"Food Revolution" is pretty in-your-face about the obesity epidemic in America. In the first two episodes, Jamie meets with a pastor of a church who can go through his church's directory and point out all of his parishoners who have died of obesity-related diseases. Jamie meets with a family of 6, and each one of them is morbidly overweight. Jamie says, "Their freezer was just basically an Aladdin's cave of processed crap." One son has a few signs of pre-diabetes. The 4-year-old daughter looks like she weighs more than my six-year-old and my one-year-old daughters combined. But probably the most disturbing thing is Jamie's demonstration of how chicken nuggets are made (although he does say that they are not made this way in the U.S.). Before you click on the link below, please know that I have a very strong stomach, and this made me queasy. You may want to skip it if you are easily sickened, pregnant, or wildly in love with chicken nuggets. In my opinion, it's worse than "Supersize Me".
Here's the video.
Okay, were you brave and did you watch it? Gross, huh? But what I thought was an incredibly important moment from that video (that Jamie completely missed) was when he asked, "If you know this is bad for you, then why would you eat it?" And the response was, "Because we're hungry." WOW. Jamie was focusing on his failed experiment, so he wasn't able to really process exactly what she said.
I actually emailed Jamie, and in part, said this:
"I believe the obesity problem in the U.S. is 3-fold:Now, I feel that as a family, we do eat very well. Yes, I buy (and the kids eat) chicken nuggets on occasion, and we've been known to go out for fast food once in a very great while. But for the most part, what we prepare here at home is balanced meals made from fresh ingredients. When I say "fresh ingredients", I am also including frozen fruits and vegetables that have no sweeteners or extra sauces or spices on them. Also, canned fruits and vegetables are very nutritious, as long as the fruit isn't packed in heavy syrup, and the vegetables don't contain a lot of sodium.
1. People live such busy lives that they don't feel they have the time or energy to cook for themselves or their families so they buy processed, easy to prepare food to eat, and many do not know how to cook.
2. Many of our citizens (especially with our failing economy and high unemployment) are living on less and less every week and fresh, natural ingredients are not high on their priority list.
3. The cost of fresh produce, lean, good-quality meats, dairy products, and whole grains is extremely high compared to the cost of processed foods such as hot dogs, chicken nuggets, pizza, individual slices of cheese in plastic wrappers, and fast food (to name a few examples).
Unlike many people, I don't think that taxing junk food will solve the problem. I also don't think that if produce, meat, dairy, and whole grains were to become much more affordable that people would make the switch to healthier eating. But it might be easier to convince people to try a better way if they didn't feel that paying the higher prices for good quality, nutritious food is a punishment for trying to feed their families something that is healthy, wholesome, and satisfying. The U.S. government's Healthy Food Financing Initiative (explained here) will not benefit anyone unless the cost of fresh, unprocessed food decreases. I don't even know where to begin in trying to come up with a solution."
At one point, I was setting aside $20 per week for fresh produce. Let me tell you, it was A LOT of fruits and vegetables. We would have at least two fruits or vegetables at each meal, and at the end of the week, there would still be leftover. I think $20 a week is very reasonable--considering a family of 4 can eat one fast food meal for about that price. (And they probably think they're getting a good deal.)
Anyway, my question is this: What do you do to make sure your family eats healthy, nutritious meals? Or do you not worry about it?
Gina
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