I know you. We have a lot in common. You have been doing some reading and now you are pretty sure everything in the grocery store and your kitchen cupboards is going to kill you.
Before Your Healthy Eating Internet Education:
I eat pretty healthy. Check it out: whole grain crackers, veggie patties, prawns, broccoli. I am actually pretty into clean eating.
After Your Healthy Eating Internet Education:
Those crackers – gluten, baby. Gluten is toxic to your intestinal health, I read it on a forum. They should call those crackers Leaky Gut Crisps, that would be more accurate. That veggie burger in the freezer? GMO soy. Basically that’s a Monsanto patty. Did you know soybean oil is an insecticide? And those prawns are fish farmed in Vietnamese sewage pools. I didn’t know about the sewage fish farming when I bought them, though, really I didn’t!
The broccoli, though..that’s ok. I can eat that. Eating that doesn’t make me a terrible person, unless….oh, shit! That broccoli isn’t organic. That means it’s covered with endocrine disrupting pesticides that will make my son sprout breasts. As if adolescence isn’t awkward enough.
And who pre-cut this broccoli like that? I bet it was some poor Mexican person not making a living wage and being treated as a cog in an industrial broccoli cutting warehouse. So I’m basically supporting slavery if I eat this pre-cut broccoli. Oh my God, it’s in a plastic bag too. Which means I am personally responsible for the death of countless endangered seabirds right now.
I hate myself.
Well, shit.
All you want to do is eat a little healthier. Really. Maybe get some of that Activa probiotic yogurt or something. So you look around and start researching what “healthier” means.
That really skinny old scientist dude says anything from an animal will give you cancer. But a super-ripped 60 year old with a best-selling diet book says eat more butter with your crispy T-Bone and you’ll be just fine as long as you stay away from grains. Great abs beat out the PhD so you end up hanging out on a forum where everyone eats green apples and red meat and talks about how functional and badass parkour is.
You learn that basically, if you ignore civilization and Mark Knopfler music, the last 10,000 years of human development has been one big societal and nutritional cock-up and wheat is entirely to blame. What we all need to do is eat like cave-people.
You’re hardcore now, so you go way past way cave-person. You go all the way to The Inuit Diet™.
Some people say it’s a little fringe, but you are committed to live a healthy lifestyle. “Okay,” you say, “let’s do this shit,” as you fry your caribou steak and seal liver in rendered whale blubber. You lose some weight which is good, but it costs $147.99 a pound for frozen seal liver out of the back of an unmarked van at the Canadian border.
Even though The Inuit Diet™ is high in Vitamin D, you learn that every disease anywhere can be traced to a lack of Vitamin D (you read that on a blog post) so you start to supplement. 5000 IU of Vitamin D before sitting in the tanning booth for an hour does wonders for your hair luster.
Maxing out your credit line on seal liver forces you to continue your internet education in healthy eating. As you read more you begin to understand that grains are fine but before you eat them you must prepare them in the traditional way: by long soaking in the light of a new moon with a mix of mineral water and the strained lacto-fermented tears of a virgin.
You discover that if the women in your family haven’t been eating a lot of mussels for at least the last four generations, you are pretty much guaranteed a $6000 orthodontia bill for your snaggle-tooth kid. That’s if you are able to conceive at all, which you probably won’t, because you ate margarine at least twice when you were 17.
Healthy eating is getting pretty complicated and conflicted at this point but at least everyone agrees you should eat a lot of raw vegetables.
Soon you learn that even vegetables are trying to kill you. Many are completely out unless they are pre-fermented with live cultures in a specialized $79 imported pickling crock. Legumes and nightshades absolutely cause problems. Even fermentation can’t make those healthy.
Goodbye, tomatoes. Goodbye green beans. Goodbye all that makes summer food good. Hey, it’s hard but you have to eliminate these toxins and anti-nutrients. You probably have a sensitivity. Actually, you almost positively have a sensitivity. Restaurants and friends who want to grab lunch with you will just have to deal.
Kale: it’s what’s for dinner. And lunch. And breakfast.
The only thing you are sure of is kale, until you learn that even when you buy organic, local kale from the store (organic, local kale is the only food you can eat now) it is probably GMO cross-contaminated. Besides, it usually comes rolled in corn starch and fried to make it crunchier. Market research, dahling…sorry, people like crunchy cornstarch breaded Kale-Crispers™ more than actual bunny food.
