"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are." This quote opens every Iron Chef, but I'm not sure where it comes from. I think it's a fitting way to tell about the culture of a people. I really started thinking about this after seeing a report about cereal companies no longer being able to use licenced characters like Shrek to market to children. I think this is great, especially since cereal is a part of the obesity problem in America. I think puppy chow has more nutritional content than most cereals.
We are an institutionalized and industrialized nation, which is why it's so easy to have a bowl of cereal in the morning (serving size: 1/2 cup) instead of an actual breakfast. Cereal is supposed to be part of a balanced breakfast, which should also include an egg (or other protein), some sort of fruit, and the milk poured into the cereal. In MANY it's cost prohibitive, but the rest of us have no excuse. A 20 oz. box of Cheerios costs $5.29. A dozen eggs costs $0.94. Bananas cost about $0.69 per pound. People who can afford it and choose not to do so are simply lazy.
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Who will rage against the dying of the light? People should not be afraid of their government. A government should be afriad of its people.
Who will rage against the dying of the light? People should not be afraid of their government. A government should be afriad of its people.
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21 comments:
This is one of the first people I learned about in culinary school. He is credited with the quote of course, but more importantly for raising conciousness about gastornomy as an art and a crucial part of life. Un-like Americans the French posses self-respect and consider what they put in thier mouths to be important. We do not have that problem here in the states since you can get an average American to eat anything if it comes layered in nacho cheese and MSG.
Brillat- Savarin's life and contirbutions are interesting although it matters notto barbarians like logician who will simply reject information if the source is French. What a peasant. As for the rest of you, please enjoy.
"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."
Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme
Biography
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (April 1, 1755, Belley, France - February 2, 1826, Paris), a French lawyer and politician, was quite possibly the most famous French epicure and gastronome of all. He was born in the town of Belley, Ain, where the Rhine then separated France from Savoy, to a family of lawyers in whom eloquence flowed. He studied law, chemistry and medicine in Dijon in his early years and thereafter practiced law in his hometown. In 1789, at the opening of the French Revolution, he was sent as a deputy to the Estates-General that soon became the National Constituent Assembly, where he acquired some limited fame, particularly for a public speech in defense of capital punishment. His second surname was adopted by him upon the death of an aunt named Savarin who left him her entire fortune conditioned upon his adoption of her name.
But.... cereal is good.
It is more expensive to eat well but it is worth it if you care about your health. I wouldn't buy eggs unless I knew that they were from an Amish type farm or were organic. It costs about $3.00 instead of $1.00 however it is worth it. My kids, when they were younger, complained endlessly that I wouldn't buy junk food, including cereal. The cereal they wanted was just sugar coated junk I'd tell them and would offer to make them oatmeal and eggs. (Imagine them rolling their eyes up into their heads and groaning at this point).
You are programed...free your mind. Who told you you have to eat cereal, bacon, & eggs for breakfast? (I think most "breakfast foods" suck)
You can eat anything you want for breakfast.
I like a can of soup for breakfast.
Don't let other's tell you what to think or who to love or how to feel or....what to eat & when to eat it.
Jesus UWL, your blog is attracting some serious halfwits, where do you get them all?
Can you really know what you are consuming unless you grow or raise it yourself?
I've always been amused by cereal commercials; "part of a balanced breakfast", indeed. Like that bottle of Slim-fast is "part" of a genuine weight-loss program (the real part being excercise). As I understand it, the best thing for breakfast is protien, in whatever phone you get it.
I dunno where eggs are $.94 a dozen, but in Chicago they're near $3.
I'm all for people making healthier choices for themselves. Here in Chicago we have a huge problem with the availability of healthy food in poorer neighborhoods. See, the grocery companies won't put stores in poor neighborhoods. The costs are too high (potential for crime) and the returns too low (people have nothing to spend). So in many areas, people are forced to take buses and trains, sometimes up to an hour each way to get to a grocery store. In many of these areas there's plenty of cheap fast food. When you've got little money, and very little free time between your kids and your jobs, it's difficult to have the freedome and ability to make the best choices.
Scott,
But it's not good FOR you.
Larry: you telling me that everything to consume, whether that be eat or wear, you make yourself?
