What do all those ingredients mean? If you think you are what you eat (as the saying goes) then you are in good company, my Grandmother and I agree, well my whole family does but let’s just keep this simple.
My Granny drinks a couple of glasses of water on waking up in the morning, she stretches regularly too. She likes a cup of tea and soaked porridge or real bread not ‘plastic bread’ as she calls it maybe even a boiled egg for breakfast. She does not eat margarine nor does she eat soy, monosodium glutamate (MSG) or aspartame. She makes real stocks & broth and mashes her own mashed potatoes to which she adds butter!
Choosing to avoid packet food, some might consider her unusual, and a term coined recently is that those avoiding junk food, MSG and aspartame who also eat natural foods can be classified as orthorexic…
But here’s the thing food never used to come in a packet with nutrition labels, claims, use by dates, logos, grams of fat, additives, preservatives, colourings or flavours from duck feathers and hair!
So whilst there may be a condition, as described by Steven Bratman, MD, called orthorexia (those of us that avoid fast food & processed food) why are we classified as orthorexic and unusual?
The reason I mentioned my Grandmother is her packet meal experiment one summer in England. It didn’t start as an experiment but rapidly became one in weight gain! She is not a scientist so please don’t take this as a study other than by a woman in her 80′s that loves to garden.
It all started when she had a lot of gardening to do, in June a few years ago, she went to the local supermarket and bought seven days worth of packet meals. This was to maximize her time in the garden as she could pop it in the Aga and carry on gardening. She bought dishes such as lasagne, beef stew, vegetable curry and other packet meals meaning that she could have a salad or boiled egg for lunch, keep gardening and then could come in at the end of the day and have supper all cooked.
This convenience had a darker side..
My usually, healthy and vibrant, Grandmother noticed, after a few days, that she was putting on weight and by the end of the week she had gained enough weight to warrant her even telling me this story. This is all despite her gardening for hours a day and walking the dog for half an hour; well “dogs find gardening relatively dull” she declared!
I know that it is hardly a controlled scientific experiment (I did warn you!) but maybe therein lies a grain of truth that the packet food made her increase in weight?
Was it the artificial preservatives that allowed the lasagne to last for a week in the fridge? Or perhaps it was the seasonings, such as sugar or MSG, to increase flavour and taste, who knows?
My Grandmother has not bought a packet meal since! As you might expect, she continues to eat the way she has done for over 80 years. She makes stews, stocks, fresh garden salads, seasonal vegetables, with butter of course. Elsewhere this is becoming rare, as many of my friends skip the butter and opt for low-fat margarine but why?
Bruce Bradley a former marketer for large American food companies for over 15 years said “Most claims and advertising by Big Food companies are meant to manipulate you, not educate you. Read your labels and do your research.” That about sums it up!
Many in modern society eat convenience food that was unknown 100 years ago, yet us folks eating how humans have for centuries are considered unusual or noteworthy.
That is not to say cooking real food doesn’t take effort… it does! Is it worth it? I would say a resounding YES. Although, whilst washing up this morning, having cooked pastured bacon and eggs for breakfast, I did think that a quick cereal muesli bar & a cup of coffee would have been so much easier!
Have we come a long way or gone backwards? I am sure you know my answer.
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