smoothie and a big bowl of pasta

There are people who would consider a smoothie and a big bowl of pasta (or at least the big bowl of pasta part) not at all the thing to eat, for various theoretical and experiential reasons. Of course others, those studying other food theories, would consider these foods to be just the things to eat (even the big bowl of pasta). Right now I am feeling that we are required to spend too much time thinking about what we eat- not in the sense of what we enjoy eating, because who doesn't love that, but in the sense of what we should be eating. Things have gone so far that I have to ask what happens if we don't spend time thinking about what we eat, about where our food comes from, about what exactly is in our food? I'll tell you...

The other day I was at the grocery store and I was in a hurry and I had a few dollars and I rushed over and grabbed some juice for my kids. I had gone in for a quick pick up of some sort and while there I remembered we were out of juice and because I wanted to spend very little money and because I wanted to get out of there before my kids lured me into the toy aisle, I grabbed some juice and ran. I am a chronic purchaser of organic products, natural products, local products and usually spend very little time perusing food labels because what I typically buy either has very few ingredients or I have long since looked over said labels and I know what is inside. Mostly it is tried and true, lots of produce, lots of whole foods, that sort of thing. I buy very few highly processed foods and the ones I do buy, like the occasional bag of Doritos for Samuel, well we all know mostly what is inside those, right?

So to be honest I was surprised when I looked at the label of the juice (once I got it home and my kids were oohing and ahing over it in a particularly um un-natural way) and saw that the first ingredient on the list was high fructose corn syrup. It was like this ah ha memory for me. Oh right, I forgot. They put this stuff in everything and this is why I buy the foods that I do, time after time after time. I had become habituated to the foods I normally buy and forgot that if I buy other unknown products, I need to look at the label or else end up with words like high fructose corn syrup or MSG in my mind, in my home, in my kids' bodies. Oh right. This is why I think about what I eat, why so many people I know think so long and so hard about what we eat, what we all eat. Because when we don't, we end up with fake whatsits in our cupboards, taking up space in our stomachs, space that other real foods might have occupied.

A little high fructose corn syrup here and there isn't going to hurt anyone, not really. Throw in a few nights of roasted kale, some local strawberries, maybe a little scrambled egg, and really it is just a blip, a short story. It is when it becomes the primary source of energy, the main flavor of our experience that it becomes something to be concerned with. I am happy for my recent juice experience. It helped wake me up a bit and remind me what it is I am doing, once again, when I think about the foods I eat, the foods my children eat, where they come from, what they are made of...It also gave me a little perspective and that also is a very good thing. It's not the pasta and smoothie or salmon and kale or tofu or eggs. It's all that other stuff they are trying to pass off on us as food. That's where it all started. When they stop trying to sell us unfood as food maybe then we can relax a bit about what we eat because we will know that when it says food- it really is food. Until then? I for one am going back to making sure that when I buy food it really is food- again.