Most everyone I know has at one time or another (ok, ok forever, here) struggled with their weight. Who has been given much, often gains much [weight]– in comparison to many parts of the world who live poor in many ways and also tend toward limited choices ( and sometimes healthier ones) in foods.
What has been put over on all of us who have been or who are poor nutritionally and glutted with advertising –is that the advertising about how great it is to be eating healthier by counting carbs and fat and reading labels–is adequate knowledge and adequate awareness. It isn’t. Sure, many of us ought keep track of and ingest less sodium, calories, fat gobbets, etc., both hidden and overt.
But what we ought to be struggling with is not just meeting daily nutritional needs in healthy ways, but WHERE, HOW, WHEN, WHO, and WHAT was processed/ applied to the food stuffs before they ever reached the fast food restaurant or highly-processed food aisels of food stores.
But you wont find that on the menu, nor on the pages of fast-food websites touting how healthy their offerings are.
Stating calories, fat, sodium, carb contents are a miniscule start in transparency about what we are putting into our bodies. Knowing far more about where the food came from, how it was grown precisely, when it was cut/slaughtered and how, who added to it, and what substances and in what amounts, how it was shipped, the time factors in all these, bacteria and rodent controls in processing factories, metals cooked in via high heat…
For ‘real nutrition’ the latter are FAR more important to know than mere calories/fat/prot/carbs/sod/calcium/etc. The QUALITY of the calories/fat/prot/carbs/sod/calcium/etc. MATTER to our health, as much as, and even more than usual ‘dietary’ counts. Fast food and grocery advertising is silent on the actual matters of growing and pre-preps that stand behind calories, etc.
The body really is like a Ferari of fine-tuned and close tolerances… and needs daily maintenance. Remember what they used to say about the sleek roadsters/sport coupes that were so often admired: that they were so finely made yet could go out of kilter easily in one area that would affect all other areas, so that you would have to carry either an Italian, French or German mechanico in your back pocket every driving day?
The human body is like that too. Because the body is massively compensatory, we can fool ourselves into believing we can run the engine hot, go without water for the radiator, without quality fuel in the fuel lines, without clearing out the sludge in the oil… and the vehicle will still go.
But only for a time. There’s a reason hypertension, adult onset of diabetes II, heart disease, arterial disease, and many others are called “silent diseases.” They dont show, until one day. If they showed immediately, manychoices of certain kinds of food would be instantly scrapped and carry written warnings, like cigarettes, for those who would like to continue eating what does not befriend and in fact despoils the body’s intricate workings.
Often, the magneto, that is the engine will suffer. Not the ignition, not the now narrowed fuel lines clocked with sludge… but the heart, the heart pumping life through the bodies of all humans is what appears to be most vulnerable to being afflicted along with all the brain chemicals and hormones of the bodily systems that can go out of order when other chemical substances are introduced into the body… often without the consumer knowing.
Reading labels, relying on counts on menus, is not even close to enough information in order to decide well, (not all ingedients, and most processes used to do whatever damage to the food are required on labels or menus) given our ’embarrassment of riches’ in pre-proicessed and pre-preared food within our reach… often cheap in price, and cheap in nutrition.
It isnt that there are 32 grams of protein in a fat-gob burger. It’s the kind of protein, the viability of its ‘life’, how old that protein is, what was done to it not just in factory, but in shipping and shelf, and much fat is ingested with it, and many other aspects that would be ‘full info and full education’ for the human being.
‘Eating clean’ as we call it, we who struggle to torment and exhilarate ourselves by working out doing sweat-drenched cardio and then working with dead weights for an hour at least 3x a week, know that if we use the body’s wisdom instead of ‘fast food incessant advertizings and images’ as our guide, we not only lose weight, but grow strong on clean protein, complex carbs, freshest food we can afford– none of which are laid into boiling grease/oil/ fat.
Fat makes fat in many bodies. We can see the fat on our bodies and on the bodies of others. What we cannot see clearly is the damage from that fat that is liquified in our bodies and creates oily films and plaques and blockages.
Whether one comes from the South in the US, or from people who had farms and ranches, or any of the immigrant groups who, like my ethnic family, who when I was a child, thought that animal white-lard is the staff of life, and the prized pan of the house is a deep sided black iron skillet for frying up a mess of heavily breaded fish, or the equiv of 50 fresh potatoes sliced straight from the garden, or saturday morning handmade donuts bubbling away in the grease, or for some persons… homemade bis-kits n’ gravy made from white flour, chittlin’s, fat and animal blood and animal meat juice…
if one grew up with any fat-gob soaked, what some call ‘comfort foods’… there will often ever be a taste somewhere in our dim brainpans for these. We seem to have been imprinted through our senses as children.
However, unlike many who grew their food, ate heavy fats and vigorously worked a 17 hour day 60 years ago, I’d venture that no fast food is picked right out of the black farmland right behind the joint, that none of its animal products were fed with nutrition according to each animal’s best need when alive, that nothing was watered by clear well water, and that nothing was fertilized or helped to keep pests away by natural harmless means.
And that few who eat from that ‘different modern table of fast food’ work a physically vigorous 17 hour day… which some think that kind of rigorous activity may have offset in many the ‘clogging sludge’ of the fats ingested.
