Do It Now! The Food You Choose To Eat Will Be Either An Efficient Medicine, Or A Direct Route To Illness

Fresh Natural food, or processed? Your choice. Your health

Exercise is essential for good health. But we can’t exercise our way out of the obesity epidemic.

Way back in time, when I was a kid, white bread suddenly became popular. All my friends had white bread sandwiches. They snarfed them down like there was no tomorrow.

And I was jealous…super-jealous, because my parents refused to buy it.Their belief was that small, brown, dense cottage loaves were much better for our health.

Whether that is true, or not, I don’t really know, but today I would never eat white bread…mostly because it is totally tasteless and leaves me wanting.

So when my mother eventually caved in and bought white bread, I heard her say once that we kids managed to eat two loaves of bread after school, and still eat dinner.

Mind you, with a whole band of children to be fed, first in, best fed was our modus operandi.

We also knew that if we didn’t eat dinner, there was nothing else on offer.

And that one introduction to our diet, I believe, for us at least, was the beginning of the slippery slope of eating fast food.

Soon all manner of ‘fast’ delights were fast appearing for our pleasure, packets of highly-salted crisps, as we called them, chewing gum (another thing we were not allowed, but friends were, so we shared), and we added to that, hugely-colorful sweets that nature could never have had a hand in.

Little had changed on the home front, of course. My mother still cooked from scratch, but with the little pocket money we ever got, we missed no opportunities in going to the local shop, and bogging in like the rest of our friends.

Sandra Nimbly is a name I can never forget, from primary school. Her mother worked at an ice-cream factory, and every day, I swear, Sandra had a misshapen boulder of chocolate that her mother had brought home for her, to eat at recess.

EVERY DAY!

I was so jealous.

She never shared.

And I have never forgotten.

My thoughts were always about what rubbish I could buy with my meager pocket money.

So instead of squirreling my cash away to buy Real Estate or something else that would have built wealth, I was already planning six days ahead, what to spend my pocket money on.

And I can tell you right now, my mouth even today, is a monument to Scottish (free) dental care.

What I remember on Saturdays, after receiving the said pocket money, was buying sugary treats, then suffering the feeling of utter sugar-sickness trying to finish off whatever I’d bought, and telling myself that I would never, ever buy ‘sweeties’ again.

Sadly, I had one whole week to get over the pain, the sickness, and the self-loathing, so it never really happened.

Those lollies were veritable jewels in my eyes, brighter and more alluring than any diamond.

Fast-Forward To High-School

High school was when fast-food consumption really took off. My mother still wasn’t on board with the junk food business, but my friends’ parents were. They were allowed packets of Pringles to take to school for LUNCH, would you believe?

Once again, my jealousy knew no bounds.

I mean, Pringles were everything. They set such a high standard for convenience eating, in that they were gorgeously-packed, every finely-cut chip was a replication of the one before (spooning perfectly with the one behind). This was pure class both in presentation and taste.

They were such a model of scientific perfection.

I was hooked.

My friends were hooked.

And when I eventually convinced my mother to buy a packet of them, she too was hooked.

We were a super-hooked family.

I’m sure you can guess what happened

That packet of Pringles was the key to my family’s world of junk food. For the sake of peace and quiet my mother bought a few of what we all wanted, and we snarfed them down like the white bread sandwiches I spoke of earlier.

It set my dad’s asthma off BIG TIME, though none of us suspected at the time.

And my fiercely-resistant mother, inspired by the clever marketing, quietly bought more of the ultra-processed, edible food-like crap.

But that was nothing compared to today. My mother continued to cook. It’s just that she also succumbed, just a little.

Today?

Oh my! Could we ever have been prepared? Certainly here in Ozland, the percentage of ultra-processed food is dangerously high.

Breakfasts are mostly a sugar treat of cereals…sparkling delights and our kids devour them.

School tuck shops, bent on profit, sell almost nothing but ultra-processed foods…and students are supposed to learn while consuming them on a daily basis.

And dinner especially if both parents work, is often convenience food…cheap, easy to prepare, and there are no complaints from the kids.

So what’s not to love?

A lot, as it turns out

When I was a child there were no obese children.

Now there are many.

When I was a child, there were few children with asthma.

Now puffers are all the rage.

When I was a child, good behavior was in place.

Now we have children who simply can’t sit still.

When I was a child, not one child died of cancer.

My friend’s daughter died of cancer on Christmas Day.

Do we need government intervention for standards to turn around?

Do we care enough to urge governments to legislate for better food for our children?

What are your thoughts?

Because if we don’t care, and don’t legislate, nothing is going to get better.

Profit will always prevail.

And we will continue to shed tears.