And by now you’ve learned that the only thing worse than wheat is corn. Everyone can agree on that, too. Corn is making all of America fat. The whole harvest is turned into ethanol, high fructose corn syrup, chicken feed and corn starch and the only people who benefit from all those corn subsidies are evil companies like Cargill.
Also, people around the world are starving because the U.S. grows too much corn. It doesn’t actually make that much sense when you say it like that, but you read it on a blog. And anyway, everyone does agree that corn is Satan’s grain. Unless wheat is.
The only thing to do, really, when you think about it, is to grow all your own food. That’s the only way to get kale that isn’t cornstarch dipped. You’ve read a lot and it is obvious that you can’t trust anything, and you can’t trust anyone and everything is going to kill you and the only possible solution is to have complete and total control over your foodchain from seed to sandwich.
Not that you actually eat sandwiches.
You have a little panic attack at the idea of a sandwich on commercial bread: GMO wheat, HFCS and chemical additive dough conditioners. Some people see Jesus in their toast but you know the only faces in that mix of frankenfood grains and commercial preservatives are Insulin Sensitivity Man and his sidekick, Hormonal Disruption Boy.
It’s okay, though. You don’t need a deli sandwich or a po’boy. You have a saute of Russian Kale and Tuscan Kale and Scotch Kale (because you love international foods). It’s delicious. No, really. You cooked the kale in a half-pound of butter that had more raw culture than a black-tie soiree at Le Bernardin.
You round out your meal with a little piece of rabbit that you raised up and butchered out in the backyard. It’s dusted with all-natural pink Hawaiian high-mineral sea salt that you cashed-in your kid’s college fund to buy and topped with homemade lacto-fermented herb mayonnaise made with coconut oil and lemons from a tropical produce CSA share that helps disadvantaged youth earn money by gleaning urban citrus. The lemons were a bit over-ripe when they arrived to you, but since they were transported by mountain bike from LA to Seattle in order to keep them carbon neutral you can hardly complain.
The rabbit is ok. Maybe a bit bland. Right now you will eat meat, but only meat that you personally raise because you saw that PETA thing about industrial beef production and you can’t support that. Besides, those cows eat corn. Which is obscene because cows are supposed to eat grass. Ironically, everyone knows that a lawn is a complete waste in a neighborhood – that’s where urban gardens should go. In other words, the only good grass is grass that cows are eating. You wonder if your HOA will let you graze a cow in the common area.
In the meantime, you are looking for a farmer who raises beef in a way you can support and you have so far visited 14 ranches in the tri-state area. You have burned 476 gallons of gas driving your 17-mpg SUV around to interview farmers but, sadly, have yet to find a ranch where the cattle feed exclusively on organic homegrown kale.
Until you do, you allow yourself a small piece of rabbit once a month. You need to stretch your supply of ethical meat after that terrible incident with the mother rabbit who nursed her kibble and ate her kits. After that, deep down, you aren’t really sure you have the stomach for a lot more backyard meat-rabbit raising.
So you eat a lot of homegrown kale for awhile. Your seasoning is mostly self-satisfaction and your drink is mostly fear of all the other food lurking everywhere that is trying to kill you.
Eventually your doctor tells you that the incredible pain you’ve been experiencing is kidney stones caused by the high oxalic acid in the kale. You are instructed to cut out all dark leafy greens from your diet, including kale, beet greens, spinach, and swiss chard and eat a ton of low-fat dairy.
Your doctor recommends that new healthy yogurt with the probiotics. She thinks it’s called Activa.
Wonderful post. I frequently say that the stress will kill me (obsessing on food) long before any food does. It was a very important post for me to read for the sharing about lyme disease. Thank you, Martha
I stood up and gave you a standing ovation after reading this, but it had to be a short burst of applause, as I am off to soak my grains in virgin tears right after I type this comment…..
First off LMAO!
Secondly, this is exactly the type of article I’ve been conjuring up in my head for weeks! You just put it so perfectly though. Loved it.
Thirdly, have you submitted this to the NY Times yet?
I’m interested in the 2013 Garden planner and journal. Is it something that comes in the mail or is it an ebook? thanks. great blog by the way.