But then too, often in the orchard and farmlands the tables of families groaned with fruit and vegetables which nourished (until DDT and other ‘better living through chemistry’ came along as the ORIGINAL ‘fast-food’ progenitour that too many thought ‘savior’ for faster, higher production of foodstuffs.)
Moreso, when I look at a lot of food, whether ‘fast food’ that I think will ‘kill one faster’ also) or the grocery store ‘massive wreath layout’ of processed foods aisle after aisle with more or less fresh produce in one little pool at one end, and the “queen of all congealed mayonnaise” deli in its pool at the other end, rather than thinking ‘this is food,’ I think ‘This is 1000 Ways to Die Faster Than Need Be.’
Chick Fil A is in the news but we need more accurate and truthful data on fast food chains across the board. They appear to be trying to position themselves as a healthy choice, but I wouldnt spend the money for the pale skinless chicken breast they offer at Chick Fil A or other branded outlets. There’s only to my mind one good reason to go to Chick, or other fast food joints, that’s to indulge in an orgy of fat-glob eating until sleepy and loggy from the high sodium and fat content, not to mention what I sense is not Charolais quality beef.
But then, here’s what I know for sure. I already see auto steep stair-stepper and treadmill and elliptical as related to Torquemada, especially with sprint running, then fast-fast walk in between. I know it takes 30 minutes of hard cardio to work off enough calories to equal even 1/2 of any fat soaked fast food burger, let alone a whole Chik fil A or other joint’s ‘frah’d chick’n samich’ (as we say back to home).
Soooo. Even though my brain pan adores the taste of crispy fat globs), just thinking of what I’d have to add to an already screaming, panting last couple minutes of my usual cardio torment, makes me want to eat clean (not even mentioning how much better and more energetic I feel eating the ‘tasty breakfast, lunch and dinner of Champions, in addition to two snacks that feed the body, not the fat.
I commiserate that many of us seem to have the zombie appetite for fat-globs and salty foods prepared in bulk on long assembly lines, preserved and colored, perhaps, in various ways one might not want to know about — then the product frozen like ice-age man– til it arrives at destination and then is ‘goldened up’ and flat out ‘fried to a ‘crisp’ in order to take away any pale gray or eerily pale pink complexions.
But I’d also say, small steps to weaning oneself from the quasi-mother’s milk of fast food is long overdue. Education about the facts on fast food helps, but one would have to look not at only the end result on one’s plate which is all that most fast food places list over and over again
But FAR MORE SO, the processes that fast food place agrees to buy the works and products from…. from growing to slaughter to shipping to shelf life as well (I know most of us would rather run off with a banshee than know what actually touched or was added to our storebought foods).
But THAT is where the data from the fast foods industry, including high profile grocers who sell massive amounts of food that has been processed except for the few whole farmers and grocers–who ironically are authentically RELIGIOUS about revealing much about where things come from, and insofar as possible willing to say how all things are treated/processed beforehand– but this critical information for one’s health and well being physically is MASSIVELY missing for public perusal in the ‘fast food’ sector. The exact processes pre-cooking at the fast food site, are not offered for public scrutiny other than some vapid words about ‘we buy the best,’ and ‘we are picky about our suppliers et al.’
But the most important form of self-education is of the soulful kind: meaning developing a regard and a respect and a listening to and reacting in healthy ways to the one loyal servant we’ve all been given, that is, the body –who does all it can for us. Would that we would listen and care for our bodies with no less attention than to a fine car.
Remember? Baby steps to cleaning up the lines to the engine… or all out smack down of anti-health habits all at once. I promise you will feel so much better if you move vigorously too.
In either case, to you, to me, to all of us surrounded by what some think of as a wealth of choices in fast food… I’d just say
choose, if you can, not by look, not by salivation, not by childhood memory of ‘better times’… but with true knowledge.
None of us know what number is writ on our heads by Creator for whatever days of life are given to each of us. But, we dont have to hasten ‘the last days–‘ in fact, that seems against what many say is ordained by clear common sense … And many say too to eat what was not given in the beginning by Creator and to adulterate food and offer it to others in ways that are unnatural, and not according to scripture which has a long long list of what is to be ingested and what is not– is also against what was ordained by One greater. The irony of modern ‘fast food’ in that sense, is in my opinion, is apparently lost in the latter by some who promulgate it.
In any case, not any belief system only, but the reality of life-giving, life-sparing food, and knowing when food raising, harvesting, processings are not in one’s best interests… that … is far more important for loving life in best health possible for as long as possible.
So we say, I’ll eat clean, ah, um, how about after the next dripping tasty gob-burger? And we all laugh. But what the sludge does to the body silently, is not laughable.
Many of us have often nutritionally starved bodies oversaturation with salt/sodium hidden in our foods… many fast foods have the equivalent of a whoe days worth of sodium to them, even half a days sodium packed into them.
But elsewhere in the psyche too, is a different table of good and tasty foods that are better for the body-servant— foods that will not yet show up as afflictions advancing the aging and death of the tissues and arteries of the body.
I’d just say this to close, knowing the struggle well and having empathy for all who struggle with these matters of taste, memory, craving vs health, strength, energy:
Courage.