Pause for a moment. Think about your favorite thing: food. You need it to survive. It’s linked to your favorite childhood memories. It tantalizes all five senses. Good food can be better than great sex. Food makes up half of your Instagram feed and you probably watch the Food Network more often than you’re comfortable with.
To state the obvious, food plays a huge role in every single person’s life and, as we’ve all heard at some point, you are what you eat. I learned that the hard way growing up as a fat kid. Topping over 200 pounds in 8th grade (not even the worst part of my awkward stage), I eventually realized I wasn’t going to simply “thin out” and I needed to stop eating the crap typical middle schoolers love like soda, packaged cookies and fast food. It sounds like a cliche you might hear on one of the daytime talk shows you catch your mom watching, but I didn’t go on a diet — I made a lifestyle change. I started eating all-natural foods and exercising regularly. It’s magic how eating real food and staying active can keep you feeling good.
In February, Subway made headlines when it announced it would no longer use the food additive azodicarbonamide (ADA).
Huh? You don’t know what azodicarbonamide is? Did you have a childhood? Your mom never made that for you? No? Me neither. It’s not food. It’s the industrial chemical they use to make yoga mats soft and the padding on flip-flops. Yes, Subway, the “eat fresh” company, the fast-food chain with its own damn diet, the one that uses Olympic athletes to show how healthy they are uses an industrial chemical in its bread.
When it comes to the safety of synthetic additives such as ADA, there’s enough conflicting data out there to give you a worse migraine than MSG, but there’s one thing that’s universally agreed upon: these chemicals are not food. The FDA allows these additives until they become serious health concerns, but we don’t know the long-term effects of these chemicals on our bodies because they’ve mostly all been developed in the latter half of the twentieth century, whereas fruit, vegetables and meat have been around since before humans.
The FDA has done a terrible job regulating what chemicals are allowed in our food and in many cases permit substances banned in other countries. Between food additives, pesticides and genetically modified organisms, it seems like supermarket shelves contain more carcinogens than a pack of cigarettes, but it’s not bad if you know how to navigate. Reading labels, buying organic produce when appropriate and buying fresh ingredients are great and all, but not everyone cooks. When we need to grab a quick bite to eat, like at Subway, we should be confident we’re eating quality food, especially when it’s marketed as “healthy” and “fresh.”
Via: pennyplastic.wordpress.com/
There’s no need to hyperlink your day away with data proving why you should eat all-natural foods, but with the rise in popularity in all-natural and organic foods, it’s very convenient to eat healthily at home. Shopping at Trader Joe’s and hunting for brown shelf tags at Publix is great if you’re keeping a healthy home, but even Paleo followers eat out of the house and a good number of us college students don’t know how to use their kitchens as anything more than a place to store alcohol.
When eating out you should be able to use your judgement. If you’re at a local restaurant, like any of those we’ve featured on our GainesvilleScene food guides, you can rest easy knowing they’re using all natural ingredients. When you’re at a large chain restaurant, however, it’s a different story. Whether fast food or not, many restaurant chains don’t use all-natural ingredients so their products can be shipped across the nation. Check the restaurant’s website for information regarding their commitment to natural ingredients, or even the ingredients lists themselves. If they don’t proudly tell you that they use all-natural, all-sustainable, all-Bluetooth-enabled or whatever the cool term is this week, then they probably have something to hide.
It’s strange that we have to consciously avoid artificial ingredients. We should have the luxury to already assume that any food we eat is just that–food. The FDA needs to step their game up in regulating and banning food additives that are neither lab or time tested.
Until then, we’re just gonna have to put in a little effort to make sure we don’t eat our yoga mats.
Featured photo courtesy of: The Observant Sprite
