Enough with flavorless food - A scream at the end of desperation

After coming back from my one-week holiday (just meet some friends, which lives in other federal states), I want to focus more – as mentioned in my last post – at my nutrition and training.

As some of my readers know, I had the time before my holiday a very stressful time due to my study. In this time I neither had time for doing some sports nor the discipline for clean eating… The craving for some brain food was so high and my will was so weak!!

Two weeks before I was at the wedding of one of my best friends, Susan. I wanted to wear an expensive designer dress, which I had bought years before. But days before the day I tried on and unfortunately I couldn´t zip it. So I have to bought another (bigger size) dress for the wedding. :o(

And THAT SUCKS!

But that stops now! Yesterday I weigh myself and the number on the scale was the highest I ever have seen!!!

So, therefore: today (Jun, 4^th) starts my countdown: in exactly 4 months (Oct, 4^th) I´ll be on my way to USA for improving my english skills in a language school in Boston for 2 weeks and then I´ll visit New York City  for 1 week.

pics via google research

And I don´t want to travel to the states with this weight, because I don´t feel comfortable with it. I feel like a fatty person with a balloon as a belly!!

You should know, that the States is one of my favorite Country to travel. I love the language, the architecture and the mindset of the people…. Last week I booked my accommodation in Manhattan in the 6^th avenue – just around the corner of the broadway and the times square. My room has a direct view to the Empire State Building!!! I await eagerly to step into the plane. And I don´t want to have a bad mood with the uncomfortable feeling of my body! Everything should be fine!

While drinking my morning coffee, I read today an article of the FAZ (german newspaper), which was shared by a nice friend of mine.

Although the article was created in April 2012, the content is still actual.

I agree for 100% with it! As the article is in german, I tried to translate it as most comprehensible as I can ….

Enough with Flavorless Food!
We spend too little time and money on food. This is a real, and permanent scandal ! A scream at the end of desperation… 

 

Everyone who loves to travel and to eat, can tell you some stories of culinary revival experiences on the roadside, in cook shops, at sidewalk restaurants in Hanoi or Kyoto, Bangkok or Guangzhou, where food is cooked with nothing more than an iron pan with red-hot coal or a big bubbling cauldron of hot soup.

This is a heaven whose gates to the gourmet temple we hope will never be closed! Eating tamarind crawfish under the sky for the trifling sum of less than 5 or 6 euros, a seemingly ridiculously low sum.

When coming back home, you then see in passing, what cheap food really is: a kebab doner for 2,80 euros, curry sausage for 2,20 euros or Mac Donald´s meal for 1,99 euros. We should ask ourselves, if we aren't completely out of our minds to eat such trashy bad food.

When it comes to food, we act like the three Buddhist monkeys: We see no evil, hear no evil, and want to say no evil. We don´t want to hear that our daily food is junk. We don´t want to hear, that we eat trash. And we don´t want to admit out loud – neither in an accusatory nor in a self-critical way – that we walk into the trap of false promises of the food industry.

Spending money for a 10-course menu seems to be too decadent

Germany is experiencing a wonderful boom of gourmet food.  But simultaneously the whole population, whole generations, have nearly  forgotten in their lechery of avarice and kitchen illiteracy that good food isn´t cheap and cheap food could never be good – and in the best case is not dangerous. They are willing to pay 3-digit sums for a 56 minute concert of a capricious pop star.

But for some people it seems decadent to spend the same amount of money for a 10-course degustation menu – and spend (without a second thought) the same amount of money on a family trip to a leisure park, which isn´t much cheaper than a visit to a (Michelin-) starred restaurant with kit and caboodle. And we always hear from these kind of people, that they aren´t able to afford organic food.

In Germany you can buy a pot of yoghurt for 0,19 euros, a liter of milk for 0,49 euros, a pound of butter for 0,79 euros and a liter of wine for 1,39 euros, produced by a food industry, which makes the this food tempting for us through the 3 Billion euros they spend on advertising, provided by the four biggest food chains (with 85% market share, and rising).