LOVED this article. Abe channeled by Ester Hicks is always telling us we have made food our “enemy”. I happen to believe Source Energy/Creator/Divinity/God whatever label you desire to use, is experiencing itself as “everything”. We look OUTSIDE ourselves for all our answers so we can play the role of VICTIMS instead Owning our own Power as an aspect of that Divine Energy living through us. Perhaps NONE of that shit is true and anything and everything is safe to eat if you only BELIEVE it to be true! I know many vibrant healthy people who rarely are sick, have slender bodies and who eat lots and lots of that “junk food” filled with wheat, sugar, and all that other supposed toxic stuff! Abe (and several others teachers) have told us if we just truly LOVE OUR BODY FULLY for the miracle it is (seeing, feeling, digesting food, beating our heart, hearing…without us consciously having to do anything to make all those miracles happen) and FULLY LOVE what we are eating( eating things we LOVE the taste of and feelings and sensations we get) then it matters NOT what we eat. If we eat fear foods are good, bad, toxic, dangerous and the like, we put our bodies into “resistance” and make it difficult for it to function as it is meant to function and digest and nourish us. Someday we may be able to EAT WHAT WE NATURALLY DESIRE and be FULLY NOURISHED by all those different foods!! Thanks for the FUN article…expressed my feelings BRILLIANTLY!!
yeah, that’s funny until you witness a few wheat bread crumbs turn your son into a sick, crying mess. or store-bought dairy give him a crusty oozy rash all over his face. don’t insult something that you don’t have to deal with.
I for real LOLed when I read the top! SO happy I just found you!
CHEERS (of grass shot, duh!) TO HEALTH!
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it made me laugh. it made me cry. it made me wonder how did you get into my head!! 😉 Seriouosly, thanks for the hilarious reality check and God bless!
This article is designed to confuse; when you’re confused you’re more prone to buy things. It’s just feeding the machine. Healthy eating is simple and easy.
What an odd and negative response to a blog entry that so cleverly pokes fun at all the confusion out there. Perhaps now is a good time to mention that a truly healthy diet provides us with the amino acids that our neurotransmitters use for seratonin support. Seratonin helps us to be happy and supportive. This entry is about finding ways to laugh at the confusion certainly not perpetuate it. Well done!
Yes thankyou Gwen… someone had to say it!
You can’t be too sensitive about these kinds of things… The writer is just expressing herself and describing the world as she see’s it. And it’s so true! That’s why so many people can relate.
It’s a very smartly written and humorous article. It’s not designed to confuse at all. It’s just an expressive reflection of the way things are.
I have to laugh at this because there are some people who move from one fad to the next without actually knowing why they are being told to eat this or that and to avoid certain foods. It is definitely not a bad thing to educate yourself on what you are putting into your body though, and to know what your body actually needs, and what may negatively affect organ function and your digestive system. People can get carried away, when in fact, eating healthy is a whole lot of common sense! Thanks for sharing! Made me laugh! 🙂
Hahahah this is seriously the funniest thing I’ve read in so long.
I had no idea anyone in the world had gone through the exact process of eliminating every single allegedly ‘healthy’ thing from their diet due to the inaccuracy of that reputation.
I’m from Australia, so wild Kangaroo meat seems to be the only acceptable thing going. Plus eggs from my friend’s country farm. And of course organic Kale, although I now realise I shouldn’t go assuming that is all as it seems either…
As a result I end up substituting the obviously heart foundation approved options of Whiskey Sour cocktails and chocolate for a large part of my diet. sigh.
Thanks for your day brightening article.. I’ll be staying tuned. 🙂
This is quite a rant and not a bit informative. Quit your bitching and write something with substance. It is ridiculous to state that raw organic veggies would need to be fermented to be healthy and that its impossible to find local grass fed cows. Why would we have to buy seal liver to be healthy? Why not the organic grass fed livestock? Why not wild caught fish? What’s wrong with shopping at a local farmers market rather than buying per washed, precut broccoli? Your complaints are baseless and have easy solutions. It’s unfortunate you invest your time in complaining about your food choices. I bet if you focused your effort toward solutions you would find them!
The responses people leave who clearly don’t read are just as humorous as the article itself.
Indeed.
Dear Ashley,
Perhaps you have never encountered satire before. Please, never read “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. I’d hate to see your painfully literal reaction to his “nutritional rant.”
Sincerely,
The Author
I like you, Erica. Thanks for the read.