Daniel,
Probably not, but there is a local food movement in the US. Knowing the people who make your food is a good idea because then you know what's going into it. Many people buy organic. those who can should buy local. And your meat should NEER have been injected with anything. Eat grass fed beef. better yet, don't eat beef.
Heh. I'm one of the guilty ones. I wake up at 8, eat cereal, milk, juice, and coffee, but the cereal I eat is absolute garbage.
The problem is not garbage breakfast though, it's skipping breakfast and eating garbage dinners. Whatever you eat for breakfast should be gone by the time you eat dinner. Skipping breakfast only manages to slow one's metabolism, so it's actually much worse than eating a garbage breakfast.
I agree with Laura. When you have no money, the problem is usually time.
It takes 1 minute to fry an egg, and isn't your health worth getting up 15 minutes earlier?
Blanket statements, such as 'people are lazy,' while easy, are not often the whole truth. Often times, what is missing is not ambition, but information.
A better job of educating people about nutrition is needed.
Thanks for the warm wishes!
yeharr
Halfwits make the world go around.
Isn't that right Danny?
"It's hard to be humble when your perfect".
United: It's not the frying the egg part, it's the getting to the store and being able to afford a dozen eggs.
My point is that you can't take evaluate people in different walks of life with the same exact ruler unless you take into account privileges. I have a grocery store within walking distance, and I can afford healthy foods. The fact that I choose not to buy them sometimes makes me a target for your criticism - absolutely. But I would never presume to take that criticism out on an elderly person or a poor person who doesn't have the same financial and geographic access to those foods and then blame them for choosing to feed their kids cereal in the morning. When your "choices" in a poor neighborhood for food are: a convenience store (reaaaaaly expensive), McDonald's, and a decent grocery store 3 miles away) that's really not much of a "choice" is all I'm saying.
If you want to evaluate people's "free choices" you must first make all circumstances equal.
Laura,
It doesn't have to be eggs, but I don't know where you're buying eggs that cost $3. That's a travesty. We are one of the few countries that have hard and fast rules about breakfast foods. Affording food is a lot easier when you know about portion control, but you're right, it is difficult in cities to find produce. I ammended this post to reflect that.
Well, the cheap eggs here are about $1.75/dozen, but those come from factory farms that mistreat the animals and pump them full of hormones. Eggs that come hormone/cage free from local small farms are about $3, and that's just at the normal grocery store.
High starch foods keep you full longer too - so for kids who don't have lunch money together and whose communities have cut back on school lunch programs, you gotta keep them fed through the day. A family size box of Mac N Cheese goes a lot further than a fresh salad.
What we really need are social support programs that make healthy food available.
I actually think it's the agribusiness and food conglomerates faults more than individuals. Get the crappy food out of the schools - where kids spend the bulk of their waking hours - and you'll see childhood obesity drop significantly.
Especially with children, the costs of eating "healthy" are really prohibitive for many many people.
Multi-vitamins. Sure, it sounds stupid to be a "Flintstones Kid" (or adult), but it beats hell out of not getting the proper nutrients. You know, ultimately, human beings are goats. We'll eat damn near anything and survive, though not always optimally.
Here's a fascinating article on the connection between height and nutrition.
Eat in moderation. Excercise. Take your vitamins. Try to eat a vegatable and a fruit everyday (one of each, not a serving). Excercise. Drink water, not Cola. Did I mention excercise?
Grow your own garden, not because you're worried about what chemicals go into the food you eat, but so that you can understand what work goes into it (and how ugly much of the chemical-free food is - imagine how much food never makes it onto the produce aisle because it's not pretty).
And realize that you live in a country so dependant on its transportation system that we are just a few days from mass starvation should that system suddenly come to a grinding halt.
***
I am suddenly reminded of the furor over food irradiation. People were starving, and there was arguement (by people who were not starving) about the dangers of cancer years later. When you are hungry, you will eat anything, and the human body actually seems to be able to take that.
Laura,
If my kids are hungry, I don't really care how the farm treats the chicken, I just want my kids to have a decent breakfast. An egg, half a banana, a 1/2 cup of cereal and a 1/2 cup of milk isn't cost prohibitive.
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