Health food?

"If you don't recognise an ingredient, your body won't either."

This is page one of two in Aldi's current catalogue - they are doing health food this week. Here is page two.

It's a mix of relatively ordinary things like rice bran oil and prune juice to the truly weird - spirulina, slippery elm or maca powder? - and the becoming familiar but non-mainstream stuff like goji berries, acai powder, chia seeds and coconut more or less everything. I do intend to do some individual posts on some of these things - I have been meaning to do something on coconut, for example for some time, but today I am sticking to just a general rant about health food, wholefood, organic, etc.

Every suburban shopping centre now has a health food shop, and every supermarket now has at least a whole aisle of 'health food' - if you count all the various aspects of this - more of course if you include some of the fresh fruit and vegetables and some of the meat, fish and dairy. In every section of the supermarket - and I do mean every section - there will be something organic, healthy, environmental, natural or whole. Which, of course, is good. We should certainly be eating healthier and protecting the environment. And I do try to buy organic eggs and chicken and I think the unwaxed apples thing is good. And I do try to buy Australian. Nothing is more important than saving the planet. However, some of the aspects of this 'health revolution' are suspect to say the least. And I found a few quotes to help me.

That first one for example about not recognising an ingredient is becoming increasingly relevant.

"Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word "organic" is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic.” Michael Pollan

And I have to say, that it seems to me that the gluten free aisle, for example is full of sweet things - cakes, biscuits, slices and bars. As somebody somewhere said, cake is cake and really you should only be eating it now and then. If you eat it all the time it is no longer special for one thing. And you've got to keep something back for special occasions. That first page of the Aldi catalogue, for example, has 'Protein balls - available in cashew and cacao, cranberry and coconut or peanut and cacao'. Cacao somehow sounds better than chocolate doesn't it, but surely that's what it is? And they look like sweet treats to me. And if they don't contain sugar they probably contain some sort of artificial sweetener, and I think the jury is still out on whether they are just as bad as sugar, though in a different way.

And is avocado oil (any oil) really healthy? Or coconut oil come to that. Surely they are fat and fat is bad for you. I always thought that coconut was a particularly unhealthy thing - but I will do a post on coconut one day, so hold that thought.

“There are people who eat only organic food, and then there are people who don’t have tons of money to waste.” Jim Gaffigan

Those protein balls that I was talking about are $9.99 ($10.00) for a pack of six! That's $3.11 each! Do people really pay that much for what is basically a chocolate truffle? My guess is that a dark chocolate ball is just as healthy. I don't know how much Lindt chocolate balls cost but not as much as that. The various organic flours on offer - coconut, buckwheat and besan are $5.00 for just 500g, and those tiny packets of smoothie booster powders (125g) are $6.00. None of this is cheap. My personal favourite in this little section though is the WPI fast release high protein powder (sounds like fertiliser!), which will set you back $40,00 for a kilo!!! And it's available in vanilla or chocolate! Chocolate! I bet it's not natural chocolate either. The goji berries, by the way are $25.00 a kilo. These are all luxury foods. The people who are abused for eating at McDonalds simply cannot afford this stuff even if they wanted to. And yes, they don't eat wisely - which is a whole other topic, but one thing is for sure - they simply cannot afford to be 'organic' unless they grown their own vegetables and keep their own chickens in their backyards. Which they could - and which the poor used to do. And in places like rural France and Cuba, a lot of people still do. 'Organic, health food, whole food' is for the middle and upper classes - with the young urban hipsters leading the charge.

Even in the markets - and there an increasing number of farmers' markets - the prices for the organic produce are much higher than that for the nonorganic stuff. I know that it has been proved that nonorganic does not necessarily taste worse than organic, and it certainly costs a whole lot less. I really, really do not understand why organic food costs so much more than nonorganic food. Yes there are economies of scale, but the nonorganic producers must pay heaps for their chemical fertilisers, and their picking, cleaning and packaging equipment, not to mention their high level administration costs. It seems to me that if you are truly organic you do not have these costs, so why does your product cost so much more? Again - grow your own if you truly want to save on costs and be organic at the same time.

“Eating organic for good health and spending your day sitting down using a wireless computer that is next to a WiFi router is a classic case of Yin & Yang.” Steven Magee

And there are lots of other ways in which we are inconsistent are there not? Just about everyone in the developed world, and increasingly in the undeveloped world, has a mobile phone and a computer of some kind. We nearly all have a car or use transport that uses power. Not many live near enough to their work to be able to walk or cycle. We heat our homes in winter and cool them in winter. And all that health food in those two pictures comes in plastic packaging, which is pretty ironic really. And don't get me started on packaging, which is becoming increasingly complex and unnecessary. I know there are a few purists around who eschew all these 'unnatural' things, but it is really, really difficult to live without them. And anyway:

"The organic world is wonderful, but the inorganic isn't bad, either. The world of plastic and artifice offers its share of magical surprises. A thing is good because it's good, not because it's natural. A thing is bad because it's bad, not because it's artificial. It's not a damn lot better to be bitten by a rattlesnake than shot by a gun.” Tom Robbins

I think the moral of all of this is that we can do our very best to be attentive about what we buy, and we should. Eat a Mediterranean diet - this seems to be the current favourite - but not too much of it. Be careful but not fanatic. The middle way, as always, and as Buddha preached - is always the best.