I have come to realise that supermarket shopping
for me has become a blur - I honestly couldn't tell you everything that you can
find on those shelves anymore. I used to enter and go straight for the cheese,
1st straight aisle right, which is no longer necessary now that I get our own
Fairview and Daleview selections, see website. And I use my own kefir
instead of cottage cheese and I'm planning to progress to making our own
mozarella and feta (as soon as I have grown more arms). Next stop is fruit and veg. Or shall I just say fruit,
because I don't have to buy veg. Then I head for the far left corner,
oblivious to whatever else I'm passing, in order to get to the meat counter.
Then straight across for milk if I run short of the unpasteurised I get on a
Thursday and because it doesn't last long enough. No more yogurt and butter
purchases for me now that I make my own, then to the far right hand side of the shop for cleaning stuff and up the
second-last aisle from where it is easy to spot the shortest till line. While
traversing the front I can grab some tea, coffee or toiletries if needed. And
that's me done!
So why am I telling you this mundane personal
anecdote? It is because I am so happy I am free to allow the rest of the
supermarket to pass by me in a blur of nothingness. I just watched a
documentary this week called 'Fed Up', and the conversation is headed up by Bill
Clinton at the behest of a live-wire lady whose name I forget, and its about the
obesity epidemic that has hit the USA. The information I gleaned from this
doccie is too much to include in one volcanic effort to you, but the supermarket
is a good start. Produce is preferably not sold in its original form any
longer, because if it has been value-added (read deconstructed, processed, and
sugar added) it sells for so much more. And if one can claim 'just add'
something or another and sit down and eat, your overworked
mother/housewife/working lady is happy to grab and go, if it means she doesn't
have to peel veg and slave to put dinner on the table. It's just that if
anyone took the time to tell her the price she is paying is her health and the
health of her family, with medical bills added, I bet more than 90% would be
just too happy to rather go to the farmer's market and cook their own darn
dinner!
Just a few stats which raised the alarm bells for
me once again: Of 600,000 items available on supermarket shelves in the USA
80% have sugar added. They tell you 'with half the fat' or 'half the calories'
(compared to what?) and while making the comparison, they don't tell you they
never reduced the sugar as well, because the sugar barons have succeeded in
labelling to simply contain 'sugar' in the list of ingredients, without stating
how much, which is mandatory for everything else. And then they furthermore
disguise the s-word by calling it fructose, glucose, lactose, dextrose and a
myriad others which I can't even remember. Research furthermore shows that all
the fake-sugar sweeteners have exactly the same effect on the endocrine system
as if it was refined sugar you are ingesting!
The second alarm bell raised for me is what they've
done to grains. Everything is sugar coated, the cereal boxes have action men
and popular tv characters on and in and efforts to stop them advertising to
children have been met with cries of interference with freedom of speech... but
what I didn't know is that the metabolic effect of a processed grain is exactly
the same on the body as when ingesting refined sugar. Even if you astutely eat your sugar-free kelloggs with just milk,
there's no health benefit. In the words of the nutritionist-doctor
interviewed: "Whether you eat your weetbix or whatever it was he
called it, without sugar or you eat a bowl of sugar without the weetbix
the effect to your metabolism is identical and the metabolic diseases
resulting from the intake of processed foods and sugar are Diabetes, Heart
disease, Lipid problems, Strokes and Cancer (there were more) because they all
cause an overproduction of insulin.
The overproduction of insulin makes you think
you're hungry because it blocks the brain from receiving the 'full' impulse.
And most notably diabetes caused by an overindulgence of sugar and fine
processed carbs is no longer called 'Adult onset' diabetes, it is now just
referred to as Type 2 diabetes, because it is ocurring in teenagers and even in
children as young as 9 years of age.
This is the one doctor's mantra, which I shall
repeat in the weeks to come, while I write more about nutrition and the scourge
of our age which is processed food:
Detox on food which looks like it came from
nature as opposed to a box or a can with a list of ingredients printed on the
outside.
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