Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: breakfast, chicken, fast food, fuel, honey, organic, sweet tooth
Food logs are so embarrassing. I don’t want people to know what kind of crap/fast food I’ve fueled my body with just to get through the day. I’m too chicken.
Yup, that’s me.
Luckily, today has been OK, though I’m still a little shy to share. Here’s what I fed myself today:
Breakfast, 7:30 a.m.: Tully’s Kona blend coffee with a little bit of Horizon Organic non-fat milk and three tablespoons (I have a sweet tooth) of non-organic sugar. I think that non-organic sugar cancelled out the goodness (organic, non-fat) of what I fed my body.
Grade: C I should have eaten breakfast. (I have a delicious organic cereal, but I’d rather feed myself 10 more minutes of sleep than feed myself food.)
Breakfast part II, 7:50 a.m.: Arrive on campus and decide that I’m starving. Considering I will probably need my lunch break to finish up a short response paper for my 1 p.m. class (I’m behind in class), I decide that I should just eat a little something to hold me over until I get to go home. So, I head to the Underground and grab a Chik-fil-A chicken biscuit and inhale it before I get to my First Amendment class at 8 a.m.
Grade: F I should have eaten breakfast at home! What a waste of$2 and 420 calories. I could have gotten some fruit. That would have been too healthy, though.
Class, 11 a.m.: Finish up my short essay that I was planning on doing at lunch, but decide that I should probably eat with my friends at the Union. Good thing it was an individual workshop day, so I wasn’t being too much of a bad student by quietly typing away on the computer in class.
Lunch, 12:35 p.m.: I hate days when high school seniors or other random visitors are on campus and like to flood the Union at lunch. It’s already crowded in there. I wanted to get something very unhealthy, such as nachos, but opted for a spicy chicken sandwich with vegetables (non-organic, I’m sure) and baked Lays. I washed it down with a Vault, the ridiculous energy soda that has enough caffeine in it to kill a small child.
Grade: D Nothing about my lunch was good for me, though the caffeine did help me get through the day. The Union has an OK selection of organic options, but most of the items are snack foods or smoothie drinks. I usually get water or tea, but I was really craving caffeine today.
Dinner, 6 p.m.: Not really hungry. Too stressed out with the thought of the looming workload that this week has in store for me. Decide to make some Oolong tea to calm myself while I figure out what to eat. Still, nothing sounds good. Put a piece of whole wheat bread into the toaster, wait half a minute, then spread some non-organic Jif peanut butter and organic honey (from Mexico and Brazil, arrrrgh) onto my sad dinner plate. My dessert is a milk chocolate caramel Ghirardelli square. (Who eats dessert after eating peanut butter for dinner? Me. Told you, sweet tooth.)
Grade: Hell, I don’t even know anymore. It seems like my eating was kind of messed up today.
The night is still young. Knowing myself, I’ll probably continue to graze on random sweets or tea tonight as I finish up my work. My diet tells me that I am an OK food consumer who usually falls victim to fast food when faced with the time constraints and stress of campus life. And, I’m a chicken. I just looked through my freezer: frozen chicken breasts and frozen chicken tenders. I’m pretty sure they’re not GMO-free, either. But, I confess, they were either 1) cheap or 2) free.
On the days when I don’t go to school and am at work, I take time to pack a decent lunch of soup and snacks, and I am a mindful shopper—but I only like to get groceries every two weeks. So, when I’m running low (like I am now—if only you could see my sad refrigerator—I’ll try to post a picture), I tend to be running low as far as my dietary habits and health are concerned. I’ve worked in organic foods where I can, but the biggest problem is dining out and rushed eating.
How do you be careful about what you eat when you are in a hurry or going to a restaurant with friends? Not every chain has caught on to the organic food movement, so it has to be impossible for everybody to eat local or organic all the time. Any tips?
—Kim Wallace
Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, ice cream, organic, till nowak, vegetables
Giuseppe Arcimboldo was one of the first people who inferred that we are what we eat.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Summer, 1573, oil on canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris
Ah yes, those where the days. Aside from the famines, the plagues, the persecutions, the people of the 16th Century had it pretty easy. Plants were taken out of the ground and eaten – what more could you ask for?
I mean, look at that guy. He seems quite jovial to me. That’s because he is made of healthy, pesticide- and preservative-free vegetable freshly sprung from the earth.
If Mr. Arcimboldo were alive and working today, his art might look a little more like this:
Till Nowak, framebox.de
Dammit Travis, you need to warn me next time. I done wee’d myself.
