Nutrition

When we were kids, we played this game. The game started by saying: “if you just landed on the planet from Mars, what would you see.” Then each person described life as it would look to a Martian (or any outsider who did not understand the reasons driving our behavior.) Playing the game today, here is the scenario we would see in a standard American home, eating the standard American diet.

The typical American lifestyle is filled with activity. We drive the kids here and there. Both parents work. Nobody is home to spend the day baking; no one can commit to spend the morning cooking dried beans from scratch. As a result, our pantries are filled with “store-bought” jars of pre-made sauces, dressings, and pesto. We stock up on boxes of mixes. We fill the freezer with pre-cooked “cuisine.” Our cooking skills consist of reading the instructions on the package. The spice jars in our kitchen pantry were bought when we moved into the house. (They’re not empty yet, so we don’t replace them; but they’re too old to taste good, so we don’t use them.) This method of cooking and eating seems practical, under the circumstances. There’s just no time to do anything else, we tell ourselves. Frozen dinners are an alternative to eating out, after Mom has put in a full day at work. For a nice family dinner at home, we’ll just take the pre-cooked frozen meals out of the serving trays and put them on real plates. If we’re on a health kick, we might even add a lettuce and tomato salad with bottled dressing! And, we could pour our soda directly into glasses with ice, instead of having everyone drink directly from the can! (The women, of course, take their soda in the diet version, while the men drink the hard-driving, regular soda.) Before we eat, all members of the family over 45 years old have to lay out their pill bottles and make the evening selection of medications. Those not taking a minimum of 7 pills must fill in the difference with an array of vitamins and supplements. This method of eating results in physical stress, as the pre-packaged food heated in the microwave creates body stressors which then must be compensated for with a wide variety of colorful pills.

Eating natural foods Somehow, our society hasn’t quite made the connection between what we eat and the quality of our health. We are bombarded with warnings not to eat butter, while no mention is made of the dangers of eating “artificial ingredients”, preservatives, and “natural flavorings made in a laboratory out of chemicals”. We eat frozen foods reheated in the microwave because we believe we must. They are what’s available. We’ve worked a long, hard, frustrating day, followed by an aggravating commute. The kids are hungry, screaming, and tired from their school day full of administrivia. Our work day wasn’t physically exhausting; it was just mentally infuriating because of the office politics. The drive home was an exercise in controlling our own road rage, while sliding out of the way of others’ road rage. Now it’s time to eat. It’s not time to start another day of work, spending hours slaving over a hot stove. It’s time to just take off the shoes, sit down, and eat. So that’s what we do.

Causes of stress: The price of convenience

We call this method of eating “convenient.” It’s convenient to pull food out of the freezer and reheat it quickly for dinner. It’s convenient to not have to think about cooking. There are too many other pressures, too much to worry about, too many problems and issues in our lives. There is a socially acceptable way to avoid cooking, so we might as well take it. This socially acceptable method of avoiding cooking has names like “Healthy Choice,” “Lean Cuisine,” and “Banquet.” When we do cook, we buy boxes of pre-mixed “Hamburger Helper”, “Stove-Top Stuffing”, and Quick, Quick, Quick rice pilaf or Instant, Instant, Instant potatoes and casseroles. Time is of the essence in our rush to the dinner table. It’s late. It’s late. Our family meal is a very important date. Tempers are flaring and stomachs are rumbling. We have to eat soon. Maybe we should just stop at Arby’s, we think. It’s on the way home. It’s easier.

If you are like most Americans, you lead a busy life. In today’s society, our families usually need two working adults to live our American dream. Children need to be ferried to sports and activities. Commuting to work is stressful and draining. Work hours are long. Families are demanding. Perhaps a family member, maybe even you, will take courses in the evening to work toward a college degree, adding more stress to a long day. By the time the evening calm descends and the work day is over, dinner together with a bucket of fried chicken seems like a rare and comforting family feast. On a good day, perhaps the Stouffer’s family-size l asagna will make it from the freezer to the oven. But on most days, it may be that every family member fends for themselves, throwing together a sandwich, heating a can of soup, or driving through the take out window at Taco Bell. If there are young children, family meals together may be more frequent. You’re stressed and overworked, but you are really, really trying to do your best by the children. After a long day at work, you may be frying some burgers, sprinkling them with a box of Hamburger Helper, steaming some frozen peas, and sprinkling the boxed mashed potatoes with the milk from the hormone-fed cows. Whatever you are doing to feed your family, you are doing the best you can do, given the situation that you’ve got. You are trying, you are loving, and you are giving everything you have.

The consequences of our busy lives

But there’s something wrong. Millions of Americans suffer chronically with vague, undiagnosed symptoms of headache, sinus problems, fatigue, eczema, skin rashes, allergies, asthma, acid reflux, and stomach aches. Frequent and recurring, these symptoms are minor, chronic, annoying. Too small and unimportant to cause us to quit our jobs, we learn to live with these aches and pains. We take pills to suppress their symptoms. At times, our little aches have been classified by the medical community as “environmental sensitivities.” The person may test allergic to dust, molds, and grass, and may have a weight problem or eating disorder. Additionally, many of our young girls are developing too early, at ages too young for puberty. We wonder how our 8 year old could already need a training bra. At the same time, frustratingly, a significant percentage of our school children are being diagnosed with “ADD or ADHD”; they are distracted and unruly in the classroom, unable to concentrate or sit still. The guidance counselor suggests that perhaps we should give the young ones a prescription drug to quiet them down. We take our teenagers, rushing through their own pressures and angst, to respectable and qualified doctors, whose answer to teenage turmoil is to prescribe pills for their “depression.” This depression and inner turmoil is real, the aggression and discomfort is unmanageable. We need those pills. So we take pills, and we give our children pills, and we feel grateful to live in a nation where pills are available.

Changing your life In response to our need to take pills as we age, we tell ourselves, “We live longer now. That’s why we get sick and have to take so many pills. It’s the price of old age.” This is how we justify the cost to our well-being of taking pills to counteract the side effects of taking pills. Sadly, though, this story that we “live longer now” is a myth. After all, Benjamin Franklin lived into his 80’s, as we learned in high school. What happens now is that more of us live past the age of 5, thus changing the statistical analysis of the average age. You remember the old adage, “Figures don’t lie; but liars figure.” People didn’t die in their fifties in the old days, as we’ve been led to believe. Rather, many people died in childhood, or very early from a major disaster like smallpox. The fact of so many people dying young caused the statistics to imply that the average age of death was considerably younger than it is today. We labor under the assumption that we have the best health care in the world. In fact, the World Health Organization published a report in 2003 saying that we had four years less of healthy lifespan than the major European nations, at a cost more than 30% higher. In the light of that analysis, it seems fair to conclude that it isn’t the pills we take that keep us healthy.

read more articles about nutrition facts from the archives!

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