There is a grocery store near my house that has a health food section. All the healthy options are put together in one little area. This section is to the far left of the entrance, tucked behind the pharmacy. The ceiling is low, the walls are dark, and the lighting is bad. It would be easy to never even notice there was a healthy-option section. When you do notice it, it isn’t inviting.

In one way it is good to have a separate section. All the different healthy options that you might want are put together. You don’t have to go all over the store to find them. In another way it is bad. Regular shoppers won’t know of these options when they are shopping. They won’t be able to discover a different brand of toothpaste or compare prices or ingredients on juice or breakfast cereals.

Why are healthy options marginalized? When they are mixed in with everything else they are often on the bottom shelf where they will not be noticed. All the popular options are at eye or at least chest height. They have bright colors and clever marketing. The healthy options sit quietly, gathering dust.

Grocery stores should stop getting bigger and start getting better. They should stop selling fourteen different brands of cheesy poofs for starters. In fact, stop selling cheesy poofs altogether. It doesn’t matter that people want them. Perhaps grocery stores should adopt the “do no harm” oath that doctors have to take. But then again, we see how well that has done us. Treat the symptom, not the disease.

One of my coworkers was told by her nutritionist that she needed to skip everything that was in the center of the store. Skip everything that is prepackaged and filled with preservatives, and buy fresh real food. Let’s add to that. Skip everything that has labels on it with ingredients you can’t understand and can’t pronounce. Skip everything with an ingredient list that is longer than the “food” item itself.

Convenience foods are killing us.

Fast food equals a slow death.

I understand. We live busy lives. Who has time to bake their own bread? Who has time to grow their own food? Cooking takes time, time we think we don’t have. Yet we have time to check Facebook and Twitter and time to watch reality TV and talk shows.

The old adage is true. We are what we eat. And we are eating junk.