As a friend of mine recently said, "We're all spoiled--very spoiled." We continually expect more and more convenience from the foods we buy. I've mentioned before that everybody feels so busy these days--working mothers, etc.—so no one feels they have the time to do much cooking. (And worse, look at the lines of cars in the drive-thru of the nearest fast-food place at dinner time: Call Hubby on the cell phone: "Pick up some KFC," or McDonald's, or Pizza Hut for dinner. Not good nutrition; that's one reason why Americans are so fat.)
When bagged salads first came out, I was practically outraged. You're paying up to $10 a pound for lettuce that should cost a fraction of that much—just to be saved the trouble of washing the lettuce and cutting (or tearing) it up. But I have to admit that now I buy it myself, probably 95% of the time. (I only eat organic lettuce, and I can more easily get organic bagged salad. But when I do see organic lettuce and it seems reasonably priced, I buy it and wash it, and save some money!)
Ditto for mashed potatoes. I've never bought the stuff that comes in a little tub in the supermarket. I'd have to agree that peeling potatoes, boiling them and then mashing them takes time and effort, and I've done it very few times in my life. So for potatoes, I'll use the instant, flake kind of mashed potatoes, or—better yet—I might just boil some little red potatoes: you don't even have to peel them. Takes 15 minutes.
You can get almost anything ready made these days, it seems, even things that are very easy to make yourself. Our grandmothers would be amazed, and probably horrified. You can get little pouches of tuna salad (you could just buy tuna and stir in a little mayonnaise, you really don't need much more than that). There are little packages of pasta dishes--just heat and eat. Even ready-made sandwiches in the food store, or peanut butter and crackers. Gad, we're too lazy to spread something on a slice of bread or a cracker!
I can make a lot of things from scratch, like brownies and pancakes—yet I buy a mix instead. (I buy a relatively healthy pancake mix and then doctor it by adding oat bran--adds fiber, cuts the sodium--and cinnamon, or blueberries if they're on hand.) I've never used the pancakes you get in the refrigerator counter or freezer of the supermarket. I buy frozen waffles, but my excuse there is that I don't own a waffle iron.
So I'm guilty, too. But we should all keep in mind that, when and if we have the time, it's better—more nutritious and typically a lot cheaper—if we make something from scratch or even a mix.
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
Showing posts with label fast food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fast food. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Monday, November 8, 2010
Food Insecurity in America
We learn from recent news that "food insecurity" is a growing problem in America—defined as not always having enough money for food. This means more children are not receiving adequate nutrition, and this might affect their performance in school. Another factor that may be associated with food insecurity is that fact that the height of Americans has ceased to increase and in fact has decreased. Americans used to be the tallest nation but now the Dutch are on average taller—by two inches (5 cm).
The U.S. is ranked third in the world in incidence of obesity (meaning we are the third fattest country, and numbers 1 and 2 are very small island nations). Perhaps paradoxically, obesity in many Americans results from a poor diet which in turn is a result of lack of financial means. Lower-income families have more frequent recourse to fast food, which provides cheap nutrition and lots of calories, but carries with it lots of fat and sodium.
Also, lower income people can't afford healthier foods like fresh fruit and vegetables and whole grains. Also, I increasingly read that people in poorer areas often do not have access to stores that provide wide food choices. Stores with wide nutritional offerings are simply absent from many areas such as minority neighborhoods.
So, while we are among the fattest on the planet, we are far from the best-nourished. A national shame.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
The U.S. is ranked third in the world in incidence of obesity (meaning we are the third fattest country, and numbers 1 and 2 are very small island nations). Perhaps paradoxically, obesity in many Americans results from a poor diet which in turn is a result of lack of financial means. Lower-income families have more frequent recourse to fast food, which provides cheap nutrition and lots of calories, but carries with it lots of fat and sodium.
Also, lower income people can't afford healthier foods like fresh fruit and vegetables and whole grains. Also, I increasingly read that people in poorer areas often do not have access to stores that provide wide food choices. Stores with wide nutritional offerings are simply absent from many areas such as minority neighborhoods.
So, while we are among the fattest on the planet, we are far from the best-nourished. A national shame.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
Monday, October 11, 2010
The Funny Foods We Eat
We never think about this, but some of our everyday foods are definitely rather oddball, from the botanical perspective.
