This week there have been three disturbing stories in the news concerning food. Here is the first I heard: Death by Bacon? It basically says that eating red meat every day increases one’s risk of all kinds of bad things, such as cancer and heart disease. Is this really news? How many times can that be said and reported and studied (thanks, Harvard, for that earth shaking insight) before people say, OH, I get it now…eat less meat, more veggies. Obviously this has not sunk in yet b/c this story was everywhere in the news for at least a day. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming, and bacon eating. The second one is about “Pink Slime.” What is pink slime you ask? Why it’s just what your child is eating at lunch today. Seriously. And apparently it isn’t just in the school cafeterias, it is also in grocery stores. And although it sounds like something you have to say “trick or treat” for, it is actually in the meat section. Unmarked. Pink slime is the oh-so-cute-little nickname of lean beef trimmings, and if you want to hear how they got that nickname and why 200,000 people signed blogger Bettina Siegel’s petition to get it out of schools you’ll have to read the article. My stomach doesn’t want to go there. But before the vegetarians start feeling too smug, there is yet another story to make one question what is on their daily fork: Eating white rice daily ups diabetes risk, study shows. Again, how many times do people have to hear that white rice, flour, bread, etc. is not the best thing for them? Brown rice is better. Whole grains are better. If you take off the outer bran of grains, you have more sugar and less fiber per serving, which isn’t how the grain was intended. Whether you believe God or Mother Nature or whatever made the grains out there, chances are they knew what they were doing. I suppose what really irks me is that these things are news at all~ don’t we all know this stuff? I mean really, c’mon. People must know these things and just ignore reality b/c it suits their taste buds, to the detriment of their waistlines, health, life expectancy, and the earth. I suppose it’s like global warming (in the ignoring reality sense), where everyone just kind of chortles and shakes their head at distant tsunamis and closer to home storms and says, “guess that’s global warming, heh heh.” It IS global warming! It IS a reality and it isn’t pretty. What exactly do people think is going to happen if we stay the course? So for goodness sakes, do something!
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