Food Phobia

Twice, this week, I've had full blown anxiety attacks in the grocery store.

Heavy breathing, lightheadedness, nausea.  I'm talking, the real deal.

I've been reading and scrutinizing food labels for a little over three years now, and when you are forced to look, every single day, at what is in every single food you offer to your family, you can't help but acknowledge and face the fact that there is very little food in most of our food.

Let's be honest.  We're feeding our pets better than we feed ourselves!

Source: Zamzows.com

I worked a short time at a pet food store, and my husband also currently works in the pet business, and one of the first things you learn, in the pet business, is how to read a food label to know the difference between a premium food (a balanced diet for your animal) and a grocery store food (garbage).

(Bear with me, I know this seems like a tangent, but I promise, there's a point to all this)

First, a premium food has no corn or grains listed in the ingredients, and mid grade food, may have some corn in it, but not in the first five ingredients, and a grocery store brand likely has corn in all of the first three ingredient.

The next factor you look at, how many cancer causing chemicals are listed?

It's not that complicated is it?  Yet, it took me a good ten years, until I had my children, to read my own families food labels that way, and only because I had to.  I really thought just buying the "whole grain" and "low fat" was good enough.

I challenge you, next time you're in the grocery store, pick up any ten packaged foods and count how many of them don't fall into that garbage food category.  Go ahead and pick up "heath foods" and see if they even make the cut.  I'd really love to hear your replies too!

I have no choice in how I feed my children (I guess that's the perk of living with food allergies).  But then...in case shopping for food free of corn, legumes, dairy, tree nut, and egg for my toddlers, wasn't difficult, stressful and expensive enough already, I stumbled upon this TED video a few weeks ago by Robyn O'Brien, which has me rethinking the way our whole family eats.





And this is why I have panic attacks in the grocery store.  And why I am on day four of no soda, and if you know me, you know that is a huge deal!

I'm not one to buy into propaganda or the latest trendy diet, but combining what I've learned about food in the last three years, with these GMO statistics, I've officially developed a phobia of food.

Here's where my brain goes:  Corn is in everything.  EVERYGODDAMNTHING.  Even if a product doesn't contain "corn" in the ingredients, it almost certainly contains a derivative of corn (see, Also Known As), like vanilla extract, yeast, baking powder.  And 90% of corn in GMO.  Even if you buy "whole foods" like fruits and veggies....which are sprayed, almost always with a corn based pesticide (yes, even organic, either by their "organic spray" or by the blow over from the neighboring standard crop).

So, organic chicken and dairy the, you say!  But what was the animal fed?  Corn probably...   And if you're willing to go through the trouble to find grass fed, and locally grown (like, as in, your own) produce, you're probably going to have to travel near and far for it, and pay quite a bit more, and commit two to three times the time the time for prep and cooking.  And that's just the corn!

And....here it comes.  Another panic attack.  Like Robyn said, you just can't unlearn this stuff...