Take corn. Our corn, or maize, as it's called in much of the world, is very much a man-created plant. Nothing very similar to our familiar corn exists in the wild. In fact, the field of corn genetics is a whole specialty within botany. What is clear is that indigenous American peoples—think Aztecs and Mayans and their predecessors—developed corn from a plant that had a much smaller ear. There is a wild plant called teosinte that has been considered a likely candidate for the ancestor of corn. Among the many ways in which native New World civilizations have usually not gotten the credit they're due is that we overlook the great achievement in plant breeding that resulted in the modern corn plant that we take for granted.
Another perhaps odd food is the banana. Is there any other fruit that is similar to a banana? Did you know that a banana plant or tree only produces one crop of bananas in its lifetime? Then it's cut down and a new tree planted. You'd think that, with the time and trouble involved, that bananas would be scarce and expensive, whereas bananas are a rather cheap, plentiful, and very healthful food source. (They are high in potassium, which we need plenty of, because it can counterbalance the excessive sodium that's common in our modern diets.)
Also, you know those stringy things that you see on a banana when you peel it? I think I read recently that they are analogous to the substance in the inner bark of a tree that carries nourishment for the tree.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
Take corn. Our corn, or maize, as it's called in much of the world, is very much a man-created plant. Nothing very similar to our familiar corn exists in the wild. In fact, the field of corn genetics is a whole specialty within botany. What is clear is that indigenous American peoples—think Aztecs and Mayans and their predecessors—developed corn from a plant that had a much smaller ear. There is a wild plant called teosinte that has been considered a likely candidate for the ancestor of corn. Among the many ways in which native New World civilizations have usually not gotten the credit they're due is that we overlook the great achievement in plant breeding that resulted in the modern corn plant that we take for granted.
Another perhaps odd food is the banana. Is there any other fruit that is similar to a banana? Did you know that a banana plant or tree only produces one crop of bananas in its lifetime? Then it's cut down and a new tree planted. You'd think that, with the time and trouble involved, that bananas would be scarce and expensive, whereas bananas are a rather cheap, plentiful, and very healthful food source. (They are high in potassium, which we need plenty of, because it can counterbalance the excessive sodium that's common in our modern diets.)
Also, you know those stringy things that you see on a banana when you peel it? I think I read recently that they are analogous to the substance in the inner bark of a tree that carries nourishment for the tree.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
Thursday, March 25, 2010
We Just Keep Getting Fatter
A news item about a week ago said that furniture manufacturers are bringing out wider chairs. Why? Because Americans are getting so fat, they can't sit on normal chairs anymore.
And airlines have official policies, now, for passengers who are very heavy and need two seats to accommodate them: the passenger now must pay for two seats.
These facts should be sobering to all of us, to put it mildly. Not to mention that we keep hearing the dismal statistics: two-thirds or Americans are overweight, and 38% are obese.
There is no mystery behind these phenomena. With the exception of a few individuals who have a glandular condition (e.g., hypothyroidism) or a genetic defect, the reason is very simple: we eat too much. Okay, to be a little more precise: we eat too many calories relative to the calories we burn. This means that we need to eat less (or eat less calorie-dense food), move around more (exercise), or both. And stop believing in any magic pills, either literal pills or magical diets.
Our food portions have gotten larger (think "supersize") and we are eating more food that is simply bad for us. I've blogged about America's overweight kids before. If you let them, kids will subsist on pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, and junk food. And then sit and play video games or tweet on their computers.
I don't know if parents give their kids 5 bucks and say "go to McDonald's." I do know that too many moms take their kids to McDonald's, for lunch and even for dinner, or bring McDonald's or KFC home for dinner. Who wants (or has the time) to cook? So goes the argument. If you care to look into it, a food item like a double cheeseburger has an astonishing number of calories. Bad enough two meat patties, instead of one; but we want to make it quite a bit worse with a slice—no, two slices--of cheese.
Start reading the nutrition information labels on the food you bring home. Request (if necessary) calorie information at McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks. Know what you're putting into your body. Besides calories, we are taking in way too much fat, sugar, and salt. These food components are in a sense addictive, and fast-food vendors and junk-food makers have made us into unhealthy-food addicts. On the addictiveness of junk food, see this link:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/study-says-junk-food-is-as-addictive-as-heroin-or-cigarettes/19417741/
or this British article about a book by David Kessler, former U.S. Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/dietandfitness/7541646/Old-fashioned-hunger-doesnt-come-into-it.html?msource=MAG10
The nutritional advice, which (if we've been listening at all) we've heard over and over, is to eat more vegetables. And it's true. I guarantee (or any diet/nutrition professional can guarantee) that if you eat plenty of celery, carrots, and other fruits and veggies, you can't possibly be fat. Note, salad is not okay if you're going to pile on the dressing, nor veggies if you're going to drown them in butter.