Yes, I know . It’s quite terrifying what goes into our vegetables. Herbicides, pesticides, preservatives. These are starting to seem much less like healthy snacks and much more like high school science fair projects.
When I moved into my first house away from my parents, I decided to stay away from junk food as much as possible. I filled my refrigerator with as many vegetables as I could tolerate. Whenever I was hungry, I’d grab some raw carrots, radishes or green beans. This led to eating habits similar to that of a rabbit. My roommates often walk in to find me feasting on a bowl of roughage and refer to me as “Bugs” or “Roger.”
But now I’m learning that this doesn’t cut it. These veggies aren’t as healthy as I once thought and they don’t have all the vitamins that organic greens do. To think that I’ve been filling my body with chemicals all this time… while I thought I was just doing a body good. The Horror.
That’s just the vegetables. Think about the food that doesn’t necessarily fit into such a distinct mold. Like moon pies or even ice cream. Polydextrose, sorbitol, cellulose gel, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gum, polysorbate 80, carrageenan, sucralose.It’s all too much for me. Maybe my old buddies, the Animaniacs can help out.
Happy rotting.
-Travis Brown
Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: beef, flavors, food, grass-fed, local food, milk, preservatives, taste, turkey
A few months ago, I convinced my wife that we should start drinking milk from a local source. We shelled out the extra $1.75 for a half-gallon of milk and the $1.50 for the reusable bottle, which we accepted as the price of responsibility. But when we got home we found something that was a little harder to accept. The milk in that glass bottle didn’t taste the same as the milk we had grown up on. Not better, not worse, just different. And as much as I wanted to be a responsible consumer, I just couldn’t get used to it. A few weeks later, I returned to my much cheaper mass-produced dairy product.
But that got me thinking about how food SHOULD taste. For example, grass-fed beef may be tougher than its conventional counterpart. I don’t eat much beef, but when I do, I want it to cut with a butter knife. Turkey is on the table more frequently, and while there are claims that wild turkeys have a more rich, intense flavor, we are probably more likely to buy a conventionally grown, oversized turkey breast that tastes more like “chemical stew”, and could be pumped full of preservatives and chemical flavors. As Eric Schlosser points out in Fast Food Nation, the flavor of most of the food we eat is produced in factories in New Jersey. Any number of chemicals may go into giving our food “natural” flavors and smells.
All this makes me wonder what I am missing out on. What delicious flavors are out there that I’ve never experienced because I’m “enjoying” the chemical alternative? Have we moved so far away from eating natural foods that the chemicals we create now comfort us? Why can’t I order a burger and expect that all I’m getting is a pure beef patty?
While I contemplate this more, I’ll just continue to suck on my watermelon Jolly Rancher (I hate the taste of real watermelon) and consider going back to glass bottled milk. But maybe I’ll get the Root Beer flavored milk this time.
– Jeff Severin
PS: This puts a whole new perspective on one of my favorite SNL skits from my youth – which was evidently too long ago to be on YouTube.
Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: Micheal Pollan, Sangha, Vegetarian Diet, Vietnamese Diet
Eat Food. Not To Much. Mostly Plants.
Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: college, diet, Local Burger, organic, sustainable food, yale
Not people are interested in my daily food intake, but I’m posting it anyway to see how guilty I feel afterwards looking at it:
Breakfast: 2 fried eggs and a piece of wheat toast, and a cup of coffee —>obviously.
Lunch: one crunchy chicken cheddar wrap (from the union, duh)
Dinner: one serving of california roll sushi (courtesy of the Target deli section, love it)
Nighttime indulgence: a way-too-big piece of of white cake i made when i was bored yesterday.
So, besides the huge piece of unnecessary cake I ate last night when I was feeling particularly sad, I would say my food intake as a whole is pretty healthy in my opinion.
When I’m choosing what to eat, the main thing I TRY to go for is whether it is healthy or not. I’ll admit, I’m not a big organic food person, and I love convenient, semi-healthy food in my life. I’ve had Local Burger before, and honestly I enjoyed it. But if I have the option of lunch at the Underground while on campus, instead of driving off-campus to Local Burger just so I can eat organic, I’ll take the convenient route any day.
When I’m at the grocery store, I always stroll past the organic section but never really browse it or think about purchasing organic. I think that making the effort to eat organic is good in theory, but not realistic for me, or any other college student, for that matter. Organic=Expensive. In my opinion, why would I want to spend more money and more time when I can just buy food that is just as healthy, and less expensive.
