The Anti-Diet Lifestyle

This Saturday May 19th was Food Revolution Day, a worthy cause started and spurred on by Jamie Oliver. I have thrown myself into the concept as I agree with the idea of eating right and teaching others about eating right. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to do that. No matter your thoughts on Jamie, the message of the Food Revolution is one that is timely, important and necessary.


Mom, any more H_t P_ckets?
Humans, being what they are, have made convenience foods-  frozen, dried pre-made foods- extremely popular. Some are high in sodium and flavour enhancing chemicals so that we actually crave inferior macaroni and cheese and turn down the real gooey, cheesy, crunchy homemade dish! Many of us are 'brainwashed' for lack of a better word into living a dependent lifestyle for the sake of convenience. What I mean by that is if you are hungry and out of the home? Then take-out is your answer. Getting take-out? Well then one of the big three drive-thrus is your answer. We spare no thought as to why we make these decisions because a lot of us have been raised in an atmosphere that embraced the new and convenient without the necessary consideration as to health benefits or harm.

We enter the grocery store and fall prey to the same temptations there as when driving down restaurant row no matter what good intentions we started out with when we made our grocery list. Just walk down the frozen foods aisle and you will see a meal for everyday of the week. While frozen vegetables can be just as nutritious as grabbing something from the produce department, many frozen convenience dinners are so high in fats, sodium and enhancing chemicals that  you are better off eating the box. As to the hamburger helper and powdered sauces aisle...don't go there. Take my word for it-you're not missing anything. We won't even discuss wieners, bologna or the chicken nuggets in the yellow box.


Keep that up, you'll go blind
There are many of us who have a genuine desire to eat and be healthier but are scared off by the fanatics who do their best to convince us that only through superhuman effort and sacrifice will we ever meet our goals. We research, buy cookbooks by the dozen, subscribe to at least two magazine newsletters about food and have a radar always on the go picking up tidbits of conversations of strangers around us. We read labels, compare sodium levels and wonder if living forever is worth eating plain yogurt. Blech.  I have a lot of cookbooks myself...hang on, I'll go count....Yep, 132 is a lot of books about food and not a one is a diet cookbook. Have I read them all? Almost. Well over half resemble porcupines there are so many post-its sticking out. I may not have read all of them cover to cover but I flip through all as soon as I get them. I can't help it. I do not obsess about calories, or what number value is assigned to that particular food or worry about weighing every morsel to pass my dainty lips. The most I do is calculate the carbs (simple mainly) as they are my personal weight gainers. 


We want to be healthier and there are plenty of people willing to tell us how to achieve that and just as many so-called solutions. So many of us tie ourselves up in knots trying to decide who to believe in the anti-food wars. There are simply too many cookbook authors trying to make money off of the concerns of your body, too many doctors with agendas and kick backs,  too many gov't groups trying to force feed you a line...Who to believe? 


Uphill both ways, in the snow
I say, look to the past. Before the advent of convenience foods, BigFood, and their industrial farm suppliers we actually knew how to eat without sitting down with a calculator tallying up the calories and fibre intake. We were quite able to remain slim and healthy without thinking about it, obsessing about it and tracking down web articles to find out how others manage to be healthy and lived to blog about it. They somehow got through their day without staring down at a scale, peeping through their toes and lamenting the fact they weigh more than a six month old baby.


Most of our predecessors came from a culture that defined shopping as something you did once or twice per month for the things you could not make or grow yourself. You travelled into town and visited the one or two stores (more and you were citified) and you then picked out your items. Sometimes you had time to chat about what was new in...(choose your own topic) or to glance quickly through a catalogue for things you wanted but needed ordering and a patient wait of six weeks.


 Whether done in a horse and cart or an old jalopy, our fore parents made of the shopping trip something special and something rare enough to remain special. Ladies would dress in Sunday best and the menfolk were made to put on their cleaner pair of pants and the children sported shirts with sleeves and slicked back rooster tails. Pride showed through-pride in self, family, community and the products of the toil of their bare hands. You were going into town because you made some money and you could afford to spend some. They nodded at passers-by that were familiar faces from market day where one of your grandmothers sold her surplus in-season vegetables and homemade jams put up that spring.


The values that are obtained and fostered by living off the land are ones found in the recipes that our ancestors lovingly used and re-used over a lifetime. Is it any wonder that at one time recipe collections were deemed heirlooms and were viciously fought over? 


That foam in the corner of my mouth is from my latte
If you are ever fortunate enough to peruse a family heirloom cookbook, try to find the word diet any where in  it. I was going to include a list of popular fad diets here but we'd be here all night. The only time the word diet should be used is pertaining to a medically prescribed food regime. It should never be used in conjunction with a weight loss goal, in normal circumstances. Trying to lose weight by restrictions, rules or other complications will only lead to ultimate failure in reaching your goals, no matter how modest they may be. 


Every day it seems that there is a new and improved way to fail at losing weight and becoming healthier. Yes, there will be some temporary successes simply by virtue of the fact we all fall into differing categories of weight gain. Some of us gain in the belly and benefit from one type of balanced food regime while others gain in their posterior and will not benefit from the same regime. Eventually however, because the necessary food learning was not accomplished, failure will result. 


Bottom Line
If you educate yourself on how food works for you, which work best for what you want to gain (or lose!), how our food is grown or is raised, while learning to ignore the latest fads then you will have a greater chance of developing a better food relationship which will always lead to a healthier food lifestyle.

by Chelle Elle
all images from Google Images