Would You Eat Your Yoga Mat? (You probably already have)

Happiness is still hot. This time last year, I was delving into the book The Happiness Project. I found so much gold there I led several book discussions on it and even developed a retreat utilizing the research presented in the book. This year my new favorite, dog-eared book is The Happiness Diet.

I was driven to purchase a diet book by the weather. Really. This eternal, maddening deep freeze that is holding my state in its clutches is seriously limiting my running and has led me to put on a few extra pounds. I’m not a good dieter. It makes me grumpy, so this “Diet” seemed like it had potential. The subtititle: “A Nutritional Prescription for a Sharp Brain, Balanced Mood, and Lean, Energized Body” hooked me immediately. Who doesn’t want all that?

I spent the majority of the book muttering, “Uh, huh,” “Amen,” and “Wow- I could use that on the blog.”  Which means that you good people are going to vicariously read this book whether you like it or not. You might as well go out and buy a copy.

The book makes a huge case for avoiding processed food. In fact, it lists 100 solid reasons why you should put down your twinkie and Super-sized coke. Being the skeptic, I looked up many of them. The authors are definitely playing on your fears, but for good reason. Here are a few of my favorites –

David, Goliath, and Pink Slime

The first time I heard the term, it was in an e-mail a few months back. I don’t even remember what organization it was that requested my signature on one of what became many petitions to stop the government from allowing “pink slime” to be used in school lunches. Little did I know it was the cusp of a beautiful story of David and Goliath.

Pink slime is a new term, but didn’t sound all that much different from the fillers described in the movie Food Inc from a few years back. Pink slime is a meat filler used in 70% of the ground beef sold in US Supermarkets, and of course, in most fast food restaurants. It’s made by gathering up all the leftover trimmings (Food Inc had graphic pictures of this process that would give you nightmares), essentially fat, muscle bits, and any other body parts leftover in the process of trimming the ugly stuff from steaks and roasts.

Now, the time was, these leftovers where used for dog food and the oil for cooking (gak!), but in the name of larger profits (the almighty driving force in the world today), these parts began being used to pump up the ground beef. Makes one wonder what is being used in the dog food now, doesn’t it?

Anyway, these random parts and oil are put through a centrifuge to separate the oil and then the sludge that is left is sprayed with ammonia gas to kill any bacteria. Now you have a beautiful pink substance that is easily mixed with burger to make the burger go further, kind of like adding water to soup to stretch it, only not so healthy.

Here’s the part about David and Goliath. David is us, the unknowing, naive public who navigate the drive-through on a weekly, or even daily basis. Goliath is the big meat processors like Cargill and Beef Products Inc. For years they have gotten away with stuffing every burger in the US, heck, the world, with pink slime and no one has dared question them. After all, they control the world’s beef supply (or so they and the government would have you believe).

But along came, Gerald Zirnstein, my hero. He’s a former USDA scientist who sounded the alarm about pink slime. Next came the internet petitions (which, truth be told, I’ve always been a bit skeptical about, but now I’m a believer). Then ABC News, the Washington Post, and other major media outlets started investigating why Zirnstein is out of work and grinds his own ground beef at home now.

And then just this past weekend, my newspaper had a front page story about the fact that our local supermarkets (Giant and Weis) will no longer buy beef from suppliers who use pink slime! And the internet is flowing with the news that many school districts (not mine at this point) are announcing that they will no longer serve beef containing pink slime!

Wow, you CAN be the change you wish to see in the world! Go world! I’m not saying it was my signature, per se, but there had to have been something that pushed this cart over the edge. After all, Jamie Oliver’s show blatantly covered the exact same process with chicken nuggets (white slime anyone?) several years ago and nothing happened.

I guess just one parent too many said, “Enough!” and look how we’ve changed our world. I’m hoping this is only the beginning of a new era of holding the FDA (who refused to make the beef industry label products containing pink slime over the objection of their own scientists!) and big industry accountable for how they treat and process the animals we eat. YEH World!

Fast Food Fight

I know this post is most likely point-less. But I’m going to say it anyway. Seeing as it is the season of fast food. And maybe I’m a hypocrite because I’ll confess right up front that during the two road trips we have planned for this summer, we will undoubtedly wind up eating at a fast food joint. And yet, I must carry on with this rant.


Please, please, please don’t eat fast food. I understand that when you have children in the car who are pulling your fingernails out one-by-one with their incessant whining while they wither away to nothing with bloated bellies and sunken eyes in the back seat, you have no choice but to pull in to the fastest food possible. You have no other option. But let’s be honest here, folks. Sometimes we choose fast food because it’s easy. It makes the kids happy. And heck, it tastes good.

But you know what else it does? It makes our country fat and unhealthy. It makes our kids develop tastes for foods that are over-salted, drenched in fat, and coated with sugar. It teaches them that eating fast food is an acceptable choice for their meal, rather than a last-ditch, there’s no-where-else-to-eat, it-might-make-us-sick, kind of option. My three kids will never eat at McDonalds without at least feeling bad about it. I’ve driven the knowledge in to them that when they eat fast-food they are eating food that is not so much food as animal by-products, lard-coated pesticide-enriched, GMO potatoes, and chemically created drug-filled sugar water.

It’s every mother’s duty to give their kids some baggage. And this is one of the carry-ons I’m loading on mine. I think it’s a good one. To be sure, you can occasionally find something nutritionally redeeming at a fast food restaurant. But my guess is your kids aren’t choosing the carrot sticks or fruit cup. And if they go for that baked potato, it’s sure to be smothered in artificially-colored cheese food products. A grilled chicken seems harmless until you ask about the chicken’s heritage and discover it was raised amongst millions of other chickens crammed in a dark, closed-in house with horrible ventilation and hopped up on antibiotics to keep it from dying from the bacterial infections that are common in such set-ups. Don’t be fooled by those lovely pictures of chickens sitting on a fence. Those chickens can’t even walk, let alone hop up on a fence because they’ve been bred to have grotesquely large breasts that prevent them from even moving. Egg to deep fryer in about 12 weeks time. If they live any longer, they’ll die from congestive heart failure because their bodies can’t support their breasts (no lie – I know someone personally who didn’t get his chickens butchered in time and this is how they died!).

If my ranting and raving isn’t enough to make you steer past those golden arches and smiling freckled-faces, consider these facts:

“With 250,000 quick-serve restaurants to choose from, Americans fork over more money on burgers, burritos, and bacon-topped sandwiches each year than what we spend on higher education, new cars, and computers combined.” (Hyman, Ultrametabolism, 60)

“The average weight of a ten-year-old boy in 1963 was 74 pounds; by 2002 the average weight was nearly 85 pounds. The average weight of a ten-year-old girl in 1963 was 77 pounds; by 2002 the average weight of a ten-year-old girl was 88 pounds.” (National Center for Health Statistics, October 2004.).

“One Big Mac is equivalent – in terms of grain produced and consumed – to five loaves of bread. But instead of feeding the hungry with grain, a lot of it is going to the waistline of people in wealthy countries – often to their detriment.” (Bittman, Food Matters 2009)

Heart disease is not only the number one killer of adults; frighteningly, it’s also the second leading cause of death for children under 15. http://champsforlife.org/whatishcm.html

A person would need to walk 9 miles (14.5km) to burn off the 923 calories found in Burger King’s Double Whopper with cheese.

So what’s an overloaded, stressed-out mom to do? Here are a few suggestions to get you through:

- If you’re in town, go home to eat. A peanut butter sandwich or a frozen pizza are healthier choices. Besides, they’re just as quick and cost less.

- If you’re traveling – pack food. Stuff a cooler with fruit that travels well like cherries, apples, bananas, and blueberries. Toss in several bags of baby carrots. Wheat crackers, raisins, craisins, apricots, nuts, and cheese sticks are easy too.

- When all else fails, remind yourself and your kids that HUNGER IS NOT AN EMERGENCY. There are very few people starving to death in the US. Your kids can go several hours (at least) between meals. Hunger will pass and many times it’s actually habit and/or boredom that drives us to demand food.

- If you must stop, look for a place that serves fresh food quickly, instead of processed food. Chipotle Grill is one of my favorite stops and it’s quicker than the average fast food. Stopping in a Mom&Pop type place can also be quick, if you tell the server you’re in a hurry and ask what can be prepared quickly.

- Find a restaurant with a good salad bar. Don’t forget that many of the newer supermarkets have salad bars. You can even get a pound of shrimp steamed quickly and enjoy a decadent treat instead of a mashed up hamburger that will make you feel ill hours later.

- If you know you’re going to have to stop and you can’t bring yourself to pack food. Remember you have other options beyond fast food. The internet gives you the power to find restaurants on your route that serve healthy fare. And in a pinch, an iphone or GPS usually can give you information on restaurants nearby.

Here’s my bottom line. Fast food won’t kill you, if you eat it once in awhile. (It will kill you if you eat it daily – see the movie Supersized if you don’t believe me!) What’s most important is teaching our children that this is not a healthy way to eat. When we swing through the drive-thru on a regular basis, we are training our kids for a lifetime of unhealthy eating. Every mom I know loves her kids too much to want that for them. I know fast food is easy. I know our children love it (they love candy and potato chips too). But this is one of those things we must do for our children (like driving the speed limit and being nice to rude people). This is the point when we need to stop saying it’s OK even if everyone else is doing it.
Besides the health issues raised by consuming fast food, I’d like to raise another point. When we eat “fast” we are not respecting the place food has in our life. It is our sustenance. When we choke down something in a wrapper while our children duck in and out of the playland between bites of ground up chicken-parts coated in bread and fat, we aren’t paying attention to the food we eat. When we sit down and face one another and eat good food together, it is a form of communion. We need to teach our children to taste their food, to appreciate where it came from, and who prepared it. We need to teach them the power they have in choosing what to put in their bodies and about the power food has to make our bodies healthy or unhealthy. Whatever decisions they make will be apparent at some point in their lives on the bathroom scale or the doctor’s table. Teach them to make healthy, empowering choices for their bodies and their lives.

We only get one shot at raising our children. This is our one and only chance to teach our children about eating healthy and being healthy for a lifetime. It’s more than a meal and much more than fast food.