If you are interested in some examples of effort focused toward solutions, you may wish to read some of the other articles on this very blog.
Well said.
Why would anyone take the time to leave such a negative and rude comment? If you don’t get the humor or the light sarcasm with this, great. Move on. I hope the clever author of this funny article deletes your uneccesary feedback. I’m sorry that your nasty response was copied to all of us- your words were sent to my phone while I was minding my own business, working hard, lifting others up and trying to be a positive force in the world. Don’t let the door hit you.
Converting turf to fruit and nut tree’s are all HINTS in the right direction but we can’t really joke about cancer and diabetes and all the other terrible other health side effects of GMO, and hormone imbalanced frankenfood and the lack of scientific information regarding side effects. I have several friends that are chefs and they all say the same about how all the food available to us is really unhealthy which I completely agree with, but when i try to go into detail about the tragedy of the modern landscape and discuss realistic solutions, and how wasteful it is to have a pretty landscape instead of a functional food forest landscape there eye’s glaze over and I end up hearing about roasted rabbit for the next half hour. While I do appreciate the good writing and decoded internet super diet trends I would really love to see some dialog on realistic solutions being proliferated. Consider the tragedy of the modern landscape, before oil, eveything was local.
Hi Mike, thanks for reading – I’m going to assume you are new to this site. I’d like to encourage you to look around at the other posts here. This site is basically all about backyard sustainable food production – how to garden, preserve, and do the “farm in the city” type thing. You may find quite a lot here that appeals to you.
I go through all of this internally on a daily basis. Beautifully said!
Oh my, this was HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for writing it!
A-FREAKING-MEN! This should be printed, laminated, and displayed in HLB kitchens all over the world! Pure gold.
I have 3 great recipes for crispy Kale chips that don’t have any cornstarch…….anyone hungry?
I have 3 great recipes for crispy Kale chips that don’t have any cornstarch. Anyone interested?
I died! So funny, so true!
In this post you have described me in High Ann Coulter style! I was laughing so hard as I read that my family got curious and asked me to read it aloud. I barely got through it, we all laughed so much. Excellent! Now I need to get off-line and go milk our cow. No grocery store milk for us!
🙂
Droll indeed! Great writing! Mort Sahl once said that modern life is so bizarre you can’t use satire on it. This is as close as you get.
Sounds exactly like my roommate. She’s convinced she can’t have gluten, soy or dairy…..because some hippy told her that all of her problems came from them. She hasn’t been to see a doctor but claims she has this terrible thyroid which leads to all her problems. Forgetful? Thyroid. Late to work? Thyroid makes you oversleep. Can’t fall asleep? Thyroid gives you insomnia. Doesn’t clean up her dishes? Thyroid makes you allergic to soap. Mean? Thryoid gives you a temper. (I’m not joking, except for the soap one). I’m working on eating healthier as well but I eat a mix of things in moderation and focus on veggies and fruit. She keeps telling me all these horrible things gluten is doing to my body….I’m sick of it. I think my bitchiness is cause I’ve got a bad thyroid.
i dont see any credit for rush limbaugh, this article is pretty much verbatim his breakdown of modern diet recs!
Credit is required where someone pulls quotes or facts from another source, not where two writers happen to write about the same or similar topics.
I ran random lines from this post through Google and didn’t turn up any Limbaugh. Unless you’d like to point out where his exact words (the meaning of ‘verbatim’) were lifted and used here, I’m going to assume you’re referring to the only Limbaugh food rant that turned up–a March ’12 screed in which he accused liberals of, among other things, trying to skew food mentality and guilt/trick people into eating healthy. It’s readable online, and it reads nothing at all like this piece of foodie snark poking fun at extreme dieting fads.
Again, simply having a similar topic to discuss or making similar points doesn’t mean one person has copied another.
P.S. My apologies to the author if ‘foodie’ is considered an insult in these parts. 🙂
Thanks Mo. I have no idea what this Rush Limbaugh thing is about.
Clearly Rush Limbaug does not concern himself with what he eats……………..
Someone, somewhere , thinks I made a prior comment relating to Rush Limbaugh……no, I did not……..To me, ..he is ……..loud and annoying……….if your posting has any similarity to his position……count it up to concurrence………., thank you for your posting. I am sure that R. L. can make his own postings if he is so inclined………….we will all be forced to listen to him…again…and again……and again……….
