Good-bye cheese, my old friend

I want to be friends with food again. Stop feeling guilty. Bargaining. Remember when eating was fun? I was talking to my sister-in-law this week about my eating habits as a teenager. Try to remember the time when you ate what sounded good. I’m pretty sure that I ate French fries and soft-serve ice-cream most days of my middle-school career. Fast-food every day of high-school? Yep. Giant Dr. Peppers from 7-11? You bet! For four years, 5-days-a-week, I ate in fast-food restaurants—not one bagged-lunch or cafeteria meal. Was that ideal? Heck no! Does it sound nauseating to me now? Yes. But I fondly remember those years as the Age When Food Wasn’t The Enemy. Seems so now, doesn’t it?

I love ingredients. I love recipes. I love cooking shows. I read cookbooks cover to cover. Breaking up with certain foods is a painful process. When my migraines reached a frightening frequency a few years ago, my neurologist told me it was time to drastically alter my diet. Some of her recommendations (no dairy?!) made me think that living with chronic migraines didn’t sound so bad.    

 

I’ve long since said good-bye to soda and fast-food restaurants. But nutritional decisions these days are not so black and white. I got my family switched over to whole-wheat and whole-grain foods just in time for gluten to be labeled the new villain. A personal trainer at the gym actually shuddered when I told her that I eat Cheerios for breakfast. Since when did Cheerios become the bad guy? What’s next?

That is why you should read this article. It is so right-on, so witty. It shows how ridiculously preoccupied we can be with terms like: free-range, organic, gluten-free, non-GMO, and on and on. (It’s even more sickening when you consider how many people go hungry in the U.S. and abroad every day.) So, you must read "The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater," if you haven’t already:

 

http://www.nwedible.com/2012/08/tragedy-healthy-eater.html

My favorite quote: “As you read more you begin to understand that grains are fine but before you eat them you must prepare them in the traditional way: by long soaking in the light of a new moon with a mix of mineral water and the strained lacto-fermented tears of a virgin.”

Our son was taught to read labels in second grade. It’s a terrific thing, I know, but I feel like he lost his dietary innocence. He worries about grams of fat like the rest of us neurotic Americans. In the wrong hands, I fear this information will lead to eating disorders at younger ages. I hope he can find the right balance. Have you?