses prior to their appointments in a government agency.

If that isn’t sheisty enough, let the numbers talk. In the 1970’s, tens of thousands of food inspections were conducted per year in the US. Today, that number is dwindling around 9,000.

Beef recalls. Spinach recalls. Tomato recalls. They are not recalled because someone overreacted. They are recalled because there is a serious problem here. Food is not being processed the way nature intended, resulting in diseases and other bacteria encountering the human body in ways that should never occur. Most, if not all of the food we consume in any given day are unnatural, filled with preservatives, pesticides and artificial flavor.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

With all of that being said, you must be waiting for me to declare my new-found vegan or vegetarian lifestyle.

I hate to disappoint you, but I absolutely refuse to give up meat. I crave it like a caveman, a trait that I attribute to my mother who also has meat cravings (we are a product of our environments after all).

BUT, I do vow to be more conscious than ever about the food I consume. I’m going organic. I’m going free-range chicken. I’m going grass-fed beef. I’m turning into the stereotypical, east-side yuppy that refuses to shop anywhere but Whole Foods or PCC (wow that didn’t take long).

I’m in an economic position where I can choose to buy foods that nourish my body rather than destroy it. It is no mistake that processed foods are cheap and healthier foods are pricey. The industry wants you to choose between Pop Tarts or baby carrots. And the industry wants you supporting them no matter how little your income.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I am no longer living in ignorance.