Clean your plate

“Too soon old. Too late smart.” I don’t think my father was the author of that statement, but it was something he said on many occasions, with regard to his life and how he conducted it. It was also an offering to the rest of us. He didn’t want his family to wait too long to learn how to live well. When Dad was in his early ’70s, he paid more attention to the “smart” part. He stopped drinking, stopped smoking and made an effort to eat properly and get more exercise. For him, as it turned out, he was too soon old. Many years of giving in to his preference for fried foods along with the stress of providing for a large family, his pre-70 years pack-aday smoking habit, maybe a few too many beers and very little exercise, put him in the hands of a cardiologist and a surgeon by the time he was 80. Dad stood firm on the issue of what food really was. To him real food didn’t stand the test of time on a counter but it had to stand up to the fry pan. To him real food wasn’t shrink-wrapped, didn’t come with a list of unpronounceable ingredients and certainly didn’t have much of a “shelf life”. Processed foods didn’t get much space in his life. He liked his cheese stinky and old. He liked his steaks and chops fried in bacon fat. As for fish, well let’s just say “wrapped in newsprint”. In his final days, spent in a hospital, he refused to eat “the hospital crap on the tray”. My siblings and I took turns bringing “real food” to him. By that time in his life, he had given in to salads, was okay with poached fish and oven roasted meats, would give fresh fruit and multi-grain breads a whirl and didn’t understand the need for food-like anything. He liked butter and had absolutely no use for margarines of any kind. He didn’t use artificial sweeteners or flavourings and thought cake mixes were for idiots. “Have you read the list of ingredients on those boxes?”

This isn’t about “hospital crap on the tray”. Feeding patients isn’t my point, although it may come up in another column. I do have a “too late smart” point.

I’ve always been “possessed” by food. I love to bake. I love to cook. I love cookbooks. I love cooking shows. I love to eat. And, in another life, a couple of friends and I owned a small catering business. Food. It’s all about food. Early in my adult life, over 40 years ago, I discovered what my father would call “crap food”. The pre-packaged stuff which was supposedly going to make my life easier. I bought into the shaking and baking, the little packets of cheese-like substances and “food” and flavours which had been created in a laboratory. I was a busy person, newly married to a full-time university student who worked part-time. I worked full-time and went to school part-time. If there happened to be a way to get a tasty meal on the table with a minimum of fuss and cost, I bought into it. I believed the ads and I believed “food” companies had our best interests at heart. And then I got headaches, heartburn and chest pain. And then I got smart. I started thinking about too soon and too late and started reading labels.

What the H E double bellyaches is olestra and why would we have purchased a “food” product that contains something that would give us gastrointestinal disease, diarrhea, bleeding and cramps? Yet, there it was in potato chips and other crispy snack foods. Big “food” producers like Procter and Gamble had a great huge problem when the Canadian government finally pricked up its ears and said, “no” to Olestra as a food additive. But Olestra is only part of the problem with faux-food. And who doesn’t know what a son-ofa- gun MSG is and there it is in all kinds of “foods”, from soup to crackers to fried chicken and chips. If you have a bit of chest pain or a migraine headache after eating a processed “food”, it could be the additives. Additives which are “okay” as far as The Federal Government is concerned. Every day we consume products with anticaking, bleaching, maturing, conditioning, colouring, emulsifying, gelling, stabilizing, thickening, firming, glazing, polishing, sweetening, adjusting, preserving, sequestering, leavening agents and, additionally, extraction solvents, acid-reacting materials and water correcting agents. Sounds like a treatment at a spa – the waxing, colouring, bleaching, firming, conditioning and stabilizing. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

I can see the Canadian government following in the USA’s proposed footsteps, effectively telling its citizens what they can and cannot eat. I think, rather than tell us what to eat, why not be more transparent about what food really is and is not. Maybe the government should consider telling “food” producers their additive-filled, gut-wrenching products would be displayed and offered for sale in grocery store aisles with signs like, “simulated cheese products with wood filler”, or “cylindrical meat-like products for the barbecue” or “salty snacks for heart attacks” or “bakery or fakery” and my favourite, “edible but indigestible oil products”.

Pass the butter, please.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca