Please Don't Eat the Sunblock

If you look through the annals of political history, starvation usually accompanies revolution. Basically, it has to get pretty bad on a very personal level for the masses before they will band together in an uprising to make a change. I remember learning in school that Marie Antoinette's (in)famous quip was illustrative of her total lack of understanding that the regular folk were starving to death...they didn't even have a crust of bread. Hence, "let them eat cake" endures in the jaw-dropping, I-can't-even-believe-you-just-said-that category.

In many ways, we are starving right here in modern America. I am not talking about the growing number of American poor, which is a serious issue. I am talking about our entire American society, on every class level. We are starving because we are not eating real food often enough.

Sure, you may watch the Food Network and love to dine in fine restaurants when you have the opportunity. But I'll bet you've had a "Hot Pocket" or some such ready-to-nuke abomination. Maybe you even have a couple of them each week. I think that's a serious problem.

I had such a packaged frozen meal last night. Yes...I cook for a living, yes...I claim to absolutely abhor that commercial gar-bahge, but I had a moment of weakness and took a shortcut. I had limited time and needed to throw something down fast. So, for a night, I pretty much let my life be mockery of my values.

As I shamefully finished this totally unsatisfying excuse for a dinner, I read the box. My meal was complete with sodium erythorbate, hydrochloride, aluminum phosphate, maltodextrin, and...and...and titanium dioxide.

I ate this periodical chart because I felt like I had no time. Being starved for time is a huge problem that we all just kind of accept. Whether for work or family or sheer survival, we have all been made to run, non-stop. We feel like we sometimes just cannot carve out enough time and consequently take shortcuts with our meals. But that list of additives is something a real home cook or decent restaurant cook would NEVER put in their food. Isn't titanium dioxide non-water-soluble? Isn't it sunblock? That's like lapping up a nice spoonful of SPF 15. If eating sunblock isn't symptomatic of starvation, then I don't know what is.

I'm sure the food companies are not trying to harm us. They have to do things on a massive scale for national distribution. They have to make the product hold up on a shelf for a long time. They have to make things maintain an appetizing color. They are just trying to give us a convenient product that appeals to us.

But, oh! That salt, that sugar, that chemical (or possibly metallic) compound that these manufacturers use to expedite the product and allow it to appear fresher for a longer period of time builds up in our systems when we eat it every day. I am not a doctor but I have some instinct that eating chemicals instead of food has contributed to the mounting problem of nutrition-related health issues like obesity and diabetes.

If there is to be a revolution because we are starving for real food (as opposed to a chemical goulash), then this revolution will be in terms of TIME. Seize back your time, however you must, and get some real food into your life on a regular basis. And hold the sunblock on mine, please.