Boy – did I get an eye opener! My elderly father has been quite ill and as a disabled person we had to hire home aids to help. It shocked me however, to discover that 2/3 of the ladies coming into our home didn’t know the basics about food shopping and preparation – even how to boil an egg, thicken a sauce, pan fry a piece of fish, debone a chicken thigh, or bake banana nut bread.
Even though most had children, their eating habits are artery clogging, nutritionally deficient, obesity promoting nightmares. If there ever was a disaster that wiped out supermarkets, electricity and microwaves, they’d starve in a few weeks. As to fresh fruits and vegetables – what’s that!
These women feed their families nothing but chemically contaminated, artificially colored, artificially sweetened, high fat, high salt, high fructose corn syrup laden drinks, cardboard tasting prepared foods or quick fixing boxed foods. If they didn’t eat fast foods, frozen pizzas and pockets, Lunchables, canned ravioli, and the rest of the toxic dump byproducts they sell in the stores these days, they’d starve.
Homemade banana bread, banana buttermilk pancakes, unbreaded pan fried fish, breaded pork cutlets, fruit, seasoned fresh vegetables, yogurt and homemade popsicles or sorbee are food only our ancester’s ate.
I’m no gourmet chef, but my grandmothers, aunts, and mother taught me how to shop for fresh meat, fruit, and veges and how to cook. I learned how to cook outdoors camping with my ex-husband (including how to build and cook over an open fire). Yum! Fresh coffee and banana pancakes in a deep woods Smokie Mountain’s campsite!
I intend to post the basics to do my part in solving this American crisis. Don’t let the multinational corporations that control the food chain from gigantic industrial strength hog and chicken farms to mega-factories producing prepared foods as far as the eye can see.
You won’t solve the obesity crisis, which was caused by the insanity of large multinational food corporation giants brainwashing the public with endless advertising funds to buy high fat, high salt, chemically laden prepared foods, with simple regulations concerning food in school cafeterias and a wimpy public information campaign.
A whole sale change in our education and drastic FDA regulations are needed. No student should graduate from high school who can’t perform basic food preparation – to graduate bake a loaf of banana bread, flip some homemade pancakes, prepare a fruit salad and a vegetable salad and know the tricks of how to keep them looking fresh, describe how to pick a ripe avocado or watermelon and a fresh piece of fish at the store. Pass a test on basic nutrition and food preparation and storage. Prepare a cup of coffee over an open fire.
Then the obesity problem will be solved. We have to combat the propaganda from the multinational food corporations. We must return to basics in food preparation and decrease drastically the consumption of toxic chemically laden prepared foods – anything that causes obesity and heart disease on the present unprecedented level can only be described as “toxic foods”. Look for detailed information to combat Food Ignorance in the future on this site.
Dr Linda Shelton 