If it wasn’t food in 1850, it’s not food now.

So reads a sign on the wall in my friend Doug’s farmers market. This is a reference to all the food additives contained in modern processed food. Pick up a package of most processed food products such as frozen dinners & read the ingredients label. There’s a good chance more than half of the contents are chemicals, dyes, preservatives, stabilizers & God (and the manufacturer) only knows what other ingredients, none of which belong anywhere near our plates. I have a refrigerator magnet which shows a picture of a chef holding a plate of food. The caption reads – ‘There’s a special trick I do with fat-free food: Throw it away.’ The point being, again, that the ingredients they put in to make it fat free makes it ‘not food’.

We have come so far from the days when going to the store meant grabbing your rifle, fishing pole or garden basket as you left the house that we don’t even remember what the original version looked, smelled or tasted like. There are actually city children that don’t know that hamburgers come from cows. I find it ironic that no nation on the face of the earth has been able to defeat us militarily, yet, through our affluence, we are killing ourselves with our food. Both from a standpoint of the ingredients & the mass quantities we consume. It’s time that we, in the words of the old Joni Mitchell song, ‘got back to the garden’.

Please for your sake & the sake of your loved ones, start being an informed consumer. Obviously, the best thing you can do is cook for yourself. That way you have almost total control over what goes into your meals. Start a garden & begin growing some of your own food. It’s really not that difficult, I mean, primitive man figured it out. It’s also fun & good exercise. And the quality of the product is unsurpassed. Patronize your local farmers markets & food producers. There’s no reason you should eat food that is brought here from somewhere else when it’s available locally.

When you are in the grocery store, become a label reader. There are two things on those labels that the manufacturer has to tell the truth about; the ingredients & the nutritional content. This is due only to the fact the government makes them. Everything else on that package is up to the manufacturers’ discretion. And as I’ve mentioned before, putting healthy, fresh, nutritious food into your body isn’t high on the list of the manufacturers’ goals (if it’s on the list at all). Try to purchase products with a minimum of unknown ingredients. A bag of frozen corn should have one ingredient – corn! Watch for the sodium & fat content. There are two ways to cheaply make food taste better – fat & salt. Ignore the picture on the package. I guarantee the contents in no way resemble the picture. Buy with your brain, not your emotions or hunger. Buy produce fresh & in season when possible. Another thing that will help insure fresh food – don’t pay for someone else’s labor. Cut up your own pineapple. We have gotten so lazy that we let these corporations feed us. It’s time to take back & take control of our own nutrition. Get mad. Get motivated. Get healthy.