Photo: Jeremy Brooks, Flickr
I came across an article where a student claims he based his decision on choosing Yale over Harvard because of Yale’s effort in serving sustainable food on it’s campus. In my opinion, that is a little extreme. Choosing a college because it serves MORE organic food?
In theory, I think eating organic is awesome, and for those people who are able to fit it into their lifestyles..more power to them. At this point in my life, I’m not sure if that’s me. I hope someday I will have enough money and determination to make that lifestyle change.
-Sarah Nelson
Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: chemical, expose, food, ingredient, landfill, Lauren Keith, recipe, trash, Twinkie, Twinkie Deconstructed, Wal-Mart, WIRED
Photo by ata08, flickr.com
I’ve always been a little picky, but lately my food choices have left a bad taste in my mouth.
I get so bored of eating, cooking and going to the grocery store that I’m on the verge of heading over to the lab to help the scientists invent meal-time in pill form. But I usually get distracted and end up at Chipotle instead.
Over the past 24 hours, this is what I’ve eaten for:
Breakfast: Highly processed corporate yogurt with organic granola and raisins
Lunch: Pizza Hut cheese sticks. Definitely the greasiest decision I’ve made in a while. My stomach lining is still not happy about it.
Dinner: Omelette-turned-scrambled-eggs with organic cheese, eggs and onion and locally grown mushrooms.
I love learning about what ingredients go into food because of this strange obsession with learning about what chemical compounds can do. I’ve been reading a book called “Twinkie, Deconstructed” that exposes the Twinkie’s usually undiscussed innards. Luckily, I’ve worked in a bakery far too long to even have the desire to look at a cake ever again.
But this book, along with numerous articles like the Happy Meal story and a monthly piece in WIRED, unnecessarily magnifies the so-called negatives about ingredients in food.
“Did you know that the iron compound in enriched flour in Twinkies is also used as a common weed killer?” the back of the book asks.
Food ingredient exposés are misleading. You can’t go out and spray Twinkies on your yard this spring to kill pests (but maybe the fish could at least enjoy some better tasting runoff).
Chemical compounds can change ever so slightly and yield a different product. Simply by the addition of a few electrons or even the rearrangement of the atoms can create something new.
The “iron compound” from the quote has a completely different chemical formula depending on which place it’s going. With this logic, could you say that the “hydrogen compound” found in water is also commonly used in nuclear fusion?
We have a finite set of chemicals to work with in this universe, but we can make an infinite set of products from them. There’s going to be some overlap. Everything is made of chemicals, and they aren’t scary things. We consume them all the time.
I’m not praising the shortcuts that industry has taken (read: corn syrup and almost anything ending in –ose), but seemingly “investigative” journalism is trying to spill the beans to the American consumer, but they should just eat their words.
On a completely unrelated note: somehow octopus from Wal-Mart has come to reside in my apartment’s refrigerator. Octopus. From Wal-Mart. In Kansas. From Wal-Mart. Digest that for a bit.
—Lauren Keith
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Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: eating habits, food additives, local foods, organic foods, snacks, thai food
What my food says about me? One word: convenience.
For a typical 24-hour period, here’s a rather intensive chronicle of my eating habits.
I woke up and my stomach was growling before I went to work, so I grabbed the only thing I had time for: a low-fat Granola bar (Chocolate Chunk flavored, if you wanted to know). I was feeling groggy and tired (which is usually the case, but rarely I have a solution for it) so I made two cups of French Vanilla cappucino mixed with coffee and creamer. I always used to say that caffeine had little to no effect on me– that was until I sometimes added coffee in the morning.
Anyway, as the morning wore on at the Ogden Publications office, more specifically the Natural Home magazine office, my stomach grumbled for a little snackity-snack. I had a small, yet always promising, stash of snacks in my drawer, so I ravaged the end of my Reduced Fat Wheat Thins box. Travis Brown, a fellow classmate of ours, came in and stole a couple, but I won’t hold it against him.
Lunch time was a-nearing, and I hadn’t had time to bring my lunch (note: remember that granola bar on the way out of the house?), so I was listening to my cravings. Lucky for me, my cravings are usually the same things: sandwiches and thai. I chose thai, and went on a rather rewarding experience to Tup Tim Thai in Topeka, Kan. I was feeling brave, so instead of sticking to what I get every single time at any Thai restaurant (Chicken Phad Thai), I ordered this peanutty, tangy curry– Panang curry. It changed my life. I am craving it just talking about it, or rather, writing about it, or rather, typing about it. I might just order Thai tonight only because I can’t stop thinking about how sensational this curry was.
