I coach Girls on the Run at my daughters' school. You can imagine my delight when I was reviewing the curriculum for one of last week's meetings, and saw that it was about nutrition and healthy eating. Turns out I have a lot more to say about that particular subject than they want to hear, and, as my mom would say, they finished listening long before I finished talking.
Regardless, I was able to get the conversation flowing with a little visualization exercise. I asked the girls to close their eyes, and imagine someone who lived in this country 200 years ago. Whether it was a native American, or a well-dressed politician, or a rural farmer wearing overalls. Then, I told them to picture that person walking into one of our modern-day grocery stores, and then trying to find something to eat. What sections of the store would look familiar to him or her? What would be confusing or totally foreign?
All the girls immediately knew that the produce section, the dairy section (including eggs), the bakery, and the meat counter would be where this person would shop. I asked them to picture their historical person's reaction when going down the Hawaiian Punch aisle, or the Oreo aisle. Would these "foods" make sense to their person? What would they think about goldfish crackers, or blue colored fruit punch?
I made the bold statement that those types of processed foods are made up, make-believe. At one point, long ago, their basic ingredients were food, but they have been so manipulated and artificialized that they barely resemble food in their finished state. I told the girls that these foods were created in laboratories by "food scientists" with beakers and scales and chemicals. Their eyes got wide and they stared at me in disbelief. It was abundantly clear that this was very new information, and these young ladies had never thought about the source of their food.
And that's probably true for the vast majority of Americans...particularly of my generation and younger. We were raised on packaged, processed, chemicalized food, and have never given a thought to what that really means.
Take the basic premise of You Are What You Eat and apply that to everything you consume. Produce is crisp, fresh, vibrant, colorful, nourishing. I want to be crisp, fresh, vibrant, colorful, and nourishing. That kind of food comes directly from the earth, and it is perfect for us to eat.
Think about how many steps it took for the food you are eating to get from the earth to your mouth, and how much it has changed since being in the earth. How long does an Oreo take to get from the earth to your mouth? At some point, there was some natural wheat involved, but many, many unhealthy ingredients and many, many steps were required to get it to the grocery store shelf. The process involved huge metal machines in huge warehouses and lots of transportation on trucks and being handled by many different people. I am thinking from wheat to Oreo is a least 50 different steps.
On the other hand, think about going to the Farmer's Market and buying a squash, and purchasing a piece of fish from the local fishmonger. These things may have been handled by two or three people before they got to you. And you can take them directly home and cook them in a simple way and be nourished by their natural state and freshness. It's a huge difference.
My mom came over last night and we decided to roast some butternut squash as our vegetable. I was a little nervous about how my girls would react to that, since I had never served it "naked" before. All it had on it was a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. Both of my little ladies asked for seconds. Score!
Have a beautiful Monday!
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