Stop Blogging and Cook

Laughter burns calories; anxiety just burns.

TODAY’S PREPARATION

SUMMER OFFICIALLY BEGINS!
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and time to get out the summer whites!  I have a sleeveless white dress that I love, so I am hoping for enough heat to warrant wearing it to a weekend barbecue.  Not tempted to jump the season by wearing the white prior to the official kickoff, once it’s here I expect the weather to cooperate with the promise of warmth.  Nothing puts the kibosh on a sexy, summery dress like a raincoat.

SIX-WORD SATURDAY
A weekly meme begun by Show My Face is followed by dozens of bloggers.  My six choice words are above, where I usually have a quote from a famous person, or just a person.  Today it’s my own quote.  Welcome all visitors, but this site is probably more pithy than most.  Stop Blogging And Cook is about the discussion surrounding the food we eat, and efforts to help non-cooks become better eaters through understanding those issues and learning to successfully navigate through the grocery store and the kitchen.

Saw an article in the New York Times by way of the blog, Appetite for Profit.  Lay’s Potato Chip‘s new ad campaign promotes the three simple ingredients that make up the ubiquitous American snack:  potatoes, oil and salt.  Now, some might decry this with words such as disingenuous or socially irresponsible because everyone knows that potato chips are not best best thing to be eating.  But hold on just a minute.

Just having cracked Appetite for Profit, author Michele Simon presents the position that corporations have a right to exist.  And to exist they must remain profitable.  That means selling products in the most vigorous ways they can find.  Advertising is one such way, and latching on to the current food zeitgeist is a strategy that could be brilliant.

FREE ENTERPRISE IS GOOD
In this country we trumpet free enterprise, and corporations large and small are the lifeblood of that system which, some would say, has made this country great.  Some corporations have taken advantage of that very system, true, but let’s suppose, just for a moment that corporations are, on average, not determined to bankrupt the global economy.  They provide jobs enabling people to be productive to support their families who thrive and purchase things, and that makes up our economy.  A thriving economy supports an ascending culture.  People can spend money on whatever they deem necessary or appropriate.  Food is a necessity; cars are appropriate.

If corporations have a right to exist, they have a right to make a profit.  Indeed, heads of corporations who do not guide them towards profit-making are replaced.  They have to answer to stockholders who have invested money for the sole purpose of making that money grow.  As long as the profit-making is maintained, everyone is happy.

Corporations must remain profitable despite downturns in the economy (when people buy less stuff), poor product performance or bad public relations (when people find reasons to no longer buy their stuff), competition (when people decide to buy other company’s stuff), and trends (when people want a new kind of stuff).  If Frito-Lay made a product out of cardboard, mud and salt and called it a potato chip, they would be out of business for fraudulent practices.  If they said that eating potato chips will make you a millionaire overnight they would be shut down for making deceptive claims.

They are merely responding to the public’s new-found fondness for passing over man-made artifice (chemicals and preservatives) for foods that occur in nature (whole foods).  Potato chips are made of potatoes, oil and salt.  Who can fault the brilliance of Madison Avenue advertisers?  They’re just doing the best job they can for their corporate client.

But, some may say, the consumer pays the price.  Yes.  They have the freedom to pay the price for those chips and the price of eating those chips.  Whether that price is the joy that comes from indulging in a simple pleasure on Memorial Day or other special occasions, or binging on a bag-a-day habit that cannot be controlled, consumers have that freedom.

The food industry argues, in another advertising bonanza, that the fault lies with the consumer who chooses the unhealthy choice rather than the corporation that supplies it.  They don’t literally make us eat it to excess, they merely provide it because the  public wants it.  We know they want it because they buy it.

SO LET’S JUST BEAT THEM AT THEIR OWN GAME
Yes it is a choice.  Don’t buy it.  Or buy less chips and more apples.  Look at the ads as nothing more than the voice of legal crack dealers, plying their food products on every corner, in every form of media, on the side of every bus.  Teach your children to become critical thinkers, seeing advertising for what it is.  Vote with your fork.  Buy the apple instead.  What?  Apples aren’t much fun at a barbecue?   I will argue that point on another day.

I am wheat- and lactose-intolerant.  Things like beautiful whole grain breads, to my dismay, became off-limits for most of my adult life.  Believe me, if you get a migraine headache from eating a good piece of bread, it quickly becomes a trade-off that is not worth it.  But potato chips didn’t land me in bed with blinding pain.  So  I never apologized for eating potato chips, and I never ate them as snacks that would ruin my appetite for a good dinner.

Long ago a friend asked, “What do you eat for fun?’  The only things I could think of were chocolate and potato chips.  Sometimes you want sweet.  And sometimes you want potato chips.  Just for fun.

I found a wonderful savory herb mixture that, when mixed into plain yogurt, made a great dip.  And it was a way to have a spoonful of good along with.  When I could no longer find that herb mix, and after finding my efforts at replicating it uninspired, I tried dipping the chips in just plain yogurt.  To my surprise, it was great!  Even with a big glob of yogurt overflowing, the saltiness of the chip pulled it off.  And I do it to this day, sometimes adding a spot of balsamic vinegar.

Having a spoonful of the good along with a bite of the not-so-good is a great idea.  Being smart about what to eat is the key.  Not deprivation, not excess.  Balance.  One food will not kill you.  What is unhealthy is the habitual eating of mostly empty foods in large amounts with frequency.  Think.  Moderate.  Choose wisely.  Exercise your freedom of good choice.

WE DO WHAT WE CAN
There are millions of food products that contain sugar, fat, salt, chemicals and artificial ingredients that are far worse than potato chips.  Take a little comfort in knowing that, while deep frying in hot oil negates all food value, perhaps it also neutralizes the poisons of the conventional potato field that ward off pests and weeds, producing a greater yield of the tubers, the most popular vegetable produced in this country.  You can rationalize anything if you want to.

Perfection isn’t.  It’s impossible to always do the right thing one hundred percent of the time, and even if we could we’d be accused of being inhuman.  The best we can do is our best with whatever limitations we bring and – armed with enough optimism and faith to hope or pray for a good outcome – learn along the way.  It is why, when we get old, our accumulated experience and individual interpretation will be seen as our own personal wisdom.

BOTTOMS UP!
Due to the week’s stress of learning about the food industry’s considerable chutzpa in strong-arming advocates of nutrition and corporate world’s inherent necessity for making a profit, today’s preparation is for a Frozen Daiquiri.  We have to live in a world with food corporations.  We have to maintain our health despite difficulties, and strive to capture a little joy along the way, what with our being human after all.  Perhaps God gave us sugar cane and grain knowing full well that we’d figure out a way to ferment it into alcohol to try and counterbalance the vicissitudes of life.  We do what we can, don’t we?  Happy Memorial Day!

Tags: BAD 4U/GOOD 4U, gluten-free, healthy choices, real food, salt, snack