Well, you’ve nailed my life. This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.
Wow, from some of the posts, the food police are alive and well….I suggest folks check out Chris Kresser’s blog…..paleo, low carb, are all templates……subject to modification and level of damage a person has already incurred……the point is to take responsibility for portion control, for dietary choices, for environmental impact…….there is no free lunch……or free calories, or free carbs….it all counts……what is a safe toxin impact? I don’t know……..I just try to keep it all together while still enjoying life. My mother is blind, has alzheimers, has peripherial vascular disease, has macular degeneration, has had 3 strokes, has no independence, and did I mention she is diabetic. My genes are not exactly perfect. I take care of her. I do not want my kids to have to take care of me…..so…I will exercise the level of caution she never thought she needed to. I am not afraid of food but I will be respectful of my intake. I will also be respectful of the choices of others. Just understand, throwing caution to the wind may force choice on those who love you. Loved your blog…….I laughed till I cried…………I still made the kale chips.
Sooooo funny!!! Your post is spot on. Thanks for the laugh!
Excellent & giggle-worthy. (But where the backyard chicks being devoured by the neighbor’s pomerarian-chihuahua mix?)
this was awesome in so many ways. and I dont like that word anymore because it is so overused…but falling short of anything else. your blog is moderately splendid and hits home in so many ways. thank you for the laughs. now I’m going to go cry.
stop eating animals..eat as organically as possible..feed your kids what you want to give them to make them strong and healthy..do not hide behind the stuff about what crock pot to cook your beans in..use those beans and legumes to make vege burgers..eat healthier..do not hide out behind these crazy things you have said..get healthy…avoid gmos…avoid monsanto products…aspartame..asflusamane? all the crazy fake sweetners…really find out which foods you can safely eat without getting too much neurotoxins on your families foods…avocados, bananas, oranges, things with skins…fruit and veges….all root vegetables have the most poison insecticides, because they are at the end of the flowering parts..they catch all the runoff…be smart…too bad corporate America got so involved pushing their pesticides and genetically altered foods off on us all…
I just read this on a link from FB. OMG I love you. This describes several of the people near and dear to me. I’m sure they think I’ll kill them :).
This post is great! I especially like the part about grazing a cow in the common area of the HOA because I’ve been trying to convince our HOA that along with the community garden my husband and I built in the common area, I think we need community chickens. Ok … you weren’t serious and I am, but I still think it’s awesome and incredibly funny.
This is BRILLIANT!!!
HAHA This is awesome. Thanks for the laughs this morning.
Oh, my gosh. How did you know–that’s exactly what I’ve been through. Are you secretly watching me? Lol. Feels good not to be alone.
You can make as much fun of this as you like in your articles, but if it wasn’t for Paleo, I’d be dead by now. Also, you have a lot of misconceptions about Paleo, reading random stuff online. 2/3s in weight on a Paleo dish is supposed to be veggies, not meat/fish. The nightshades and dairy removal is only for those with major auto-immune problems, not for everybody else. Regarding legumes, only lentils lose most of their lectins via fermentation (making them safer). However, it requires a 36 hour fermentation to do so. Green beans, and all other veggies, fruits and tubers are all allowed. The biggest no-nos are grains (they were killing me, even if I’m NOT a celiac), vegetable oils, most unfermented legumes, and excess sugars. Everything else is a go.
Someone posted the link to this blog post on Facebook today. You took the words right out of my mouth. Every time I think I’ve found something good to eat another nutritionist or scientist or doctor tells me, “No. You can’t eat that.” It makes me want to go back to eating whatever I like . . . within reason. Thanks for your post.
Oh dear god this is one of the funniest things I have read in a long time.
Thank you. Thank you so much for the laugh.
I so get this. I have made the decision that I will eat fruits and veggies and lean meat. I can’t worry about all the rest. There is too much to worry about. Besides I learned the hard way a few years back. I had decided to go super healthy. I even changed the cleaning supplies in our house to all natural ones. A week later I went completely numb on my left side. Doctors thought I had a stroke. Nope. Doctors thought I had lupus. Nope. Doctors thought and thought and thought. Then finally I mentioned how annoyed I was that this happened just when I had made so many changes. Turns out I am allergic to tea tree oil.
Hilarious and depressing, simultaneously.