Interestingly, I was originally writing about how snacking was bad for you, and then discovered it was quite recommended by science, so I kept the genre and wrote something else. Who knows what would have been wrought if not for google? Anyways, hope you enjoy it, and anything else you may see while you're here!
The Fallacies of Food by Mackinley Clevinger, February 6, 2016
Food is, obviously, quite important. It gives us the energy to do things, brings us together I social circles on common ground, and it tastes fairly amazing. If eating were as simple as that, life would be much easier for us all, but instead there are health considerations and social rules that don’t really make sense when you think about them, mostly born out of humanity’s problems with abolishing rules made for stressful times we’re no longer in and our inability to avoid following trends that are widely followed.
Alongside the cultural and physical evolutions of mankind over many millennia, changes also came to the habits of our eating, from early hunter/gatherer tribes that viewed eating as a matter of survival to the era of mass-produced farmed goods that allow us selection and choice in how and what we eat today. This newer method of eating has only become widely available in some regions of the world in the last century, and with it has come numerous by-laws and guidelines we all follow, without really thinking about why we do what we do.
Breakfast, however, is completely arbitrary. Why do we eat delicious bready foods with liquid sugar on top, sided with majestic bacon every morning? Besides it being what’s become expected of ourselves, there is no reason to consistently have one meal that doesn’t benefit our health at all, or at the very least always have it assigned to one time of the day. The requirement to only eat foods we have classified as being ‘for breakfast’ is a self-imposed illusion, one that limits us to only having any real freedom in our consumption to two meals of the day. If we are going to abide by having three meals in our day, then they should all at the very least be free to be whatever we want them to. In essence, pancakes for dinner isn’t something to laugh about or laud as a special event, it is something to strive for in the quest to free ourselves from the oppressive yokes of our breakfast yolks.
Another activity that has sprung up now that we have food readily available is the act of snacking: eating food between meals to satiate sudden hunger and keep ourselves energized and alert. This act calls back to the days of yore when a gatherer would eat whatever they could find to help themselves along until the next big find or victory in slaughtering a beast to consume for several days to come. Snacking is a good thing for one to do, but, as always, must be done in moderation, lest one ruins their appetite and may not enjoy the full force of a properly cooked meal in exchange for a stomach full of odds and ends eaten mindlessly. Always remember: When you’re reaching for a snack, ask yourself if what you really want is a nice full meal. It may not be time yet, but time’s an illusion mass produced by mankind to keep track of events, while the grumbling of your stomach is most certainly real and should be satiated by whatever food you want, regardless of the arbitrarily assigned name to the meal you’re about to eat.
However, while snacking is well and good to get you through the day, society has built a large industry around snacks that taste good, but are quite terrible for you. I do not call for the abolishment of the industry, merely the moderation in your intake of these goods. Though you may yearn for something with colors that would ward off a starving hyena, reaching instead for something that exists lower down on that old food pyramid will leave you better off, most assuredly. There’s an addictive quality to many snack foods, and eating food that’s healthier is typically going to leave you feeling better off and with less of a yearning for more than, say, a bag of candies. Going a few days or weeks without them will actually remove the urge, and a habit of healthier eating makes it easier to stick with it.
On that note, even the food we eat during meal times has been intruded upon by many items that aren’t exactly what we should be munching on. They may be tasty and make your tongue light up with delight, but an abundance of oils and low quality ingredients do not do wonders for the body. Having your interior arteries begin to clog up and apply undue pressure on your cardiovascular system is not something to do to yourself, so change it up a bit. Obviously, and this goes without saying, taco Tuesday should never be abolished, but a bit of vegetable or meat from an animal that got into double digits on a pedometer would never do you harm.
Despite what health class once taught, what the food pyramid says is true, and what the government made sure to ignore some scientists about; bread should not be eaten five times as much as any other food category. Which is a shame, truly, because eating an entire baguette was the kind of thing that made not being health-conscious really worth it. However, it’s true that we don’t really need the stuff that bread provides; we need nutrition and proteins, not pure deliciousness. Or carbs, as science calls them, but I find the two synonymous. This, to utter dismay, does also include pasta, and everything else that has gluten in it. Now, given the fact that society is not gone, this isn’t going to kill you, but it is something to be a bit aware of when you’re thinking about what to munch next. That baguette catching your eye? It may seem – well, be – full of deliciousness, but not much else is sharing that space. It wants to load you full of blanks so that when you go to shoot, there isn’t the kind of power better foods would’ve given you.
Now, we can all agree that protein is good, and pretty awesome. Beans or bacon, we’re loving it, but there’s an attachment to some of what we eat that we usually turn our heads at: fat. I’m glad to tell you that fat isn’t all bad! Some of it is the stuff that will clog you up and slowly constrict your arteries until your heart is unable to pump such a high-pressure system anymore, causing unfortunate demise and a sad funeral, but a lot of it is good for you and needed by your body to avoid grieving families! It’s really a fight between good and bad fats, and the key to any healthy living: Moderation. Fat is dense, so there’s a lot of it in small packages, and most of the time what we’re eating, as mentioned before, isn’t so good for us, which results in a lot of low-quality bad-for-us our-arteries-are-constricting fats entering our diet, when what we want are healthier fats you can get from animals allowed to use their legs, or nutrient rich legumes. Many options exist to keep yourself healthy, you just have to be aware of what exactly you’re putting in your mouth and what things you should be putting there.
Speaking of considering whether or not to put something in your mouth, diets are an odd thing that have sprung up in a big way these last few decades. To make ourselves healthier, we are going to eat less of everything until our stomachs get smaller from a lack of everything, at which point we are magically better than we were before we stopped eating. Now, not all diets are like that, many are more the kind to change what you’re eating and they typically recommend some manner of exercise routine alongside them, but the old style diets of self-induced starvation because thinner-is-healthier just does not make sense for trying to be healthy. We need food to live, so, above all else, eat. If you have a problem with something related to your food, the answer is changing what you eat and what you’re doing with what you eat rather than choosing an empty plate. Remember, food’s awesome, so eat it! Just eat stuff more awesome than fast food and whatever it is that even a raccoon would turn its nose away from.
In a general sense, most people can’t go wrong with the old stereotypes of healthier eating. Eat green, leafy things; eat meat from animals that haven’t built a religion around myths of some solar source of light; baguettes are not a meal unto themselves, sadly; read some labels, they’ll probably make more sense than that book about the universe you’ve been trying to get through; make sure to enjoy the food you’re eating; just ask for some nutritional help if you’re really confused; and don’t eat something just because you feel obligated to or because it’s what you’ve done for a while, you’re not lying to yourself for changing your habits. Our society is a tad obsessed with food, if you couldn’t tell, so there are plenty of people around to help you understand it better than the government did when they made those pyramids for kids.
The way we’ve been eating and how we view such habits have changed a lot over the years, and are going to change even more before civilization as we know it ends, with any luck, so always make sure to look around yourself every once in a while and ask yourself the important question: Why? A lot of destructive behavior in our lives is born as a result of us not really taking the time to wonder why we’re doing a thing, or if it’s a good idea, so a little bit of curiosity will not be killing the cat if you turn that brain of yours towards the things that seem almost second nature. Make sure to question what you eat, why you eat, and how you’re going to eat, as well as anything else in your life that takes your fancy. Just take a gander at your rights before you start questioning the government, they’re a tad touchy about that. But seriously, they thought bread was supposed to be eaten as much as everything else in our diets? Wishing something were true doesn’t make it true, not even with an entire country at your back, no matter how much strongly we may share that sentiment.