Food, in the end, in our own tradition, is something holy. It’s not about nutrients and calories. It’s about sharing. It’s about honesty. It’s about identity. —Louise Fresco
When it comes to eating healthy, when has the rule ever not been one of moderation?
The little ones in our house have become food critics. They have taken to watching Food Channel re-runs on Netflix. Things such as Cupcake Wars and Worst Cook in America can keep them occupied for several seconds at a time, between bursts of body-slamming each other into the couch. On one hand, the shows have ignited their interest in food and cooking, especially in regard to cupcakes. On the other hand, however, it has made them much more picky about things that six- and seven-year-olds really shouldn’t notice, such as plating and food presentation.
Last night, as I served the little darlings a dinner of baked cod with a wheat cracker crust and steamed veggies, little man looked up from his plate and informed me, “I really think you could have crushed the crackers more; there are some pieces there that are really too large.”
He’s lucky I let him eat.
Knowing what to eat seems to become increasingly more difficult with every day. The Nestlé company issued yet another recall yesterday, this time for frozen pizza, Lean Cuisine, and various Stouffer’s Lasagna. The problem? Glass in the spinach. I’m still trying to figure out how glass gets in spinach in the first place, but then, I never have really understood how mass production of frozen food works, either. While frozen is, admittedly, a wonderful convenience on those nights when I’m exhausted, I would still rather order out for fresh pizza than settle for frozen. We just don’t consume that much of it because the taste isn’t there.
Putting healthy food on our plates doesn’t really seem like that big a challenge, in my opinion. We typically know our schedules in advance, we can look at the weather report and guess which days are going to be physically challenging for me, and we plan our menus accordingly. During the summer and early fall, we tilt heavily toward fresh veggies, especially things we grow in our own garden. During the winter and early Spring, before things have a chance to grow, we rely more on things I can put in the slow cooker of the morning and not have to worry about. Eating reasonably healthy isn’t difficult for us.
However, we are fortunate to not have a lot of restrictions on what we eat, either. None of us have serious food allergies or sensitivities, so I don’t have to worry about making substitutions for ingredients that are natural. Not everyone has that advantage. There are millions of people who are diabetic and have to avoid sugars, for example, and finding substitutes that work in various recipes can really be a huge challenge, especially when everything artificial seems to have issues.
The latest sweetener to run into problems is Splenda. A study published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health this week found “increased incidence (p < 0.01) of hematopoietic neoplasias in males” when sucralose, the primary ingredient in Splenda, was injected into rat feed on a regular basis. In other words, regular consumption of Splenda causes cancer. This study feeds into a long-standing claim against the sweetener that, until now, has had no basis. A 2015 article on Snopes lists such cancer claims as false. Splenda, which, by the way, is owned and manufactured by Indianapolis-based Heartland Food Products Group, was quick to dismiss the study, stating:
Sucralose has been extensively researched, with more than 110 studies conducted over a 20-year period. These studies include rigorous testing to specifically identify any potential for causing cancer. Worldwide regulatory authorities, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Food Safety Authority, Health Canada and the World Health Organization, have reviewed these studies and confirm that results show no link between sucralose and cancer. The U.S. National Cancer Institute also supports this conclusion.
I’m not one to decry “artificial” foods that are designed to help people with food-related diseases, such as diabetes and Crones, be able to enjoy relatively normal lives and eat the dishes they have traditionally enjoyed. Every food contains chemicals, folks. Most chemicals are naturally occurring and to the extent they can be extracted and used to help people, I’m all for that and can even encourage further experimentation and exploration. Natural foods can kill even more quickly than artificial ones if ingested by the wrong people.
What’s more likely to cause danger is the way we prepare our food, not the food itself. For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns that over-cooking potatoes, whether fried or baked, can increase amounts of naturally-occurring acrylamide, which really does create a variety of health issues. Understand, this problem occurs even with organically grown potatoes. The chemical is there regardless of how the potato is grown or harvested. What makes the difference is the length of cooking time.
We have a choice. We can either live in fear of everything we might want to put in our mouths, or we can use some good old common sense when choosing and preparing our food. There is very little that is actually bad for you in reasonable doses. Yes, some of the chemicals that occur naturally in our food can also be used in plastics or household cleaners, but the proportions are so outrageously different as to not be comparable. One can die just as quickly from so-called “clean” food when it is prepared incorrectly or smothered in excessive fats and sugars. Eating an all-natural diet doesn’t help one bit if one is consuming 7,000 calories in a single meal. The rule of moderation still applies for the vast majority of healthy people.
