Food seems to be in the news at the moment. Twice last week, I heard farmers on the radio talking about the problems they have competing with imported food, the lack of government support over the years and the selling of agricultural lands to businessmen for construction purposes. Every time we drive to the airport we notice the housing communities that occupy what seems to be prime agricultural land, sometimes side by side with small "gardens" of vegetable crops.
I well remember laughing about a statement by a former PM, fortunately gone now, who claimed he was bringing Cuban experts to teach Trinidadians how to farm. Cuba, with a land mass 20 times ours, which has never been able to feed its people! What expectations! Cubans can certainly teach us about social justice, medicine and how to survive under a brutal Communist regimen, but food? Never happen.
I remember going to Tobago and seeing a set of wretched little Monopoly houses being built along Milford road and being told with sadness, that they were for the new generation of government public workers who were moving from the countryside in droves. The PNM destroyed agriculture in Tobago was a common refrain and just this week an indignant Tobagonian called in on 95.5 saying, "Allyuh, the whole of Tobago is ah garden but they won't plant!" I even remember hearing older members of my family saying that Tobago used to feed Trinidad with vegetables.
So it was pleasant to see a full page ad in Saturday's T&T Guardian, "Come home to more nutrition" next to the usual stupidness about "hair loss "and elixir of this and that supplement, "clinically proven" on pregnant women and children and the elderly and chemo and radiation therapy, all of which is nonsense. Firstly because it is poor English and second because, like most ads for health products, it makes no sense. What is being "clinically proven?" Pregnant women?
It is difficult to get people to understand that most of the food they eat is processed, junk food containing toxins. The ad for local food ("Buy Local?") also correctly identifies that local vegetables "are fresher and retain more of their nutrients" than imported vegetables simply because foreign vegetables take a long time between harvesting and getting to us.
Their carbon footprint, the amount of green house gas emissions caused by an organisation, event, product or person, is also much less. (Forget for a moment that in 2013, UTT demonstrated that, after Qatar, T&T has the second highest per capital annual carbon footprint in the world). We can make the world a better place for our grandchildren, if we eat local. Help other Trinidadians, help ourselves and help future generations.
Processed foods are foods that have had the living daylights beaten out of them by factories so that most of their nutritional value is lacking. Processed foods are not found in nature. Foods that are plucked from a tree or pulled from the earth or fished from the sea and eaten within days are usually not processed. Processing foods is the reason for all the obesity and diabetes and heart disease and certain types of cancers around now. It may be related to the rise in Alzheimer's disease.
Beating the nutrition out of food typically involves things like liquefying, boiling, frying, grilling, pickling, canning, jarring freezing or drying etc. In addition various additives or chemicals are inserted to make them taste better or last longer or look prettier. One practical definition of processed food simply involves looking at the ingredients added, the more ingredients added (sometimes proudly as in the case of infant formula), the more processed the food is.
Everything that you eat that is bottled, bagged, boxed, canned or packaged in any way is processed. It's surprising how few people know that most of the food they eat is processed, so well have we been brainwashed to believe that processed food really is not too unhealthy. Don't be fooled by the brightly coloured pictures of beaming healthy looking people and friendly farm animals and terms like "100 per cent natural." Once a food has gone through a factory, it's not natural.
So all so-called "infant foods" (the ones in those cute little bottles in the supermarket with pictures of smiling babies?) are processed. Yes, apple sauce is processed. So is that beloved staple of western mothers, "rice cereal" which has as much to do with rice as rain water has to do with WASA water. Do not give it to your baby. Infant formula is processed. Soy milk formula is processed. Goat milk formula, recently "discovered" by modern mothers, is processed. So are rice milk and almond milk.
The list is endless. Orange juice, apple juice, boxed or canned juice, packaged breakfast cereal, canned beans, peanut butter, flour (bread, roti, doubles), macaroni, cheese, ice cream, chocolate bars, any snack bar, burger patties, popcorn and of course the most processed foods of all, junk food: white rice, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, french fries, ketchup, salad dressings, gummy vitamins, canned fruit, Twinkies and such like monstrosities, cookies, calorie-free whipped toppings, sweet drinks and so on, all are processed.
For too long we have allowed the food industry and their advertising cronies to decide what we eat. It is time to take food choice back. If only for yourself, and for your children, buy as little processed food as you can.Go local.