Why do we eat the food we eat?

It is in the news again – we are eating ourselves to death – not just because of the volumes of food we consume, but because the food we eat essentially lacks any nutritional value.

According to an article on BBC News malnutrition is sweeping the world, fueled by obesity as well as starvation. The 2016 Global Nutrition Report  highlighted the “staggering global challenge” posed by rising obesity. Hundreds of millions of people are malnourished because they are overweight, as well as having too much sugar, salt or cholesterol in their blood, the report said.

It is a very sad day indeed when the number of children under five who are overweight is fast approaching the number who are underweight.

With all of the information at out fingertips and with experts constantly telling us that we are killing ourselves and our children by making the lifestyle choices we do, we are faced with this question:

Why do we eat the food we eat?

Why do we buy and eat things that are sold as food when there’s no real food in it. It’s just highly processed fat, salt and sugar?

Surely by now, we know we shouldn’t. We have all the best intentions but just seem to run out of steam when the kids demand processed convenience food with very little (maybe even no) nutritional value. Whether it is because we do not want to start a fight or we prefer convenience and speed over “time consuming actual real life cooking”– the point remains we are the ones who are in control of what we put into our mouths and we have a responsibility to guide our kids in what they eat. (At this point we would like to hail Jamie Oliver  – who has already shown us that it is so very do-able and not a massive drain on family resources to cook real food from scratch.)

Like me, I am sure you will have overheard conversations similar to this one I could not help but hear between parents at the school gate:

Person A:

“I will choose what I want to eat and how much of it I want to eat and no one – I mean NO ONE – will tell me what to do. My food tastes sooo much better than your rabbit food.”

Person B:

“Your food is killing you and your children.”

Person A:

“That is not the point. No one – I mean NO ONE- will tell me what to do.”

At first I actually smiled a bit, but then the realisation struck that so many people out there just do not get it – and I actually wanted to cry.

If we do not stop this epidemic, what are the chances of our children, and their children turning it all around and stopping the stupidity that is processed food addiction?