Great article on Eating At Home

I read a great article today on the Huffington Post via Time magazine - How Eating at Home Can Save Your Life, by Mark Hyman, MD. Well worth a read, it talks about the changes to the American (and by extension Canadian) diet over the last one hundred years have led to problems for the environment, obesity, and the loss of valuable cooking skills to future generations. Two points that were shocking and sad to see:

1) "In 2010...one in five breakfasts [was] from McDonald's."
2) "In his series, 'Food Revolution,' Jamie Oliver showed us how we have raised a generation of Americans who can't recognize a single vegetable or fruit..."

Regarding 1), I love McDonalds as a special treat, but it's not a good idea to have that much deep-fried goodness so often!

Regarding 2), I enjoyed taking pictures of fruit and veggies in situ during Agrifest in 2006 as a way (hopefully) that kids could see what these things look like in the ground, as they often look different when they get to the grocery store, and different again when they reach the plate. But it's shocking to hear that kids wouldn't be able to identify them even in their grocery store form. That is really scary. A fruit cup puree is not a fruit. There's almost always added sugars and syrups. Worse than a fruit cup puree is (probably) no fruit at all.

It used to be that you'd run into the occasional person who couldn't cook, and it was a bit of a joke. But if NO ONE in your family cooks, that is a serious concern! (Heating microwave dinners doesn't count as cooking!) If no one can cook, you're either a) eating too much take out - which has a lot of foods that are purchased for their long shelf life (preservatives, TONS of excess salt/sodium), deep fried, or processed meats (as above, preservatives and salt), or b) buying convenience foods from the grocery store, which pretty much have the same drawbacks. If you don't have to chew your food very much, then it's probably too processed (and a crispy fried coating outside doesn't count!). :) Our bodies don't run their best on stuff they don't even have to work at to digest.

Annnywayyyyy, the article is very interesting, and definitely worth a read. There's lots of good tips in there!