The other day I made a quick pit stop at my local grocery store to grab the onions I needed to make a pot of borscht (beet soup). It's one of my favourite types of soup to eat and I finally had a recipe I was dying to try out.
You see, the last time I attempted to make borscht, for whatever reason, it was bland tasting and not at all the beautiful deep red colour one expects from borscht. But, that is part of the beauty of cooking - if something doesn't work out one time, all I have to do is find a different recipe and try again.
I talked to the one woman I can always count on for amazing recipes, my significant other's mom. She passed along the recipe she just used to make us a pot of beet soup, so armed with my new recipe for borscht I found myself at the store looking for my missing onions.
As I'm waiting in line, excited about trying this new recipe, I looked ahead at the 20-something-year-old female in front of me. She was a little taller than me and skinny. She must eat well, I thought to myself. Then I looked down at what she was buying and found myself in shock.
Her part of the counter was filled with enough frozen dinners for two meals a day for a week! On top of that, she had a half a dozen of those cup-of-noodles, a box of sugar-filled cereal, a carton of milk, a box of sugary granola bars and a loaf of white bread. There wasn't a single piece of fruit, vegetable, or whole grain item in sight - unless you count two pieces of pre-cooked-before-they-were-froze-with-the-meal broccoli.
The total came to $35 and change. She definitely had enough food to feed herself for the week with some left over, so $35 was a steal compared to what my significant other and I spend on our weekly (or bi-weekly) grocery trip. We're looking at number six to seven times higher for the two of us.
The difference between our bill and hers is big, there's no way around it. But, so is the quality of food we buy. Our carts are filled with, what I refer to as, real food. We don't buy the frozen dinners, the cup-of-noodles or even the white bread.
Instead, we toss plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables into our cart, along with whole grain cereals with minimal sugar, nuts, and dairy. We buy our chicken, pork and eggs from a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and we get all our beef from my significant other's uncle, who raises cattle for a living.
During the summer months, we either get our vegetables through the local CSA by buying a share of their organic garden, or we grow our own. I enjoy growing my own, but it is rather time consuming, which means we'll likely go back to the CSA this year.
The great thing about this CSA is that, some of the vegetables the couple grows we wouldn't necessarily buy in the store. For example, a couple years ago, they brought us pumpkins toward the end of the season which I used to bake my own pumpkin pie. One word, delicious.
One of the more unique vegetables they brought us was an eggplant. I used it to make ratatouille, a tasty French-inspired stew with eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers and onions. Another delicious dish we might not have tried otherwise.
Now, going this route - buying fresh, organic (when possible) food - is more expensive than pre-packaged foods, but if one can afford it, it not only tastes better, it's better for you.
So, sure, it may seem cheaper at the moment to buy frozen meals and other pre-packaged foods to eat, but more and more research is showing they lack the proper vitamins and minerals we need for optimal survival. I'm not suggesting to simply pop a daily multi-vitamin and continue eating the franken foods, I'm suggesting limiting, if not removing, those types of foods from the diet all together.
Real food - fruits, vegetables, whole grains, locally-raised meats - they all taste better and are better for you. Food scientists have not been able to re-produce these real foods regardless of what all the health claims companies pay to put on their products say.
Need proof? Look at margarine, one of the biggest food product blunders of our time. Margarine is one molecule away from being plastic - one molecule! Can anyone say they would really want to ingest something so unnatural? We might as well just go into the cupboard and chomp down on the plastic container.
When margarine was first introduced, consumers were told it was a healthy alternative to the fat-laden butter. Overnight, everyone tossed out the "evil" butter and began using margarine in massive quantities.
Today, we know margarine was actually worse for us with all its trans-fats. Instead of admitting their mistake, the companies who made these products quietly began restructuring and re-marketing margarine to read 'trans-fats free' or whatever other clever line they could come up to try and dupe consumers.
Margarine is just one of the many, many franken foods scientists have developed over the years. All the pre-packaged foods people live on are in the exact same category and I would be willing to bet it won't take long before companies begin restructuring and re-marketing them too.
So why not take the safer, not to mention tastier route and incorporate more real, whole foods into our diet. It may cost more up front, but when we suffer from less heart disease, cancers, and obesity, it will save millions in the long run.
