It’s not my usual beat but let’s talk about food and the great American problem of weight control. It intersects very closely with government policy, so anyone who is sick of government and deeply distrustful of its policies and programs absolutely must look more carefully about what he puts in his pie hole.
Speaking of which, my great resolution for 2024 was to eat only freshly cooked food. Once you put your mind to it, rewiring your own expectations, it happens.
Without trying and to my incredible astonishment, the extra weight fell off quickly and dramatically over a period of weeks. My belts are easily tighter by a notch or two and it is again a joy to wear all my favorite suits. Overall, my own health took a dramatic turn for the better.
It wasn’t a diet as such and I did no more exercise than usual. You can say it was just being more generally conscious as an eater, and surely that is a contributing factor but credit should also go to home cooking from fresh ingredients. Introducing a total ban on processed foods does wonders.
What are “processed” foods, as we call them? I’ve been reading about it and it turns out there is no settled-upon definition. It just refers to foods that are many stages away from what they were when they began, and are sold to have a long shelf life and ready to eat. Part of this involved adding a remarkable amount of chemicals and preservatives for purposes of keeping the look and feel of actual food even though it is mixed, pounded, packaged, and shipped, and made from many products that have undergone the same until it finally ends up on the shelf.
There seems to be nothing wrong with that and I’ve always seen this as part of the natural unfolding of the capitalist process. But is it really? The ubiquitous presence of seed oil and corn sweetener is a reflection of massive subsidies for grains as part of an industrial plan emanating from the federal government. As for the seeds, insecticides, and fertilizers, all designed to work together and under strict patent control from government, one does truly wonder. Nothing about this is natural, much less regenerative.
What is the effect on the human body? I’ve known people who say that the American food supply is utterly poisoned as a result. I used to laugh at such claims but I’m no longer dismissive. It makes me curious. In any case, there is nothing wrong with trying an extended experiment in eating only fresh food that is devoid of all this insofar as you can manage that. I seriously doubt that anyone who tries this won’t notice a huge difference in the quality of life.
After four months of this approach, I found myself at a gas station but seriously affected by the munchies. What in the world could be wrong with picking up one of those yummy gourmet health cookies that I always see sitting on the shelf? So I went in and grabbed the most high-quality one that I could find. It was $3.50 which is ridiculous but I was very hungry. It had all the earmarks of a healthy snack.
The shock that came was indescribable. I opened the packet and what appeared to be a chocolate chip cookie appeared. I smelled it but it did not smell like a cookie. It didn’t even smell like food. It was sort of bendable, not crunchy, to give the appearance of having come right out of the oven even if it had been sitting there on the shelf for months or years.
I cautiously took a bite. Whatever else this was, it was not food. It tasted like a petroleum product, perhaps like a coffee-can lid or a frisbee. There was no hint of anything we associate with flour, eggs, chocolate, or anything else. It seemed like something else. It made no crumbs at all. I looked at this big round thing with a small bit taken out of it and realized that there was no way that I could eat this, no matter how hungry I was.
Suddenly I realized. After four months of eating only fresh food, my palate consciousness had been raised dramatically. I had eaten junk food like this my entire life and never noticed that it had no real food qualities at all. Now it seemed like absolute poison, like a product to be consumed in a prison camp to save money.
At this same convenience store earlier this year, I spoke to the manager about his products. I asked him how he stays so thin and healthy looking. He said that he only eats fresh food and drinks no packaged drinks at all. I asked about all the food in this store. He clarified that there was not one single food or drink product in his store that he would personally consume. He sells it but considers it all poison.
Now I see his point.
The experience does make one wonder. How much of the American diet consists of some version of this packaged cookie that was so disgusting? Go through the aisles of mainstream grocery stores and you see it. Row after row after row of packaged stuff, dry to frozen, and shoppers filled up the carts with these beautiful looking things and devour them without thinking. What precisely are we consuming? Hardly anyone gives it much thought.
Drinks alone are remarkable to consider, once you realize that most are sweetened not with sugar but with corn syrup, which is made from inedible corn products that would likely not even exist without vast subsidies. Tariffs on real sugar cause it to be priced twice as high as the global average so this corned-up muck ends up being far cheaper, and therefore ubiquitous in nearly all drinks and packaged snacks plus desserts.
What is the effect of this? I’m not a nutritionist but I have my suspicions. And what else is going wrong? It can be hard to figure out, to be sure, but there is clearly something wrong. People who travel abroad often report that they lost weight during their trip despite seemingly eating more. The dismissive comment is always: that’s because you exercised more during sightseeing. Maybe, maybe not.
It’s safe to say that millions these days have lost trust in government, media, medicine, academia, and corporate culture generally, figuring out based on evidence that they are all far more captured by interests that are not the same as the common good. It’s not entirely implausible that the same is true of the whole food supply, which has been managed by a top-down industrial plan for nearly 50 years, together with a recommended diet that has been proven to be a disaster. What you end up with is poison cookies on shelf after shelf and people wonder why heart disease, diabetes, and early death is soaring.
It’s possible to make a change in your own life. It simply takes one decision to give it a go. Pledge to go a few months with only eating fresh food that you or someone you trust has prepared. For example, in order to satisfy my own cookie craving, and following my convenience-store disaster, I hopped over to the real bakery run by a nice lady from Guatemala. I bought a chocolate-chip cookie. It was tremendously delicious and even had the flavor of healthy food.
It’s undeniable that something has gone very wrong with American food but it is within your power to fix it for you and for your family. Try an experiment and see what you think. We can’t guarantee perfect results but we can be confident that your life will improve dramatically, and that’s saying something important.