Yogurt, a few decades ago, was usually eaten only by "health-food nuts." Today it is very popular. But will it help us to slim down? Those flavored yogurts are sweetened and have twice the calories that plain yogurt has. Eat plain, fat-free yogurt. Personally, I like the taste of plain yogurt. I never eat those flavored ones because I don't think that the sweeteners go well with the natural tart taste of yogurt.
People tend to think that anything healthy has to taste bad, or that healthy eating habits are too austere and their food just won't taste good. It's not true. There are plenty of books, magazines, web sites and so forth that can show you how to have tasty but healthy food.
And don't forget that eating less calorie-dense food is only half the story. The other is more exercise. I notice how many people take the elevator instead of climbing the stairs in, say, the public library. Even to go just one floor. There's the amusing but all-too-true story of the thirty-something who takes the elevator to his/her health club and then uses the stair-stepper machine. And he or she never even thinks about the contradiction there.
And don't drive around and around trying to find the closest parking space at the mall or supermarket. Make a point to park a little further away. You need the exercise. Believe me. Or believe your mirror.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
And airlines have official policies, now, for passengers who are very heavy and need two seats to accommodate them: the passenger now must pay for two seats.
These facts should be sobering to all of us, to put it mildly. Not to mention that we keep hearing the dismal statistics: two-thirds or Americans are overweight, and 38% are obese.
There is no mystery behind these phenomena. With the exception of a few individuals who have a glandular condition (e.g., hypothyroidism) or a genetic defect, the reason is very simple: we eat too much. Okay, to be a little more precise: we eat too many calories relative to the calories we burn. This means that we need to eat less (or eat less calorie-dense food), move around more (exercise), or both. And stop believing in any magic pills, either literal pills or magical diets.
Our food portions have gotten larger (think "supersize") and we are eating more food that is simply bad for us. I've blogged about America's overweight kids before. If you let them, kids will subsist on pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, and junk food. And then sit and play video games or tweet on their computers.
I don't know if parents give their kids 5 bucks and say "go to McDonald's." I do know that too many moms take their kids to McDonald's, for lunch and even for dinner, or bring McDonald's or KFC home for dinner. Who wants (or has the time) to cook? So goes the argument. If you care to look into it, a food item like a double cheeseburger has an astonishing number of calories. Bad enough two meat patties, instead of one; but we want to make it quite a bit worse with a slice—no, two slices--of cheese.
Start reading the nutrition information labels on the food you bring home. Request (if necessary) calorie information at McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks. Know what you're putting into your body. Besides calories, we are taking in way too much fat, sugar, and salt. These food components are in a sense addictive, and fast-food vendors and junk-food makers have made us into unhealthy-food addicts. On the addictiveness of junk food, see this link:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/study-says-junk-food-is-as-addictive-as-heroin-or-cigarettes/19417741/
or this British article about a book by David Kessler, former U.S. Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/dietandfitness/7541646/Old-fashioned-hunger-doesnt-come-into-it.html?msource=MAG10
The nutritional advice, which (if we've been listening at all) we've heard over and over, is to eat more vegetables. And it's true. I guarantee (or any diet/nutrition professional can guarantee) that if you eat plenty of celery, carrots, and other fruits and veggies, you can't possibly be fat. Note, salad is not okay if you're going to pile on the dressing, nor veggies if you're going to drown them in butter.
Yogurt, a few decades ago, was usually eaten only by "health-food nuts." Today it is very popular. But will it help us to slim down? Those flavored yogurts are sweetened and have twice the calories that plain yogurt has. Eat plain, fat-free yogurt. Personally, I like the taste of plain yogurt. I never eat those flavored ones because I don't think that the sweeteners go well with the natural tart taste of yogurt.
People tend to think that anything healthy has to taste bad, or that healthy eating habits are too austere and their food just won't taste good. It's not true. There are plenty of books, magazines, web sites and so forth that can show you how to have tasty but healthy food.
And don't forget that eating less calorie-dense food is only half the story. The other is more exercise. I notice how many people take the elevator instead of climbing the stairs in, say, the public library. Even to go just one floor. There's the amusing but all-too-true story of the thirty-something who takes the elevator to his/her health club and then uses the stair-stepper machine. And he or she never even thinks about the contradiction there.
And don't drive around and around trying to find the closest parking space at the mall or supermarket. Make a point to park a little further away. You need the exercise. Believe me. Or believe your mirror.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
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