If you’re having difficulty comprehending all this, or don’t know who to believe, maybe you just need to eat more chocolate. Chocolate makes you smarter. Run with that. We’ll all have a better day.
Sympathy For The Masses
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.—Ivan Turgenev
Life is not always as comfortable as it appears
I’m wondering this morning how many people consider themselves sympathetic. I’m not talking about how we feel when someone dies, though certainly we could use more sympathy there, but more along the lines of what the Oxford dictionary refers to as, “understanding between people; common feeling.” Sympathy for our fellow humans, for the people right around us, and especially for those we perceive to be different from ourselves, appears to be in a drought.
For example, being a Saturday, one’s expectations might be that people have the day off, their weekend free, two days of leisure available to them. Yet, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, at least 35% of us work on the weekend. Most of those working weekends are in retail, food service, or sales, which is of little surprise. Of those working weekends, though, more than half of those have more than one job, and that particular statistic has grown substantially over the past ten years. I wonder, as we snarl at how slow a waitress seems to be moving or complain about the number of registers open at the market, if we might do well to show a bit of sympathy for those who are overworked, lacking sleep, struggling to make ends meet, but are still expected to smile and meet the petty demands of customers.
I also think about those around us who deal with persistent pain that we never see. When I was a boy, I fear there were too many times when I thought less of my mother because her arthritis forced her to ask for help. While that attitude reversed itself by the time I was an adult, it is only as I find myself frequently in that same predicament that I truly understand how deflating it feels to have to so often ask for assistance. I know many others who deal daily with chronic pain brought on by a plethora of issues; they smile, they rarely complain, they would rather you not know how they’re really feeling. Yet, when they can steal a moment to themselves, they break down and cry in the silence. Do they not deserve sympathy?
As a general population, I fear we have become so incredibly selfish and self-centered that we’ve lost our sympathy for our fellow man. We deride those who struggle. We make fun of those less fortunate. We even delight in placing obstacles in the path of those trying to better themselves. We would rather strip people of their dignity than put an arm around their shoulder and help them out of the ditch into which they’ve fallen. Instead, we chide them for having dared to fall into that ditch in the first place.
Our lack of sympathy became painfully evident in the past week with a local news story that went viral. A woman complained to a local bar that her New Year’s Eve was ruined by what she mistakenly assumed was a dead drug addict being carried from the bar. Her words were scathing and mean as she not only derided the bar, but her over-worked server. When the bar’s manager came back with a scathing reply, explaining that the “dead addict” had in fact been a 72-year-old woman having a heart attack, the entire Internet cheered that the rude woman had received her comeuppance.
There is a shocking lack of sympathy in that story, first from the woman making the complaint, who was so caught up in how “horrible” her night was that she felt compelled to share her anger on social media. Her words were insensitive and uncaring and the manager’s response was sufficient in correcting that wrong. However, we, as a society, are not happy, apparently, until we’ve taken things too far. As the story became one of international interest, people around the world went out of their way to humiliate the woman making the complaint, even inundating the salon where she rented booth space. Notice that I’m using the past tense in that sentence. Because of the severity of the response, the salon canceled her booth rental. The woman now gets to start 2016 without any income.
“She got what she deserved,” is the common response, but did she? She deserved to be corrected in the same manner as she complained, and that happened rather swiftly. But to think that she, or anyone, deserves to be shamed internationally, to have financial harm inflicted not only on her but on others, who worked at the same salon, demonstrates a global lack of sensitivity, compassion, and sympathy even greater than that which she exhibited herself. Some have said, “I hope she’s learned her lesson,” and I would assume she has, but clearly the rest of the world has not. There is no good reason for the shaming to continue nor for her name to be dragged through the mud of international media.
Throughout my life, I’ve made plenty of mistakes, errors in judgment, outright acts of willful ignorance. Chances are pretty damn high that you’ve done the same. None of us are proud of those moments. We learn our lessons, hopefully, and move on. We all work hard. With the economic devastation of the middle class, the number of people struggling just to put food on the table has increased, despite yesterday’s news that the economy added 292,000 new jobs in December. Simply having a job, or two, is not necessarily sufficient for sustaining a reasonable quality of life.
For 98 percent of us, life is a continual race from one challenge to another. We all have our struggle. We all experience pain we don’t talk about. So doesn’t it just make sense that we should have sympathy for the masses that share our common condition?
A little sympathy and caring goes a long way. Try it.
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