Archive for March 17th, 2010
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Day 18: Sing it, Sistah!
From the Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama is urging the nation’s largest food companies to speed up efforts to make healthier foods and reduce marketing of unhealthy foods to children.
Mrs. Obama asked the companies, gathered at a meeting of the Grocery Manufacturers Association on Tuesday, to “step it up” and put less fat, salt and sugar in foods.
“We need you not to just tweak around the edges but entirely rethink the products you are offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children,” she said.
The first lady has talked to schools and nutrition groups across the country in her effort to reduce childhood obesity. This is the first time she has confronted the food companies that make the snacks and junk food that stuff grocery aisles and school vending machines.
Read more here at the Huffington Post:
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Day 18: Wicked Wednesday!
But I’m surprised at the moments that attack out of the blue and make me want some sweet sustenance.
Just before noon today, on an already appointment-packed day, I was just getting off the bus on a street called the Hotel de Postes in Nice. I stepped down on the curb and it hit me – I was just a block away from one of my favored chocolatiers. It’s a little place run by a lovely little, white-haired French woman who always smiles at me so kindly when I walk in.
“Alors?” she’ll ask, knowing full well I order the same thing each time – ten of the thin, exquisite milk chocolate galets and ten of the caramel. She moves slowly, there’s no rush in a little store selling chocolate in the south of France.
She carefully places the chocolates in a lovely little bag and ties it with a gold ribbon. She assumes that, like the French, I am buying the candy in order to savor it later, during a formal time period like after dinner. No, I gobble it up as I leave the store, like a normal American. But I never tell her not to wrap the whole thing up because it’s part of pleasure. Even the most obscurely-located chocolate shop in France will often have the most beautiful and delicate candies, presented, decorated and later wrapped as if they were to be a gift to Marie-Antoinette herself.
That’s why it’s France.
Anyway, all this went through my head as I got off the bus. How much I’d like to drop in for a sweet treat and to see the kindly old woman. But no, I’m not eating sweets. I turned away from the direction of the shop toward home.
But before going home, I decided to satisfy another craving that I rarely get: I wanted a hamburger. I like hamburgers well enough but I don’t eat them much. They’re not a staple in France. I’m also very aware of how bad red meat is for you – although I am not at the point of becoming a vegetarian – yet.
If you really look into how bad red meat is for you – especially antibiotic and hormone-riddled American red meat – you’d never touch it again. But investigating meat is a bit like looking deeply at the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. It all becomes so overwhelmingly bad – and it all stems from people in charge lying to us and encouraging us to turn a blind eye – that you almost don’t want to deal at all. Taking right action just seems almost impossible.
Turning a blind eye, going with the flow, is so much easier, isn’t it?
I’ve read books like John Robbins’ Diet for a New America and I’m dying to read Jonathan Foer’s Eating Animals.
I know what eating meat means. And it’s not pretty. And I usually happily hew to a very healthy diet. But today I went to McDonald’s anyway. I ordered a Big Mac, fries and Diet Coke. I used to think a little McDonald’s was fine. Now I don’t really think so. Then again, my goal is not to be a food militant, save the world or be perfect.
However, I also know the worst thing about eating McDonald’s is how all that overly salted, sugar-riddled food triggers cravings for candy.
It’s only 3 p.m. Pray for me!
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Recent Posts
- Day 365: Tell the Women of Congo You Love Them!
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- Day 363: Twilight of the Dictators, Twilight of No Candy
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