Now, my mother and I have different schedules; especially this year. This year, we've literally hardly seen each other, maybe once or twice a week. Between her work schedule and her new boyfriend, plus she's in Greek Life a little bit as well. I have work, school full time, Greek Life full time, and of course socialite time. However, when we do hang out, usually on the weekend, we'll go to the mall or go out somewhere. We usually eat in between places too. One of our "staple" places, if you will, is Subway. I've always been a fan of Subway. You can see how they're making it, you can see what you can eat, they're simple and common ingredients, and most of all you have Freedom of Choice. Freedom of Choice is what Subway hails and advertises, besides the usual "Eat Fresh" slogan, of course.
Who doesn't like to have all the power in what they eat?? You literally make your own menu and your own sandwich - it's essentially the Starbucks of sandwiches. People don't realize how important factors like these are in your nutrition. Think about it, everything else you eat, almost 100%, you have a say of slim to none in what you eat or what's put in it. Do stores even have real food anymore? Everything is "added" or "processed" or with "enriched ingredients". Take one one of the most common and used products of food - bread. You have multiple kinds: white, wheat, whole grain, split-top, Italian, French, etc. These aren't different "species" of bread, they're all bread, but processed in different ways! White bread is mainly starch product; wheat bread is mainly wheat product. If people din't manipulate the original product in the first place, there wouldn't be a need for enriched ingredients or to add/take away things from it. You're next question may be, "Why are products manipulated, Donald?". Simple... Money and Supply & Demand; in other terms - the Market Place. If it's cheaper to make one thing than the other, nutrition is no longer thought about from that point on, if companies can make more money, then so be it. Thank goodness for some regulations put on food, or we might just be eating dust at this point. That's why when you read an ingredient label, if you don't know what it is, then you shouldn't eat it. Never take a front label for face value, there's fine print to everything that has money involved. If it doesn't just say "Corn, Beans, Green Peppers" then red flags should go up/ Speaking of corn, do you know how many ways corn has been processed now?! A whole lot more than should be for one ingredient; from Starch, to meal, to Ethanol, to cleaning products. Corn is the cheapest and most abundant food that we have nowadays, and it's been mass produced, not to mention modified to satisfy the market and all the different uses.
I've mentioned how I had to "Blackboard" posts for some of my classes before. One of them was my Health Care Ethics class. During the section of Obesity, one of the topics was to think about who was to blame - the fast food industry or people themselves. The obvious answer here, is that everyone is to blame. The fast food industry has the choice of what they sell to people, what's in their food, how their food is made, and how much to serve at one time. They, in the end, control what people are consuming and how much. However, it's expensive to ensure high quality, healthy food; they wouldn't make fast money that way. Then, laws started coming out on having to provide healthier food to consumers. places like McDonald's and Wendy's had to substitute or add meals that were healthy for people. Why? because they didn't have those options already, and that's another thing that should send red flags up - if they had to add them in the first place, doesn't that say their not healthy in the first place?
It's not entirely the fast food industry's fault though. Everybody has a choice of what they eat and where they eat. America is based off personal freedom, people seem to forget that sometimes. When something tastes good or is cheap, they succumb to the whim of the industry; it grabs a hold of them and encloses them in a strangling grasp. You don't have to buy from McDonald's but you want to. People need to take advantage of the personal freedom of choice they have, and eat the things they should be. You and only you have the power to decide how healthy you're going to make yourself, and whose whim you succumb to.
In the end, everyone has a choice. Everyone had the power to choose what to eat, where to eat, and how much to eat. Everyone has the power to make their own food, and to make great food taste great too. A little effort truly goes a long way in the world of Nutrition. Give effort to your nutrition, and reap a world of benefits.
A Dreaming Dietitian
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