Stop Blogging and Cook

The ‘i’ in illness is isolation, and the crucial letters in wellness are ‘we‘. ~Author unknown

‘JUNK FOOD’ IS OXYMORONIC
Thank you, Marion Nestle, for your post on today’s Surgeon General’s Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation.  Her website has links to the full report.  Professor Nestle’s observation that eating guidelines are “not exactly front-page news” is accurate.  Why aren’t they, I wonder?  Somehow, the question of what to eat is perceived as a complex idea.  So why are we not seeking to learn everything we can, sort out the best, accurate information, and bring it to the forefront?  Isn’t that what journalists do?

I maintain that the question of what to eat is quite simple.  Human civilization has been feeding itself for thousands of years.  People in underdeveloped nations do it every day.  Just how simple is it?  It is so simple it can be done by a third grader.  Yet many Americans seem puzzled by the perceived difficulty of cooking.  Hence, this site, begun for just that reason.

A key omission in the Surgeon General’s Vision is the need to make greater use of our kitchens (conveniently located right inside our homes) preparing meals from whole, fresh foods, so our reliance on  food ‘products’ — packaged with  sugar, salt, preservatives and chemical additives — is lessened.  Teaching children this from a young age is crucial.  We’re becoming a nation of people who cannot feed ourselves without a middle-man  preparing our food for us in the form of fast, frozen and take-out meals.  Cooking for mealtime more easily allows us habits of less snacking and craving less junk.

As a culture, we are losing our food ways skills.  Involving the whole family in the  daily food preparation process gives invests children in the skill of feeding themselves responsibly, leading to a lifetime of sustainable eating habits.  But we have to teach them!  They may well emerge from the womb with computer savvy — or so it sometimes seems — but not so with feeding themselves.  The best investment you can make in your child’s life is to teach them how to feed themselves so that they can live balanced, disease-free lives.