I did not buy a jar of stuffed olives yesterday though I wanted to...

  Yes,I went to No Frills, as I wanted to buy something for my potato salad. I had some pickles, green onions at home and I decided to buy some pickled (marinated) olives as I like them with salads. I took a small jar, not expensive, nothing fancy, just stuffed green olives for a dollar something. I was about to put it into my shopping basket that already had some greens in it. But then I decided to read the label on the jar. I did not expect anything but salt, vinegar and olives. Boy, I had a surprise! Yes it said olives,vinegar,salt all right and 3 or four foreign sounding ingredients extra that sounded suspiciously like bunch of preservatives and something that had a brief commentary to it "to help maintain freshness". And what the heck is 'natural flavor'?
  Stupid me! I always thought that  only fresh, not spoiled food can maintain freshness. Do we need to swallow chemicals in order to eat unspoiled food? May be we should change the way we cook and preserve food instead of adding 'unfood' to it, what do you think?

 I tried to find another jar of olives. I checked different brands and more expensive ones to no avail. They all had 'unfood' in it. So I decided I can live without olives this time. May be next time somebody will sell me something that has just olives and vinegar, and salt. As it used to be. As it used to be in my old country where if there is not enough food you can buy at the store, you can go to a farmers market, check around and sure enough -  some old granny is selling her tasty preserves to people. I need that granny here in  Canada, because this monstrous conglomerate that's called Food Industry is selling me poison. One pinch at a time, here and there, in this and in that until I have cancer, or heart attack, or something equally nasty. Don't tell me it's okay, it's a small amount. It's not okay. People eat  lots of preserved food because it's fast, convenient and we just sometimes need time for something else, rather than spend our life in the kitchen preparing everything from scratch. You open a can and part of your meal is already prepared. Saves time for rest or study, or work for that matter. Give us that time but please, do not feed us 'unfood' - we deserve better, we earned it.

I found this label on Internet with right ingredients in it. That's how things should be. Organic or not.  I wonder how much these beauties cost though... Can I afford healthy food?


 

Things we eat, what food industry keeps quiet about.

I was thinking, what exactly prevents us from healthy eating? Is it our industry that is at fault? Or is it our reluctance to go ahead and just drop all that nice tasty things we love so much, those delicious juicy things that are tasty and absolutely harmful to our health? Is it our inertia that makes us overweight and unhealthy, or is it our habit that was developed in our childhood, the one that kills us now, slowly destroying our health. May be we don't know enough about health and nutrition yet. May be we still need some time. Well, we don't have that time.

Enough. Industrial revolution freed us from hard labour and meager  rough food. Now we can grind, bleach, process, turn into pulp, into powder just about anything. We can extract, add, remove, pasteurise, boil, freeze, keep frozen, sterilize,evaporate, add lots of chemicals unknown to the most part of population,mimick nature, mimick real food. We have to trust our food industry, haven't we? Well, I don't know and I don't think so.
Most of our contemporary diseases are from lack of right nutrition and physical inactivity. Plainly speaking we sit too much and eat too much of wrong food. And it does not really matter what exactly do you eat, if you food is wrong.

I do not believe our food industry and our doctors for that matter for one and only reason, - their vast material interest is in it, financially they are too deeply in it.  Loblaw Companies Ltd. says first-quarter profits rose nearly 23 per cent to $162 million, beating expectations, even though its sales were down. People eat, people eat more when recession strikes.

If a food company can squeeze one more cent from  you, I am sure they will. Sometimes all they have to do is just to remove some more expensive ingredients from your product and then add the cheapest ones. You'll never know the difference, until you get sick, even then  you are not going to know. You'll get bad symptoms, you'll go to the doctor, who will gladly prescribe you a bunch of unnecessary, even dangerous drugs, worthless vitamins, that your body will store in you tissue and organs desperately trying to get rid of those, getting even more "sick" symptoms. Your doctor has a vast financial interest in your being sick. Always remember that.

You  have to educate yourself. You have to think, to experiment, to try. Forget about restaurant, they are in business of making money, fast-food traps, all that processed crap they are relentlessly advertising about on TV. They need money, your poor schmuck's money. You need health. And no one is going to give it to you but yourself. Go to the store and look at the products beyond beautiful colourful packages. You do not eat pictures, you eat product, and that product has to be healthy and minimally processed. Why do you have to buy 'chicken fingers'? Chicken do not have any fingers. Buy meat if you want meat, fresh and unprocessed. Grill it, or boil it, or roast it, it's up to you. Make some fresh salad. Plain white vinegar, drop of good olive oil and squeeze of sweet orange will make you the best dressing for your salads.

If you want cereal, don't look for a fancy box. Buy grains and cook those as much as you like. You never know what might hide in these fancy packages, but you are not a child and you are not eating that box! Oatmeal is cheap and takes no time to cook and is good for you. Eat it! And there are lots of useful  grains that you can eat, that will give you energy and health. And you know what? You can hardly overeat on a wholesome food, because you'll satisfy your body well enough with a small amount of good food.

 Another thought. Just imagine that we suddenly refused to buy all that crappy loaded with sugar yogurts,cereals, juices, ice-creams and cookies. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what exactly our food industry is going to do? Yes, they are going to adapt to OUR NEEDS. They must. They must produce good, clean,wholesome unprocessed product for our consumption. Why? Because we need it. And they do not have a choice, they need that money of yours.

A girl with a Coke bottle...

Image:Cocacola-5cents-1900.jpg licensed with PD-US

It was an ordinary morning. Just a regular working day. I was taking my usual bus route to work - not a complicated one. I go to Keele/Finch intersection and then 4 stops from there take me to my work. On a good day(or empty pocket) I can actually walk home from my working place, I do that sometimes, when I feel like it. If there is no rush and weather is good, I can be home in 40 minutes, not bad for a big city, distance-wise.

But my story is not about my healthy life style. On that day while on a bus, I noticed a girl. She was probably my kids' age, give and take. Young, she could even be pretty, if not for her gross overweight -400 or 500 pounds she was, I don't know.

What really upset me - she was sitting there drinking Cola from a 500 ml bottle. I was looking at her but I could not say anything, not in Canada, not on a bus full of people. I could not just come close to her and tell her that she was killing herself by drinking that stuff.

She was siting there drinking exactly what was a no-no to her, because with every sip she was adding to her weight and health problems.

If she is going to consume that stuff, she'll continue to grow bigger until she is bed ridden and helpless and very sick, and she probably does not see the connection.

In 12 oz of cola there is 40 gr of sugar, about 8 tsp of sugar. http://http//www.askipedia.com/askipedia-article-006-219.htmIf you drink one can of cola for a year, you'll consume 65 pounds of sugar. What do you think it will do to your system?

Do you seriously think that you can play with your health like that and get away with it? Lots of sugar make this drink highly addictive, and you'll be craving that drink over and over again.

We bust marijuana growing, but drinking coke is legal and Coca-Cola company is flourishing. Is there any sense in that? Or is just me, stupid immigrant, who does not understand the divine wisdom of successful business?

Who cares about your personal health, we have plenty of young and eager doctors to help you with your medical problems and lots of medications to prescribe to you.

I think same as with credit cards we need a wake up call with our food industry.

There is a saying in my old country:"We don't see forest bend the trees." Exactly, we don't see it here.

We don't see that our children can stay healthy and all we need to do is just a little effort - just take out poison from our shopping carts, that's it.

And when we'll do that - companies like Coca-Cola we'll be out of food industry too - for good.