Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Truth




Sometimes I love Oprah so much I could kiss her.

Other times, well let's just say we don't always agree.
But today, let me tell you, she was spot on in my humble opinion.
I even took notes.

She had Michael Pollan on her show.
What? You don't know who he is?!?
He is the maker of a documentary called Food, Inc.
If you have not already seen it, you MUST!
This documentary should replace all the videos shown in any health and nutrition class in any school the United States over.
Bar none.
It will literally change the way you eat forever.
You may never eat fast food or anything prepackaged ever again.
So if you like your food the way it is, stop reading now.
Ignore the problem that is America's food supply a little longer until it continues to kill you ever so slowly and painfully.
I know I'm being a little harsh, but in all honesty, it's the plain truth.
We are killing ourselves.
And it's not a pretty death.
Michael points out that things like heart disease and diabetes and obesity and high blood pressure(the list goes on and on) did not become such an epidemic until about the turn of the last century.
150 years ago food was so much simpler.

Michael Pollan wrote a book (which I'm itching to read) called Food Rules
Oprah discussed some of his rules on the show.
#2 Don't eat anything your great grandmother would not recognize as food.
Think Little House on the Prairie times.
There were no cookie and chip sections in the town grocer filled with more preservatives and flavorings than actual food.
There was no neon colored and flavored yogurt in little tubes you can just squeeze into your mouth.
If they wanted yogurt they had to make it from scratch, they flavored it with fruit or not at all.
Don't get me wrong, grocery stores are a wonderful modern convenience, and there are some things worth buying.
For instance Dannon's plain yogurt is all natural.
No thickeners, no additives, just milk and live active cultures, period.
Just how your great grandmother would have made.
If we have yogurt that's what we buy, then I blend frozen berries with a squirt of honey and mix it in and you know what, it tastes way better that the neon variety.
#12 Avoid products containing ingredients that a 3rd grader cannot pronounce.
We have got to read labels, people.
Really, we don't even buy many labeled foods anymore.
I make 95% of what we eat from scratch.
I buy brown sugar and rice and oats and wheat and spelt and barley and buckwheat and millet and rye and beans in 50 pound bags.
I either soak or grind the real food and bake or boil it.
It's really not that hard to do. I set aside 3 hours a week to bake.
I make things like granola bars, cookies, muffins, bread, bagels, English muffins, and on and on.
Not all in one week of course.
Basically, if I see something in the store that looks good, I come home and find a recipe for it and I make it.
No preservatives, no fillers. Just plain old good food.
#23(I think) Eat only foods that will eventually rot
Michael said, "Food is alive and it should eventually die"
Here we are again with more preservatives than actual food.
#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself

I don't know how I feel about this one.
I do agree that we need treats, and I do make them on a regular basis, but all the junk food I want?
I don't think this man knows how much junk food I can put away.
If there is junk in the house I eat it until it's gone.
I have the worst sweet tooth and I think I'd weigh a million pounds if I just ate all I wanted.
I have lots more to say about this, but this is already long and boring.
For now can I just say, watch the movie.
Download it, buy it, rent it, borrow it, but please, watch it!




5 comments:

Spelt Right Baking said...

Hey There,

It's Beth George again from Spelt Right. We do have a few things in common...I posted the Story of Stuff on the Spelt Right website; I'm constantly blogging about Food, Inc.--actually had dinner with Michael Pollan in Maine about a year and a half ago...didn't realize he was such a foodie rock star at the time. And, I am curious what kind of reactions does your son have when he eats wheat? I assume you also dumped all the artificial stuff out of your kids' diets too? Hope you are well. I'll subscribe to your blog, but got to head off to a meeting at the moment.

Lara said...

It's funny that all those preservatives aren't preserving us!!

It's sad but every time another young friend of ours dies of cancer I point out to my children that we need to eat right and take care of these bodies that God gave us. It's probably too late for me to reverse 37 years of bad food but it's not too late for them to live a long healthy life.

KarenB said...

I'm anxious to watch it now! Thanks for the reminders about the importance of eating real food.

Spelt Right Baking said...

I sent a long note to Sara, but the quick version is my son got very sick on wheat and artificial additives in foods. He was misdiagnosed with multiple disorders. Not accepting the diagnoses, we went searching for answers, causes, rather than treating the symptoms. Our journey led us to what he was eating. We changed his diet, removed wheat (replaced it with spelt), removed all artificial additives, and he went from being a special ed student to being placed in the gifted program. He is not on any meds, just good real homemade food. I ended up starting a baking company as a result. Here is a little t.v. clip about our story and where we make our baked goods...we think it is a little bit of heaven on earth http://www.wcsh6.com/video/default.aspx?aid=55155#/Cooking/Spelt+Right+Bakery/49383985001/49746547001/61461622001

Karen M. Peterson said...

I happened to be home the day this episode ran and I am SO glad. I really needed to see it.

I am trying to do better about what I eat. I've always preferred whole and natural foods to stuff found in a box anyway, but this show sealed the deal for me.

Oh, and on that last one, I think his point was that it takes a lot of time to make junk food like chips and french fries and whatnot. If it's only accessible when we make it ourselves, we're not likely to eat it as often.