ISS 310 - An email to my girlfriend
Hey, Beautiful!
I just finished reading a book about food for one of my classes this semester. It made me think of you, like most things do, but mainly because of how much we love to eat food and watch TV together. The book is called Pandora’s Lunchbox and it is written by Melanie Warner if you feel like checking it out. There were so many shocking, disturbing, and interesting things that she wrote about. It’s mainly about processed foods and what most people don’t know about the industries that create them. For one of my class projects I am to email someone (my person being you) and talk about the things I found particularly fascinating or surprising. Maybe you will have similar thoughts and start eating more veggies like I always tell you to do.
Before I really dive into the little things, there was a story that the author told toward the end of the book. The story is about an American family with four kids. The oldest son, around thirteen when the author met the family, had a history of behavioral problems. He wasn’t always the most social and he often complained of stomach pains and discomfort. The family went to different doctors for possible mental problems, and even tried ADHD medication. Nothing seemed to work until the mother came across a website about eating non processed food. The whole family decided to try out the diet for ten short days. Ten days led to a complete life change in the way the family eats. The biggest reason was because after only seven days, the son came to the mother and said, “I feel like I’ve been lifted from a fog” (Warner, 211). The boy’s mother had finally gotten her son back and all it took was omitting processed foods from the family’s diet. This story was the breaking point for me in this book. To read about a child that suffered so much from what he ate makes me wonder what everyone would be like if no one ate processed food.
To start out, I want to talk about cheese. You know how much I love cheese. When you make breakfast you put cheese on my eggs and hash browns just to make my morning. After reading some of the things Warner talks about in her book, I’m not too sure I should be eating as much cheese as I usually do, at least not as much processed cheese. Apparently cheese used to be different than it is now. It used to go bad in the stores much quicker than it does today. I figured it was because we have improved refrigeration, but that isn’t the only factor. Cheese, among other foods I’ll get into later, is altered physically and chemically to last longer. This isn’t too surprising. I mean, it’s great that cheese can last so much longer now. More cheese to eat! What I didn’t realize is what has actually been added and taken out of cheese over the years. At first scientists were just adding certain ingredients to make cheese age less and have a better consistency. Later they found, with technology that takes milk apart, a milk protein that would be added to cheeses to reduce the amount of cheese needed. Scientists pretty much used this protein to make cheese with less cheese. Since it was against the law for the protein to be present in the amount it was, cheese companies just changed their labels to read “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product” (Warner, 44-45). The cheese can’t even be called cheese, it’s a cheese product. All of this might seem slightly shocking to you, that some cheese isn’t even cheese, but there was something else about it that I found weird. Processed cheese doesn’t have the good bacteria that other cheeses have. People that are lactose intolerant are sometimes able to eat natural cheeses without getting sick, but in processed cheese, there isn’t that bacteria that can break down lactose for them. (Warner, 47). Cheese is only one of the topics that caught me by surprise in this book.
Another one is that vitamins aren’t really what you think they are. Yes, they are good for you and provide your body with the proper nutrients it might need. However, you’re probably thinking about the little Flintstone gummies, or possibly the boxes of cereal you eat that say what kinds of vitamins are present. Those are vitamins too, but they aren’t natural vitamins. Fruits and vegetables contain natural vitamins, whereas most of the foods you eat that claim to have a great source of vitamin C or D, are not natural at all. They aren’t even taken from their natural sources. Almost all vitamins are synthetically produced in a factory. They are just copies of the natural born vitamins. The book goes on to say that the synthetic versions can be good for you, but they don’t always do the things that they would if they were natural. Without the other minerals and components that partner with natural vitamins, the synthetic ones can’t do their job (Warner, 85).
This book really made me never want to eat processed foods again. When I thought about foods that aren’t processed I realized I didn’t know of any other than fresh fruits and vegetables. We watched a documentary in class on food industries and there was a family who couldn’t afford healthy food. They ate at fast food places quite often since it was much cheaper than buying a healthier dinner from the store. The end of this book pretty much debunks the thought that healthy food is more expensive. The author says that there are many recipes that don’t include a single processed food, and “[e]ach meal costs no more than $10 for a family of four” (Warner, 219). This shocked me but really made me rethink the foods I eat. If I could potentially be saving money by eating less processed foods, I’m upset I haven’t started sooner.
Remember when I told you about the Cheetos from one of the articles I read for this class? Well this stuff really doesn’t compare to diminishing caloric density. I will continue to get you Cheetos and chocolate milk for our road trips, but I’ll have to think twice about helping you finish the whole bag. I do think when we move in together next summer, we should think more deeply about what we are eating. We can buy less processed foods, and more fresh veggies since I know how much you love those. Hopefully this information didn’t scare you but at the same time I hope it did. If you want to read the book, let me know. I think you would enjoy it. I hope your day is going great.
Love you,
A.