Needless to say, I was pretty full after stuffing my face. I did find room in my tummy for two peanut M&M’s I found in my desk drawer (they were still in the bag) before the work day was over. For dinner, I was in a rush, running from Rock Chalk Revue rehearsal and the Stauffer-Flint building to work on a lab project. I grabbed a turkey sandwich from my favorite sub place, Jersey Mike’s, and went on my way.
Now, that might not be the most typical day, but it is rather indicative of my eating habits. I’m always on the go and rarely have time to plan out my meals. No, I don’t eat all-organic or even really try to eat local. I’m not too concerned with additives either. I’m just trying to be honest. We’ve all heard about this bad stuff– I just can’t help myself when I have already consciously chosen not to make the time to visit farmer’s markets, or research on the foods that’ll work better with my body, or cook meals on the weekend for easy access during the week. I’m just worrying about getting my homework done, succeeding in classes, graduating, having fun. Sure, maybe I won’t be having fun later if I contract some evil disease, and somehow I feel like I’m going to get knocked down for saying that I don’t eat organic, but is it really a crime? I wish I could say I was better about this, but I’m just putting it out there that I’m not.
–Danae DeShazer
Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: carnauba wax, diet, food, michael pollan, my dog Lady, organic food, The Black Crowes
I enjoy eating food quite a lot. Especially heavily processed corn-based foods with unrecognizable, impossible to pronounce names. Food and drinks with caramel color, phosphoric acid, carnauba wax (what the hell?), confectioner’s glaze (huh?), and the always ubiquitous riboflavin (sounds like the name of a bad progressive rock band or a concept painting put together by Rhode Island art students). It may cause cancer … but it tastes great! Perhaps when I am stricken with terminal illness at the age of 40 I will look back and say “maybe that frosted cherry Pop-Tart wasn’t such a great idea.” In truth, I have experimented with organic food – mostly by accident. I remember going into Local Burger one hot September day to get a sugary fattening unhealthy chocolate malt and being taken aback by its utter lack of flavor. It tasted vaguely like chocolate, but I had to throw it away halfway through cause it tasted awful. If organic food becomes tastier I might consider eating it. Here was my diet for Monday:
Breakfast: Heaping bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats and a Carnation Instant Breakfast drink.
Lunch: Barbecue Chicken and mangos microwaveable dinner with a side of some weird pasta concoction that contained spinach. Three glasses of Cherry Coke.
Dinner: Simply Asia pad thai noodles. Glass of Cherry Coke. Glass of carcinogen and additive-free organic water.
Late-night movie-time snack: 12 Kroger Always Save brand tortilla chips (I think it cost 9 cents for the entire bag) and some Tostitos queso dip. Also, a handful of Planters cinnamon nuts (limited edition!).
What does my diet say about me? Well, I have no ability to cook anything. I can barely use the oven. It looks like it was built in 1940. Our microwave is more modern and user-friendly. My food eating habits also demonstrate my laziness. Sometimes my grandma bakes me apple pies and chocolate pies and gives me Twix bars and Snickers and blow pops. That’s a fairly typical diet supplement to most of my meals. Something from grandma’s house. Then she’ll call me and relay with rapid-fire precision every ingredient that went into the pie (usually followed by a superfluous rehash of all the personal and family tragedies that occurred on KCTV 5 news that day). So, basically I do have a decent knowledge of what goes into my food courtesy of my grandma and her amazing graciousness. Beyond that I don’t really know. I only have so much time in my day to worry tirelessly. Ingredients in my Kraft macaroni and cheese meal ranks slightly lower than 1. post-college plans that don’t involve mops 2. the well-being of my old broken down dog named Lady who has bladder control problems 3. The new Black Crowes record 4. getting a haircut
In all seriousness, it is sort of frightening what things I eat on a daily basis and it cannot possibly be good to be deriving so much of our diet from corn. It also has economic implications. The Tyson food plant in Emporia just laid off 1500 employees caused in part by rising grain costs associated with the increased demand for corn to produce ethanol. Also, I HIGHLY recommend checking out Michael Pollan’s interview with journalist Amy Goodman on the radio/television show Democracy Now! conducted about a week ago. It’s pretty fascinating. It’s also available in podcast form which is how I get it.
I’m gonna go eat some Doritos now. (the Doritos people will probably find me now and comment on this post and then start sending stealthy marketing communication materials to me).
