I have been looking into traditional foodways for nearly 2 years.  It was only a week ago that I became enraged at what the food and diet industry has fed to us as sound healthy information.  It was when I got a stack of size 10 jeans and pants and they were all too big that I realized I had been played.  Size 10 was the smallest I had ever been in my life.  I starved to get there.  I exercised way too much.  But now, having never felt hungry, having eaten 3 meals a day consistently, and exercised as being a mother of 2 permits me, I not only had to put back the size 10, but also the size 8.  I was shocked and had to triple check what I was seeing.  I didn’t understand how it could be.  It shouldn’t have been possible that without what I would have called a weight loss program I had lost enough to fit into a size 6.

That is when I got mad.  I got mad that I had been jerked around.  That my parents were led to believe that soda, Oreos, and Little Debbie’s were appropriate snacks.  That without cleaning my plate I wasn’t eating enough to grow strong.  That because I was a big baby and was a lazy nurser, I needed to be bottle fed.  That as early as age 12 I was dieting, or depriving myself of food to lose weight.  That I had been up and down and up and down ever since.

I got angry that somehow my “ideal” weight was always just under what I was able to achieve.  I got angry that chemicals such as monosodium glutamate was allowed into our food and called a spice.  I was terribly angry about the high fructose corn syrup is okay in moderation commercials when every box I picked up, no matter what food group, contained it as an ingredient.

I am angry that food has become something that isn’t taken care of on the local level.  That we are made to feel we don’t have time to cook from scratch.  That a mother can’t work (or father for that matter) and also prepare wholesome meals for their family.

But, as I got to thinking about all this angry stuff, I realized that the food and diet industry are telling you how to eat a standard American diet and be pseudo-healthy.  You’ll still probably need your cholesterol and heart medications.  Hopefully, you’ll be able to control your diabetes with diet and/or a pill.  Make sure to include plenty of Splenda.  It’s made from sugar and absolutely fine for you.  They are telling us how to get by and still give them our hard earned dollars.

It makes me angry.  I’d like to have a conversation about how you too view the food and diet industry.  What flaws do you see?  What is good?  What is the future of food and diet in the United States?  I’d like to hear from all people… vegan, vegetarian, fast food lovers, meat and potatoes folks, junk food eaters, those who eat the SAD (standard American diet).  Tell about your story in food.  Let’s talk and then decide what we are going to change in our lives for the sake of our health and our family’s.  I believe it’s all an individual thing.