You Are What You Eat

I am blessed to have a mother and a grandmother who excel at cooking healthy and delicious meals. That said, I have yet to accept that I will have to learn how to properly fuel myself in the absence of them and their food when I go away to college in less than a year and a half. As a result, I’ve been putting together a list of “easy and healthy recipes for people who can’t cook” (aka me). In working to create this recipe book, I found that it’s a lot harder to find healthy food than it is to find unhealthy food. More than the actual food, you also need to pay attention to where that food is coming from. 

Last August, the FDA recalled shrimp imported from the processing company PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati in Indonesia as they were radioactive. I recall my mother bringing it up at the dinner table and feeling horrified that I could have been eating radioactive shrimp. However, upon further researching other recalls, I’ve seen that they’re actually (unfortunately) quite common. Black beans have just been recalled for having pesticides, a ready-to-eat chicken breast was recalled for Listeria, a raw ground beef was recalled for E. coli, "Tippy Toes" baby food was recalled for mold toxins, and the list goes on.

The horrifying part is that people would have no idea these items were recalled if they hadn’t gone out of their way to research it. And if you were to go out to dinner, you have no idea what kind of shrimp or beans they put in your meal. 

So what’s the solution? To be frank, I don’t really have one. I’m not a food expert or nutritionist, and my guess is just as good as anyone else’s. Personally, I’m planning on just rotating what kinds of food I eat and where I get them from because college dining halls have a limited food selection.

Regardless, the quality of food has become a pressing issue in today’s society. And as much as people may like to say that America is just a melting pot brought together by our fast food, obesity, and terrible dieting, American food is often imported. In general, food has become ultra-processed and filled with additives while being deprived of nutrients.