Two-thirds of baby food is organic products

Only 10 % of our expenditures are spent on food by Germans, while Italians and Spaniards reserve almost 15 % and the French 13,4 %. But it gets worse: in the States the amount is only 6,9 %.

For half of all Germans, price is the one and only criteria for buying foods – even though food in Germany is already 15-20 % cheaper than in neighboring European countries, thanks to the dominance of discount-retailers.

People have an ever increasing desire for natural and genuine food, but simultaneously the proportion of convenience food is on the rise. People will watch brigades of TV chefs preparing gourmet meals, while eating industrial pizza, which is more expensive than the homemade version. Two-thirds of baby food is organic, because babies should getting the best – but as a proportion to all groceries, organic food accounts for less than 3%.

We have perfected the three-monkey exercise

A lot of car drivers think biofuel is hellish stuff, because they have fear of the health of their engine, but they don´t care about their own engine, their body. It´s a pity, but unfortunately true: The majority of the
Germans spend more money for motor oil than for salad oil!

All these groceries scandals scare us, but unfortunately they don´t change our behavior, because we refuse to believe that a rotten pork cutlet or poisoned turkey meat could be a real health hazard we face. This is only the peak of the true, permanent scandals… of the real ice berg. The damage, which is caused day by day with fast food, soft drinks and bags of chips will shrink all dioxin to a trifle.

Our tragedy is this fact: three quarters of chickens are full of medication. More than 800 tons of antibiotics will be mixed in animal foods… every year!  – that´s almost three times more than humans take, when they are on medication. The chickens will grow from 40 to 1600 grams in only 30 days; in the past they gained 1 kg (2 pounds) two months. Only 0,8 % of german chickens are raised on organic farms. Ground meat is cheaper than cat´s food….

Why don´t physicians prescribe vegetables?

Maybe this is the biggest scandal: we delegate the responsibility for our own health recklessness to the grocery industry and politicians. Why don´t we use our own brain? Why do we refuse to think about how it is possible for the price for ground meat to be a mere 0,99 € ?

The question of nutrition and food is too rarely considered. We don´t think about what food is the best and lightest for our stomach, what impact our nutrition has on our body or how the kitchen can be a place passion. Unfortunately, we ignore the quotes of Physicans as Hippokrates: The food will be your medicine, and your medicine will be your food!

We eat mindlessly, and then remedy with our mistakes with supplements or medication. Or we fall for the grocery industry´s trick and eat a digestive yoghurt with tons of sugar. Or we try to contain the rampant overweight with medicine. Why do physicians prescribe antihypertensive drugs instead of healthy food?

It´s a matter of taste

The solution is so easy and sensual. It is called taste. Good food tastes good, bad food tastes nasty: Industrial carrots taste of soap, cheap chicken like paperboard,  farm-raised fish like insulation material from the hardware store. Bad meat drowns in its own artificial justices while being cooked. Some tomatoes cannot be recognized as tomatoes when eaten with closed eyes and some frozen meals seems to consist of inorganic material.

The exorbitant price of fuel is awful. But why aren´t we equally outraged about imitation cheese or shrimp, and ham made of scraps?

Why do we accept that our kids will never learn the taste of good food?

-      because we don´t cook for them,

-      because we don´t teach them to cook,

-      because they will be fed reheated or oven-ready meals in kindergarten/preschool and school cafeterias

-      because most restaurants only offer Kids Menus with french fries and hot dogs, instead of an adult meal in a mini-size portion (as in France or Italy)?

Educating our own offspring on the taste of good food should be an obligatory subject for all parents and for all educational institutes.

You don´t have to be an extremist to come back to the right path. Just open your mind and look more closely for natural and healthy foods.

What do you think about? Like and share your comments....!!

Stay healthy and look for the right healthy stuff of nutrition!! Your body will thank for!

(*all pics via google research)