There’s a great post today over at Screaming Fat Girl. The author is adjusting to life back in the US after “two decades of living in an Asian culture.”
My thought after reading the post was that it reminded me of the apocryphal story of the frog and the boiling water. Unlike those of us who’ve spent the last twenty years here seemingly not noticing the changes in our food supply, SFG has been dropped into the boiling water:
My husband and I have not had the time or mobility to visit a lot of the typical shopping haunts of people who live on lower incomes, but the biggest shock for us came when we made a trip to Target. … I was stunned by how cheaply one could eat food that wasn’t really food and how much pricier it was to buy real food. It’s not that you can’t buy “real” food cheaply, but that it’s far less attractive, far more troublesome, and requires pretty sophisticated knowledge of cooking.
Before you say, well, she was shopping at Target, she points out that this is not a phenomenon reserved for price-conscious shoppers. It’s really very much reflected in how our busy lives are making it far more likely we’ll choose processed ‘heat and eat’ foods over real, whole foods (emphasis mine):
I’m shocked at how easy it is to eat poorly and how even people who are educated are eating badly and convincing themselves otherwise. Lara bars, sugar-packed Greek yogurt (and most of it is!), frozen and canned processed vegetarian meals, and protein powder-based drinks and smoothies don’t make your diet a good one. It’s still not “real” food for the most part.
I’m certainly not one to pine about the “lost art of cooking”, but it has really come home to me that people have lost the art of eating well. …
The sickness of America’s food culture is so deep and wide that I have to wonder if there will ever be a cure.
A great read (go read the whole thing!) to complement Evelyn’s post today.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
Awesome blog. Loved it. Thanks for recommending it. I spent some time reading the other blog entries. So interesting. Thanks again. Karen P
Thanks! Looking forward to reading your blog too … just added it to my reader.
Great posts. Thanks for the links!
Something interesting I’ve noticed about my food preferences since I changed my diet in order to replace fat with muscle: without even giving it much thought, I’ve gotten into the habit of eating quick meals that consist of, say, some nuts and an apple. These kind of meals are quicker and cheaper than frozen meals. They’re as quick and easy as eating a bag of potato chips, and an added benefit is your hands don’t get all greasy.
I’m off to read the linked posts. I feel her pain – I live in Europe and come home to Canada for a month each summer, and struggle every year to make compromises without making myself ill or alienating my family members. I spend far more time running around for real food here than at home, possibly because it’s not routine and probably because it’s so damned hard to find! (The yogurt thing is a case in point; why do the ingredient lists all start with skim milk, followed by at least two things to recreate the lost creamy mouthfeel of those 2% milkfat?)
What really annoys me every time I visit the US is the ubiquity of low fat products everywhere! You have to ask to have whole milk or whole eggs, whereas the heavily processed egg whites should be the stuff that raises eyebrows.