Organic Food and other things we eat - part 2

When I am at school supervising my first-graders during lunch it occasionally makes me shiver what parents give their kids to eat. Junk food, that’s what it is. That name is there for a reason. Kids bring sandwiches made from white bread, dry buns with chicken nuggets in between the bun halves, 2-minute soups, macaroni and cheese, and worst of all, “lunch mate” kits - lots of packaging for a few DIY-mini hot dogs or mini pizzas. Some bring fruit but unless it’s chopped into bit-size pieces they take a bite or two and throw it away because the whole apple is too much for them. If I catch the kid on time, I tell it to take the fruit back home or finish it later. I dislike food waste. Ruby only gets food that I would eat. We had once packaged organic baby food that gets mixed with water – it tasted like water. Of course, I don’t add spices, salt or sugar to Ruby’s food.      

The food of most school kids is low in nutrional value and high in fat and salt and that’s because a lot of it is processed food. I don’t believe the claims that processed food from the store is cheaper than preparing meals yourself. We’d be bankrupt if that was the case because I avoid processed food wherever I can. At a recent food fraud talk the speaker, a dietician, pointed out that when you read the ingredients list what you don’t want in your food (e.g. salt) should be less than 5% and what you want (e.g. carbohydrates or fibre) should be at least 20%. Good luck finding something with less than 5% salt! I am notorious for reading ingredients lists and I put a lot of stuff back on the shelf because of its high sodium or sugar content. Processed organic food is not necessarily better than non-organic. I held an organic vegetable lasagne in my hands the other day – it had 30% of my recommend daily amount of salt in one serving! Oh no!         

That’s still not where it stops. Remember Monsanto – I mentioned it before. It’s a chemicals-company gone agriculture. They developed genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) – corn is the best-known example. I’ll write more about it later because I watched a DVD about Monsanto but they also got these GMOs approved by the US American Food & Drug Administration (FDA). It makes me very suspicious about foods from the USA. How they managed? Oh well, the same people that work for the FDA have at some point worked for or with Monsanto or have otherwise ties with the company. No questions asked; the crops were not properly tested for their food safety before they were approved and today Monsanto has spread its crops in 46 countries - and in my understanding these crops have become pests themselves. Alone the name makes me sick: Monsanto – Mon Santo – My Saint, there is nothing saint about this company, it should go to hell, the faster the better.