nutrition | betsybeadhead

I know a lady whose adult daughter has Crohn’s disease. She has done well with it for several years, but it has flared up again. She is recently divorced and has moved back in with her parents.

Her mom wondered if she should buy her a Blizzard from Dairy Queen after she found out the test results weren’t good. Uh. No. As another person said – what health condition would that be good for?

But it isn’t physical health she is trying to treat. She is hoping to soothe with food. We do this a lot. We soften the blows of life with ice cream and cake and brownies.

These are celebration foods. Perhaps what we are trying to do is “turn that frown upside down”. Perhaps by eating the same foods we eat at parties we are trying to trick our brains into thinking that everything is fine. We aren’t in the middle of a bad situation. We are at a party!

But junk food never fixes anything. Good food will fix quite a bit. Exercise will always help.

I’m not sure how we got to the point that we treat the symptom rather than addressing the cause. I’m not sure how we have become reactive rather than proactive. I’m not sure how we have become so passive about our health and our lives.

I know that I’m not playing that game anymore. Sometimes I think I want to go back to school to learn how to be a nutritionist, or a life coach, or anything that helps people prevent their own suffering. But then I think I can’t save the world. It seems like such a logical thing – eat well and exercise and you’ll do fine (barring accidents). Eat terribly and be a couch potato, and you’ll suffer. But that is the way of things. I don’t think we’ve always been this way, but we sure are now. Our medical institutions don’t help either. Coughing? Take a pill. Diabetes? Take a pill. There is no education on how to get well.

Doctors who made a pledge to “do no harm” aren’t doing any good either.

Where does the change start? I think it has to start with us. We have to take control of our own health and lives. We have to essentially homeschool ourselves on our health and wellbeing. The more we expect others to do for us, the more passive we are. And the more passive we are, the more we will fall behind.

Zero calories. Fat free. Gluten free.

This doesn’t mean it is healthy. Look at the label. It can have healthy claims and be totally devoid of nutrition. So what if it has no calories if it also has no vitamins or minerals?

I remember one time when I was working at the craft store in Chattanooga. We got in a shipment of pottery that was packed in these new cellulose packing peanuts. The owner of the store got really excited and said they were edible. He started eating them like they were cheese puffs. Just because something is edible doesn’t mean you should eat it.

There are plenty of snacks that are being sold in pre-portioned packs, usually 100 calories. Partly this is because we have no idea what a proper portion is, and we are gluttons. We’ll eat the entire bag of chips or cookies in one sitting without thinking twice about it. So we need limits. But so what if it is 100 calories, when is 100 calories of nothing? Empty calories fill you up fast and don’t leave any room for actual food.

Something can be gluten free or kosher or organic or any other health buzz word and be high in cholesterol or fat or salt. It can be totally devoid of fiber and nutrients.

I’ve never understood why someone would pick an “energy bar” when they can just eat an Apple and some almonds instead. You’ll get the same results with no preservatives and no packaging, and a lot cheaper.

We are being deceived. We are being tricked. We no longer know what food is, and how to cook it. We are letting corporations make our food. To paraphrase Michael Pollan in “Food Rules”, our food comes from plants, and isn’t plants.

I have relatives who put out bowls of apples for decoration, rather than for eating. Then they realize that the apples go bad, so they have to buy more. Then they decide to buy fake ones. Only in America would we decorate with fake food. Meanwhile people are dying of malnutrition across the country and across the world.

All you can eat doesn’t mean all you should eat. Sure, you want to get your money’s worth when you go to a buffet, but if you overeat, you’ll pay for it in more than money. That dozen doughnuts costs less than a half dozen, but how long will it take you to burn off those calories? So, really, it costs more.