Friday, March 1, 2013

That's Bologna: Blog Title & Processed Meat Product That Nobody Should Ever Eat. Ever.

(Full disclosure, I do not eat meat of any kind, and stay away from dairy 99% of the time. Sometimes I cannot say no to a homemade cookie with butter in it, but I really try hard! I would not call myself a vegan because I wear leather and eat dairy sometimes, but I don't eat meat. I just don't. For lots of reasons, so this is a particularly biased post- all the more reason to read it!)

Yes! There is pink slime in here! Delicious!
taken from usatoda30.com
We have all seen Pink Slime. It's disgusting. Many of the people I know try to eat natural meat and buy organic milk, but they are not the norm, and after learning more about the food that is sold in our grocery stores, I am not sure buying organic milk is enough. On a personal note, my boyfriend, Alex, always suffered from allergies. He had high blood pressure for several years, but we could never figure out why. He worked out, he didn't smoke, he didn't drink alcohol very often, and he was young and skinny! Why was his blood pressure so high? His doctor thought he should go on medication for this problem, and would most likely stay on these meds forever. We saw Forks Over Knives and after years of not eating meat, decided to give up dairy as well. That movie does a great job of making you feel like dairy is the most evil thing on the planet, and it worked on us! Long story short, his allergies are gone. His blood pressure is completely normal, and he is healthier than ever. Now, it's possible he had a lactose issue (and he drank a lot of organic! milk,) but my theory has since been that everybody could probably benefit from quitting the dairy, and I am not just basing this off of anecdotal evidence. It's science, ya'll!

My bologna has a first name, it's
P-R-O-C-E-S-S-E-D my bologna
has a second name, it's C-R-A-P...
taken from martyrobertsblog.com
I hate when people assume that because I don't eat meat or dairy, I am going to try to push my views on everyone else and judge them for eating meat. Well, that's not really my thing. I don't really care what you eat, and I appreciate when people don't really care what I eat. In fact, I wasn't going to blog about food at all when I began this blog because I didn't want everyone to call me a hippie, but this blog is for calling out bologna, and the food industry is full of bologna. Both kinds. So go ahead- call me a hippie. I don't mind.

I was watching one of my favorite shows this evening, and saw an interview with Michael Moss, New York Times investigative reporter and the author of the new book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. (I will be purchasing this book with my amazon gift certificates, and I hope you will all buy it too- it looks incredible.) It was a timely interview for me, as the ladies I went to lunch with today were talking about this book and how insane the food industry is. I was intrigued, but much more excited to read it after seeing this interview. It was eye-opening to say the least. The second half of the segment was an interview with Melanie Warner, who has a book out called Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal. (Yes, I have enough amazon cash for both- done!) I am not going to go through the whole segment, as I could write about this all night. Instead, I am going to give you a few teasers and kick you if you don't hope you watch the two short videos posted at the end of this short rant.

"Every year, the average American eats as much as 33 pounds of cheese. That's up to 60,000 calories and 3,100 grams of saturated fat. So why do we eat so much cheese? Mainly it's because the government is in cahoots with the processed food industry. And instead of responding in earnest to the health crisis, they've spent the last 30 years getting people to eat more. This is the story of how we ended up doing just that...Philip Morris became the largest food manufacturer in the United States starting in the late 80s, when it acquired General Foods and then Kraft... when [they] came under increasing pressure for nicotine and tobacco- the Philip Morris officials turned to their food people and said, 'You guys'- and this is private of course- 'You guys are going to face the same issue we're facing over nicotine with salt, sugar, fat and obesity..."- Micheal Moss on Democracy Now.

If you don't find that interesting, and don't want to learn more, I don't know what to say! Let me try one more:

"...I was really surprised to learn where some of these vitamins come from...it turns out that they're- these vitamins aren't coming from the foods that contain them. Like Vitamin C does not come from an orange, and Vitamin A does not come from a carrot...they come from things that aren't actually foods. Vitamin D, for instance, was probably the most shocking. It comes from sheep grease, so actually the grease that comes from sheep wool. You have giant barges and container ships that go from Australia and New Zealand over to China, where most of- a lot of our vitamins are produced. About 50 percent of global vitamin production comes from China inside these huge factories, very industrial processes...[it is] converted, through a number of chemical steps and chemical processes, to Vitamin D, which is added to our food and used in supplements."- Melanie Warner on Democracy Now.

Lick meeeee for a dose of Vitamin D?
First a pitstop at a factory in China!
taken from photographyblogger.net
"Fortified with vitamins" has a very different meaning than it did two minutes ago, right? Watch the videos for yourself, read the books, and let me know what you want to eat. I know cheese is delicious, you don't have to tell me. However, there is no denying that the food industry is evil, and that most Americans eat a horribly unhealthy diet, which ends up costing you and I lots of money. (See, Republicans? You are paying out of your pocket to help these food companies get rich off of our unhealthy populace! Not fair! Don't you guyz hate bologna like that? )

 I am off to plan my summer garden. What about you?