The Gospel of Food

With millions of books, articles, and BLOGS about food today, it is easy to get bogged down by information. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish whether a piece of information is fact or opinion. Regardless, I think it's important to keep reading and keep learning!

I've started a new book called The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food is Wrong by Barry Glassner.

I'm currently on page 45, and it's a decent read so far...nothing that I'm going to stay up late for though.

There is a passage I'd like to share:

(Page 37)

"There is a belief that if it is natural, it is safe, and if it's artificial, it is unsafe, but the real issue is healthy or unhealthy," he said. "We can all think of a number of natural products that are perfectly dangerous." Take crude oil, Beck suggested. "Perfectly natural. There is nothing more natural than that, and in its raw state, it's perfectly dangerous. Nobody is going to eat raw petroleum. But if we take this petroleum and distill it and start to burn it off, we get sugars." Flavor chemists use those sugars to make almond and strawberry flavors that are not ony safe for human consumption, but so true to life, "they would knock your socks off," said Beck.

Wow. Now there's some perspective. It's very true though: most people do see the term "artificial" and think of it as unhealthy, or at least I do. I've been trying to cut all artificial sugars from my diet because I deemed them unhealthy. I've heard that our body can't really digest artificial sugars. Are they really unhealthy? Are they really undigestable?

If you google "artificial sweeteners" you will see a multitude of articles that say that artificials sweeteners are fine, and you'll see the same amount showing that X happened in Y study so you shouldn't use them.

I'm not a scientist. I'm not a dietician. I'm not a nutritionist. I'm just a blogger, but here's my take on it:

Everything in moderation. Think of your body as being composed of a Yin and Yang. The number two is all around us. Night and day, sun and moon, black and white, good and bad. You can consume some items that are deemed "bad" for you, but don't forget about the good stuff too. We can't be perfect all the time, so just try and be in the middle of the road.

Enough for today, this post wore me out.

More book commentary to come later...