*All pictures are my own, taken during my “dates” with real food*

A friend once told me I had a healthy relationship with food.  I had never thought of that concept.  I love food.  I eat my fair share of food.  I don’t stalk food or drive by its house late at night, checking if food is seeing someone else behind my back.  I don’t get into wicked fights with food after a few beers and a movie.

My entire push for real food is NOT to eat 100%, all the time, no questions asked…real food.  It’s unrealistic.  I don’t feel guilty when I eat a donut because I don’t eat dozens of donuts per year.  I don’t bring much fake food into my house, but I’ve certainly been known to enjoy a few McDonald’s fries now and then.  A few…thousand of them.  Basically, fake food and I like to keep it casual, no real commitment.

I spent the day thinking about this concept because Greg mentioned to me last night that he wasn’t sure America was capable of having a healthy relationship with food and we should perhaps abstain from having any emotions about food whatsoever.  My soul fell out.  No emotions about food?  EVER?!  What about when the cream to salt to pepper to tomato ratio in the Lobster Bisque is perfect?  Or when the hot pretzel with savory butter hits my tongue?  I’m not sure I could go on if I faced a world without the enjoyment of food.

I think I have an idea as to where we went wrong as a country:

A) America tried to diet, which inherently meant deprivation, which meant guilt, which meant a lot of icky emotions surrounding food.  If we couldn’t stop eating too much, we should try not eating at all, which put us in a true biological conundrum…what with “death” being the outcome of starvation and all.  We are built to have feelings about food in order to stay alive.  Your sense of smell is attached to your memory which is attached to your appetite, which is why Yankee Candles makes about $400 million dollars a year selling us wax that smells like pie.  Telling your brain to not care about food is like telling yourself to skip Christmas.

B) “Diet food”, as it was proposed, SUCKED.  There wasn’t an emphasis on real food or flavor, but rather, on cutting out every ounce of fat and salt and carbs (or whatever fad we’re cutting out at the moment…I believe we have left “eat nothing but soy” and are now in the “avoid all gluten” fad).  A better idea might have be a healthier balance of these elements, but that’s just my crazy “food is not evil” argument, and it simply doesn’t sell newspapers.  And an announcement to our Pop Culture Diet Gurus: squeezing lemon on every single thing you eat IS NOT FLAVOR.  It’s LEMON.  BUTTER WON’T MAKE YOU FAT….LOTS AND LOTS OF BUTTER WILL.  Just as a side note: “diet” food that contains fake sugar is the epitome of fake food, but I can’t possibly address that issue here….simply not enough time in the day.

C) When sugar was produced cheaply (high fructose corn syrup…or HFCS as we now call it), rather than say, “Hey!  Half as expensive, we’ll use half as much!”, the food manufacturers quickly realized they’d sell more food if they used TWICE as much.  So food that NEVER contained sugar 40 years ago, now contains loads of sugar. Boatloads in fact. Sugar, while awesome, and while being a whole food, is about as safe to your system as alcohol.  It’s metabolized in much the same way.  Americans are literally drunk on sugar.  Your brain responds to sugar in a similar manner as it responds to alcohol, which is to say, “That’s great!  I feel great!  I’d like some more of that!”, and the more you eat, the more you become accustomed to the taste of it.  There is a reason at the cellular level you cannot become addicted to carrots.  Your brain does not light up with fireworks when you eat chicken.  BUT, when you eat chicken, drowning in sugary sweet sauce, while inhaling a beer….oh yeah baby, your brain is having a party (or a food orgasm, if you will, which, by looking at the size of Americans, I’d say is happening more often than actual orgasms).

D) Over time, this sugar-laden way of life has hindered our ability to taste depth of flavor or enjoy “real food” as I call it.  You know how too much salt can overtake a dish and simply drown out all other flavors?  Sugar has this same capability.  Our taste buds have become dulled and accustomed to the familiar flavor of sugar, while our brains have become addicted to the rush.

Hi, my name is Lori, and I’m a recovering sugar addict.  Here’s the good news: abstinence is not required for recovery.  I’ve been eating real food with “some” sugar for about a year now, and I feel amazing.  The more real food I eat, the less sugar I crave.  Your body will want what it gets, and after a while, your cravings find a bell curve.  Food with less sugar will start to sound good to you, and they will make you feel good.  I started by asking McDonald’s to mix the sweet tea with the unsweet tea, and over time, I was able to cut it out.  They accidentally gave me a sweet tea yesterday, which a year ago was my favorite treat, and I couldn’t even swallow it.  I dumped it out when I got home and poured myself an unsweetened tea.  I put about a tsp of sugar in mine, and I’m good.  If you like math, there are 36 grams of sugar in a large McDonald’s Sweet Tea, which equates to 9 teaspoons of sugar.  Measure that out and eat it straight.  Yuck, right? I honestly never thought Sweet Tea and I would ever break up, but looking back at it, I can see now how dysfunctional our relationship really was.

I believe it is possible to have a healthy relationship with food, but only real food.  Fake food?  We tried dating.  It didn’t go well.  After a while, I felt lazy and bored, and I could only fit into my fat pants.  We’re on friendly terms.  I occasionally run into a Zinger at Wal-Mart and we say hello.  In fact, if I ever want to see fake food, I find a trip to Wal-Mart is a great place to go.  But if I really want to get turned on, I go to Whole Foods.  Aisles and aisles of dye free, HFCS free, nitrate free food.  Yummy, sexy real food.  So much flavor, so much life. I never have to complain about real food when I’m having coffee with my girlfriends.  I don’t waste away my free time, wondering if we should break up.  There is so little drama between us, and yet, so much enjoyment.

So thank you Lydia.  Thank you for sending me on this thought journey.  And thank you for loving my food, just as it is.  You are a joy to me.