-Vince Meserko
Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: corn industry, high-fructose corn syrup, michael pollan, obesity
I have this weird, unshakable addiction to canned tomatoes. I can eat a can a day as a tasty accompaniment to a salad or soup, but I have been known to open a can of stewed tomatoes and devour them a la carte. Canned tomatoes are my flavor and vitamin C bridge between the end of the fresh tomato season in August and the start of the new season in late June.
But corn is putting an end to my canned tomato addiction.
I found corn in the form of high fructose corn syrup in my can of tomatoes last night. Why would a can of tomatoes need that stuff? Then I read a few more labels to discover it’s in my Glaceau vitamin water, it’s in my breakfast cereal, it’s in the salad dressing I put on the salad, and it’s in the salsa I had.
A cursory Internet search will tell you that corn is used in the production or processing of 2,500 grocery store items out of 10,000. It’s used in manufacturing for things like adhesives, aluminum, antibiotics, asbestos insulation, aspirin, automobiles – and hey, we’re not even out of the A list!
One of the ways it gets into the food supply is via high fructose corn syrup. It’s strange stuff. The New York Times described the process this way: “It starts with corn kernels and takes place in a series of stainless steel vats and tubes in which a dozen different mechanical processes and chemical reactions occur — including several rounds of high-velocity spinning and the introduction of three different enzymes to incite molecular rearrangements.”
Sweeeeet, right?
A few years ago, there was an uproar over high fructose corn syrup. Rates of increasing obesity were commensurate with the increasing presence of HFCS in the food supply. The corn lobby didn’t want manufacturers to lessen demand, which relied on consumer demand, so they put up this slick, innocuous looking site to tell you “all the facts” about HFCS. You have to hunt around for the contact us page before you find out who is sponsoring the site.
Since then, the original studies about the possible relationship between HFCS and obesity have been called into question but I’m avoiding it nevertheless. No more canned tomatoes except for the ones I home can myself.
Reading labels isn’t new to me, especially for calories and fat. But the idea of thinking about them, really reading them to consider what I’m ingesting, is. The fewer the ingredients, the closer you are to eating the real food instead of a chemical cocktail meant to seem like food. I’m going to try to eat the way author Michael Pollan (check out his thoughts on corn) says to: if something has health claims on the label, question whether it’s going to be good for you. Ever see a health claim on an apple?
— Jen Humphrey
Filed under: Food + Health | Tags: environment, Health, Japan, Japanese food, maguro, mercury, minamata disease, sushi
Last weekend, I went to Yokohama Sushi, recently opened on New Hampshire street. Munching a big piece of tuna sushi, I appreciated my privilege of being able to eat raw fish in Kansas without worrying about food poisoning. Well, not really. It might have been fresh. But I had other things to worry about.
The New York Times recently reported that so much mercury was found in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, “a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.” The article says that the research was done in New York City, the similar results, high level of mercury in fresh tuna, would be found everywhere. This mercury is believed to be due to an industrial pollutant.
Credibility of the New York Times article is disputable. Some Japanese media dismissed it as incomplete and biased information. Reuters put an article “New York Times should Retract Error-Filled Mercury Story” on its Web site. However, the story about tainted tuna is rather a symbolical message to me.
The Minamata disease is one of the biggest environmental pollution occurred during the economic boom in Japan, from the late 1950s to 1970s. Answers.com defines the disease as a “degenerative neurological disorder caused by poisoning with a mercury compound found in seafood obtained from waters contaminated with mercury-containing industrial waste.” The disease was caused by industrial wastewater, containing methyl mercury. The patients of the disease consumed a lot of fish contaminated by the water. Thousands of Japanese have still suffered from the disease. According to the Guardian, 2,264 people were certified as the victims of the disease by the government, of 1,435 of whom already died, and another 20,000 people are likely to be certified in Japan.
The case of the Minamata disease taught us we cannot just emphasize the economic growth. Otherwise, our health and life will be threaten. Mercury pollution is an ongoing problem around the world. The Washington Post reported a study last week that pollutant substances are raining down on national parks across the West and Alaska. Mercury levels at eight parks would threat fish-eating wildlife. The article also says, “Much of the contamination is thought to have come from overseas _ traveling global air currents from Europe and Asia.”
If we don’t take of the environment, it won’t take care of us either.
To me, eating the tuna sushi is more than appreciating the taste of home.
Photo credit: Biggest Menu
By Sachiko Miyakawa
J500 Media and the Environment 