Saying No to Processed and Packaged Foods

It’s time for a challenge. The goal this week (beginning as of this morning) is to limit my intake of highly processed and packaged foods as much as possible. I’m not going to say “completely avoid” because I have to leave myself an iota of wiggle room. (If I say I’m avoiding packaged foods, would I be without milk, bread, or pasta for a week? I don’t think I have the time to raise a cow in the backyard and make homemade bread and pasta in the next seven days, although I may try two out of the three in the near future). So, the goal is to limit my intake as much as possible.

Why? Because in doing so, I can instead focus on eating more healthful (and, hopefully, seasonal and local) foods. And, in the process, I will be sending less packaging to the garbage or recycling bin. It’s a win-win for this girl.

This challenge won’t be without it’s difficulties, to be sure. One of them is the fellow I live with, who essentially lives on homemade egg McMuffins (at least they’re homemade), sandwiches, Doritos, and Diet Coke.

It’s not an uncommon situation for my generation. When you’re raised to expect a cupboard full of snacks (read: highly processed foods) as so many of us were, it’s hard to get past that to think that a big bowl of fruit or a handful of crunchy carrots can be just as tasty.

It’s not that Conservative Boy’s parents raised him only on Ding-Dongs and Funyuns. It’s just that somehow the love for vegetables and fruits and well-balanced meals that his parents have, the appreciation for produce eaten close to where it was grown, has been lost on him. He can’t stand most vegetables and gets annoyed when I spend an hour—an hour!—making dinner, because to him vegetables are gross and cooking for that long a waste of time, when you can cook up a brat or slap together a sandwich in no time.

And so I struggle to clear out the cupboard full of snack food, to lure Conservative Boy to the dark side with beautiful asparagus (he won’t touch it) and the promise of tasty cherry tomatoes from the plant growing in a pot in our front yard (he just grumbles that I spend too much time with my plants). And in the meantime, my efforts to get him to fall in love with food like I am exhaust me and so I reach in the cupboard for a granola bar or a Chips Ahoy cookie and—gasp!—even ask him to bring me home a box of macaroni and cheese to make for lunch because the homemade stuff is so much work.

Am I failing? Or is it just that I’m facing the reality of the society in which I was raised—in which food is supposed to be quick and easy, ready when you want it, to be consumed hurriedly while standing up at the kitchen counter or driving or watching TV rather than sitting down and savoring it.

This is not a criticism of C.B. and his eating habits so much as it is an acknowledgement that this is the mentality we all must learn to overcome if we are truly going to embrace the concept of eating seasonal, local, natural foods the way they ought to be eaten. I’m not going to force C.B. to stop eating meat or Chips Ahoy. I probably won’t completely give them up myself. But it’s time we face the facts—all those chemicals, all that high-fructose corn syrup, all of the manufactured items that go into most of the food we eat is making us incredibly unhealthy, fat, and sick. Yes, really. All of those food items that hardly have an ounce of real food in them aren’t good for the environment and are even worse for the people who are consuming them. And even when we do eat fruits and vegetables from the supermarket, they aren’t anything like the produce grown locally and picked from the field or garden within hours of when we eat it. All those food miles the produce travels in trucks, all that time the produce sits in stores, renders it flavorless compared to the fresh stuff. Really.

I wish I could “go off the food grid” so to speak and grow a massive garden, know exactly where every food item I put in my mouth comes from, bake my own bread and can my own tomatoes, all the actions Barbara Kingsolver and her family undertook in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that made me swoon. But at the same time I’m faced with reality, the reality that I don’t have the space or the time or the knowledge (yet!) to grow all that food myself, and that beyond the little farmer’s market in town at the moment, my local options are limited. (Although I did find out about a local source for eggs and milk this weekend. Now if someone can give me a lead on the best places to find locally raised meat I’ll be set.)

I don’t think it’s necessary to become a hardcore locavore (as those who dedicate themselves to eating only sustainable, locally produced food—typically grown or raised within 100 miles of where they live—are called). But I think there’s something to be said for taking the advice of Michael Pollan and avoiding food that our grandparents or grandparents’ parents wouldn’t even recognize as food.

So, now I wonder: When it comes to food, what matters to you?