Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET by MARGARET DICKSON This time of year, I look forward to my Saturday morning routine — an early yoga class followed by a weekly shopping spree at the Farmers Market in downtown Fayetteville. Right now, the tomatoes are glorious, though I miss the deep green fresh spinach that could be had before the weather got too hot. Fresh eggs are always part of the purchase. Some egg customers bring egg cartons to be recycled as a small, personal effort at being green. The blueberries have been terrifi c as well, and I often snag some homemade baked goods, which I tell myself I will take to friends and neighbors but which often remain in the Dickson cupboard. Summer vegetables — corn, squash, cucumbers, beans and peas — are fresh and so vibrantly colored I am tempted to take photographs. This is what I call “real food,” the summer bounty of my childhood that is both good and good for us. There is a lot of “unreal food” around, too, and while it may taste good, it is unquestionably not good for us. This is not news, of course, but it is stunning — to me, at least — how pervasive unreal food is in our culture and how diffi cult it has become to avoid it. Take a stroll around your favorite grocery store and read a few labels. As you do, remember that the federal government requires food processors and manufacturers to list a product’s ingredients with the primary one fi rst. For example, product with a great deal of sugar — a breakfast cereal advertised on Saturday morning television, perhaps — would have to put sugar at the top of the list. But wait! The manufacturer can beat the system by using several different sugars in lower amounts so “sugar” does not have to be listed fi rst. Ditto fats. Ditto salts. Next, go to your favorite chain restaurant and try to eat healthy. Order a salad with chicken and salad dressing on the side so you can control the amount you eat. Chances are better than good that your chicken portion was pre-cooked — most likely, pre-fried — somewhere else and shipped to the restaurant where it was cooked — most likely fried again — and assembled with other shipped-in ingredients to create your salad. The dressing is virtually liquid fat, fl avored to be creamy and yummy. The reality is that there is less and less actual cooking going on in restaurants these days, even in independent, locally owned establishments. More and more, restaurant meals are put together on site using ingredients that come from somewhere else, often partially prepared long before we order and eat them. This is true even though area farmers have fresh produce right here, right now. There are thousands of books and other publications documenting and lamenting “unreal food” and its consequences in our culture from chemical unknowns to the obesity epidemic so clearly linked to unreal food in ever-larger quantities. Think about all those doggie bags we take home. It is easy and cheap for the food industry to provide so much and make us think we are getting a deal to boot! The industry studies and understands what makes us like something — the smell, artifi cial or not, the feel, chemically enhanced or not, how long it takes to dissolve in our mouths so we can eat some more. The industry knows all this — and more — far better than we do ourselves. The federal government requires food processors and manufacturers to list a product’s ingredients with the primary one fi rst. We just know we like it, really like it. One book that caught my eye recently is The End of Overeating by former U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. David Kessler. The cover features photographs of a piece of carrot cake, which may or may not contain actual carrots, and a bunch of the real thing. Kessler is critical of modern industrial food production that deliberately creates what he calls “hyper palatable” foods with such a delectable and endlessly adjustable mixtures of sugars, fats and salts that they are more appealing — literally “better” — than real food. Added chemicals enhance the effect, making us want these foods even more. He makes a strong case that many of us become addicted to these hyper-palatable foods in the sense that we do not feel “normal” if we do not eat them. This same terminology is often used by substance abusers, specifi cally alcohol and drug addicts who confess they do not feel normal without using their substance of choice. I fi nd Kessler’s criticism both accurate and damning, and I fi nd myself thinking more carefully about what is passing my lips. Is it fresh? What is in it? Is it real? I am grateful that Kessler also offers suggestions about getting off the hyper- palatable treadmill. Figure out what triggers our poor food choices and avoid the triggers. That may mean taking a different route to work to avoid the donut shop. Make a few rules for yourself and do not stray. Tell yourself you do not eat drippy burgers and fries and do not. Find some friends who eat well and copy them. Meanwhile, I will be looking for you Saturday morning at the Farmer’s Market. Bring your own bags. MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Unnatural Bounty 10 UCW JUNE 29 - JULY 5, 2011 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM