Does anybody else hate counting calories?

People have always had to worry about food, but for most of history it has been from the opposite view point. I am glad that I worry about getting too much rather than whether or not the early frost or lack of game is going to starve my family to death next winter.

While I agree on some level (I would hate to have to starve my family over the winter, too), the fact that we get processed food doesn't entirely eliminate the possibility of that happening.

We are fortunate to have the ability to grow food. I live on a reasonably seasonal diet - my only "treats" really are things like chips & pop which if they didn't exist would be all the better for me, but I digress...

There are lots and lots of things to eat that grow wild, even in the winter. But mostly in the winters before industrialization, people ate storage foods like potatoes, beans, carrots, grains, etc..

Some greens, like kale, grow well into winter and benefit from a few frosts becoming sweeter as a result.

I think the biggest problem we are facing today regarding food is the actual lack of real food and varieties of food. Did you realize that the half-dozen varieties of apples in supermarkets represent far less than 10% of the apples that exist? I'm just guessing at 10%.. it could be way, way less than that, but the point is that there are hundreds of varieties, but most people don't know about them because they're not on the shelf.

Same with tomatoes, squash, peppers, greens (so many greens)... we're developing a corporate monoculture of food, that when it fails, many will starve because the base of their diets are corn, soy and corn-and-soy-fed meats. This is how the potato famine happened, too, because the Irish depended on one type of potato. When it went into a natural blight (as all crops do from time to time), they starved. Peru, on the other hand, had that same blight come through, but were literally unscathed because they had many varieties of potato available. One crop went bad, the rest were fine.

We're breeding on dangerous ground. And now we want to genetically alter what's left so these foods can withstand greater and greater applications of herbicides and pesticides. And pretend for a moment that those applications are safe for the food, but what about neighboring communities, soil quality and water runoff?

And this doesn't even TOUCH the idea about transporting out-of-season produce from distant places in our winters / exporting them in our summers. The oil cost alone is astounding.

So on one hand I feel grateful and on the other I feel sad. The best thing we can do for ourselves is to grow our own, or support a CSA or Farmer's Market, using the grocery as our last resort. And even then, be choosy.

I'm not one to suggest ridding of the industrial food market all together; what I would suggest is that we try to soften its footprint. We're so lucky on so many levels and we have so much to offer, why put it all in one basket?

http://fora.tv/2008/06/18/Paul_Roberts_The_End_of_Food

Wow, thank you so much!

I'm kind of late on this topic, but I love what you all have been saying. Counting calories is so much more a necessity because our own greed. We wouldn't have to be obsessed about fat types (trans fats!), carbs, sodium, or weird compounds being added if we hadn't allowed this to occur. There seems to be a trend that we can beat nature and I'm skeptical of that. Take this miracle pill to fix this disease! Where if you just ate real foods you wouldn't have that disease. The desire for cash and expediency has overtaken our lives. Luckily, there are many of us out here who do want change and those who do still know how to do things the real way (organic farmers) that we can partner with. We've gotten so far removed from nature - people don't even want to touch dirt! Gotta be 99.99% germ free! So how are they going to want to eat the real foods that might have a bug hole in the leaf?

Like someone said with the potato blight, I've heard, too, that we're on the path to doom. There are so many things out there that we could be eating that we aren't. Russett potatoes and yellow corn! And I live in the south, so don't forget the macaroni and cheese plants - since apparently they are a vegetable here...

We can't trust our government to tell us what is honestly decent for us - the food pyramid is built upon interest groups and lobbying. Luckily places like Harvard's SPH Nutrition Source are around and look at data to give us information.

And the recipes! Oy! Apparently no one knows how to cook anymore. Dump a can of this in a can of this with a box of that and that's "dinner." It's gross. I recently told my nutrition coach that I need help with cooking because I can't keep spending 2hours cooking, that I need to learn to cook healthy in 20minutes. Sadly, I've realized that if I am honestly starting out with the raw material, I have to spend 2hours. (Yes I can prep earlier by chopping veggies) But real food takes time to cook.

Alright. I'll stop and I apologize if this was a bit disjointed. I could rant for a while on a bunch of things related!

But on topic, counting calories sucks because my food is made with trickery!