Whoever thought eating healthy would be so dang hard? It’s enough to make you throw up your hands and scream, “Bring on the Pop-Tart sushi!”
(In case you were looking for signs of the end of civilization as we know it, I give you Pop-Tarts World — the nutritional apocalypse. It’s opening in Times Square and will sell, I kid you not, Pop-Tart sushi. I gained a pound and lost a year off my life just reading about it online.)
Thanks for kicking us while we’re making progress, food companies. Here we are becoming interested in what we eat, and adjusting to organic squash and multi-grain pasta. Then you have to go and give us that.
I’ve always been a relatively healthy eater, but in the past year I’ve turned even more so. Or at least I’m trying.
Maybe the change has been spawned by more widely-available nutritious, and even organic, offerings. Maybe it’s that I’m getting older and am more serious about my health. Maybe it’s having a young daughter who I don’t want to pump full of preservatives, sodium and sugar like some kind of toxic hot dog.
Or maybe there’s just more information out there about what goes into our food. A lot of it, you learn, is just plain scary. Issues with obesity, high blood pressure, hardening arteries and, maybe the worst, genetically modified monster food attacking our cities and stepping on our cars. Damn those genetically modified foods!
So I’ve started swearing off fast food and sodas, which I barely consumed before. I’m swinging clear of processed foods. Turning to more fruits and vegetables. Adding whole grains and organics to my diet. Reading labels — “It says they add rubber tires as a flavor supplement!?! WHAT!!!!” — and trying to better understand nutritional guidelines — “So by my math, if I eat four bowls of ice cream, but put a chopped carrot on top, I think I’m OK.”
A lot of people are doing this, and I think it’s great. Take a look at the aisles of your grocery store if you want proof. More healthy and natural offerings. People actually standing there reading ingredients and taking responsibility for what they cram in their body. It’s not just hype. I think there really is a food revolution taking place, and we could use it.
But it’s not easy breaking with our poor nutritional pasts. I can’t beat my newly-formed addiction to peanut butter pretzels. I’ve considered eating them with milk like a breakfast cereal. I think if I use hormone-free milk from cows fed with grass it’s actually fine.
The more I think I’m getting a handle on this healthy eating thing, though, the more I realize there’s more to learn, more to do, or that there is some new study throwing a wrench in it all. “Seedless grapes that aren’t massaged as they ripen cause cancer of the toenail?!? JUST GREAT!”
Sodium is my latest kick. The American Heart Association says Americans consume on average 3,436 mg of sodium every day. But the recommended amount of daily sodium is actually 2300 mg — the equivalent of a teaspoon of salt.
A TEASPOON! Shoot, I put more than that in my tea each morning. I’m already tapped out before I start breakfast.
Everywhere I look I now see sodium. Ten of those peanut butter pretzels have 10 percent of my daily allowance. I’m going to have to give up the salt lick hanging above my desk at work. No more sprinkling it on my strawberries.
If it’s not one thing it’s another, and everything’s a tradeoff. I switched to a different kind of bagel because it’s multi-grain and has more fiber and no high fructose corn syrup only to realize that — frickin’ frackin’ cowamalackin’ — there’s enough sodium in each one to kill a rhino.
I’m starting to think my only option is to go live with some koala bears and take up a diet of pure eucalyptus. (I just realized typing this column added another 200 mg of sodium to my diet.)
But I must remember to take it easy on myself. The point isn’t to get too extreme about all this nutritional stuff, but to keep taking important steps, even little, gradual ones. To search for balance and moderation in my diet. To become more aware and responsible. We could all do that.
I am feeling better, even healthier, because of it. And I don’t glow in the dark anymore. My insides don’t feel so pickled, and I’m transferring responsible eating habits to the next generation. That’s a plus. But I’ll tell you this: you won’t be prying those peanut butter pretzels out of my hand, no matter how much sodium they contain.