What's left to eat (safely)

What's left to eat anymore?  And who's respons-
ible?

Anyone who has ever gone on a specialized diet knows the stress and difficulty that comes just from trying to find something that won't kill you in the short run, but we're finding more and more that everyday foods are going probably going to kill us in the long run.

The problem is complex and persnickety.  On one hand, we have the food industry over here, talking about how they've had to embrace all kinds of innovations and technological marvels in order to feed our insatiable appetites, but those very appetites were created by a focused drive to increase sales through making food less filling - leaving us with the impulse to eat even more.

But all of those "innovations" have changed the nature of the food we consume.  Genetic modifications, pesticides, herbicides, chemical treatment through processing, and insufficient oversight endanger all that we hold tasty, and mostly because of money.  Wheat has never been the most healthy of grains, but it grows better and faster than most others, so that's what farmers needed to plant in order to make ends meet.  Cattle used to be much smaller and smarter - but also tastier - and today's bovines are subjected to enough drugs and deplorable conditions that it's nearly human.  (Sorry, I mean "inhuman".  Really.)

Tina McCarthy has my back on this one.  She took the time to list the thirteen biggest threats to our health right from the grocery shelves.  Can you take a wild guess what the common theme is for most of them?  Try convenience foods.  Hot dogs, cured meats (with chemicals, I mean), canned foods, diet sweeteners, processed snacks, anything with food dyes, and microwaved plastics (like the ones you get with your H****** C***** prepackaged lunches) are all at the top of the no-no list.  And then there are all the other known hazards like the high levels of mercury in fish, the arsenic in chicken, and the uncomfortable presence of hormones in beef.  Plus, you've heard me rail against white flour, and no doubt that regular readers of the Examiner have read about soy, high-fructose corn syrup, and GMOs.

What's a person who eats to do?  It comes back to a little something that was brought up in that movie we talked about - voting with your dollars.  If you get your vegetables from the local farmer's market instead of the supermarket, what does that say about what you're willing to do for good food?  Good food doesn't just taste good - it feeds your body and soul.  There's a saying that "food is love", and that really applies in today's age.  What kind of love are you sharing?  Is it the prepackaged, heavily-processed kind, or is it the pure and uncomplicated, unconditional kind?

The answer to our question "what's left to eat (safely)" is local food, with the providers of whom you can have an educational dialogue.  We can recognize that while organic food seems to be more expensive, we are spending roughly the same price per serving since we don't have to make up for the empty nutrient-free calories.  We can structure our time to be able to cook, to learn to cook, to embrace the idea that sometimes less if more, to know that fad diets are crap, to give love to ourselves and each other by only supporting the very best things in life.

We've got one shot at this.  Make it worth it.