This food culture has GOT to go

I'm just adding my voice to this public forum. Stating something I wholeheartedly believe and practice:

FAST FOOD IS NOT FOOD. WE SHOULD NEVER, EVER EAT IT. EVER.

It is a disgusting symptom of everything wrong with our food system here in the US of A and how we view food and understand food and approach food.

Chemicals are not treats.

I like treats. I am a fan of treats. I love yummy food, a lot. A lot, a lot.

But this country has been spiraling out of control and we are sooo freaking separated from our food, we don't even recognize food anymore when we see it.

REAL FOOD IS: eggs, chicken thighs, spinach, coconuts, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, raisins, apples, venison, macadamia nuts, avocados, wheat, the list goes freaking ON and ON and ON. So.... why are we eating the following:

Ingredients in a typical fast food breakfast sandwich:

Whole eggs, skim milk (water, nonfat dry milk) vegetable oil (soy and/or corn oil), salt, xanthan gum, natural egg flavor, natural butter flavor. USDA inspected pork sausage patties, may have caramel color added. Pork, salt, spices, dextrose, sugar, monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed soy protein. Prepared in partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Bleached enriched flour (bleached flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine mono-nitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, hydrogenated vegetable oil (soybean, cottonseed) with citric acid added to protect flavor, baking powder (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate), cultured lowfat buttermilk (nonfat milk, whey protein concentrate, whey, cream, dairy cultures), sugar, salt, sodium caseinate, corn syrup solids, egg whites, natural flavor, carrageenan, dextrose, nonfat milk. Pasteurized American cheese (cultured milk, salt, enzymes, annatto color), water, cream, enzyme modified cheese, (cultured milk, water, cream, sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, salt, enzymes, sorbic acid [preservative], acetic acid, phosphoric acid, colored with paprika and annatto extracts), sodium citrate salt, sorbic acid (preservative), sodium phosphate, colored with paprika and annatto extracts or beta carotene and apo-carotenal, acetic acid, lecithin. 

Sooo, I think I will stick with MY delicious breakfast I consider a treat every morning. I will give you the ingredient list:

Whole eggs, egg whites, green peppers, white onions, crimini mushrooms, baby spinach, olive oil and ketchup (red ripe tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, onion powder, natural flavoring), coffee

I think we should enjoy the foods we put in our mouths. I just think they should be real foods. In fact, you can be slimmer eating MORE calories of real food than less calories of junk food. This is because your body can efficiently process real food and won't be inflamed and confused by chemicals and crap. When I eat super clean, I can eat 2000 calories a day and lose/maintain weight. When I start slipping down that slope of junky food... I can eat 1600 calories a day and BARELY maintain my weight. Food for thought?

We can have "treats", sure! Here's another comparison for you. My favorite chocolate bar has these ingredients:

Organic chocolate liquor, Organic raw cane sugar, organic hazelnuts, organic currants, organic cocoa butter, soy lecithin (emulsifier), organic vanilla extract organic whole milk powder

Soy lecithin is the only ingredient I don't know exactly what it is. It's in everything. I did a little googling, it's the oily substance in soybeans. Okay. I am willing to eat that.

Here's the ingredients for a popular candy bar:

Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, skim milk, lactose, milk fat, soy lecithin, artificial flavor), peanuts, corn syrup, sugar, milkfat, skim milk, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, lactose, salt, egg whites, chocolate, artificial flavor

Let's stop eating PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED OILS!!! Seriously. There is no reason for it. 

AND why does the second candy bar have corn syrup instead of normal sugar? Is it because of the government subsidized fucking corn farms that are taking over, making it hard to grow anything except corn in this country? Yeah, probably. 

Gross.

Anyway.

My second point I want to make: 

I've seen comments on blogs or blog posts time after time that talk about certain weights being too low or impossible to maintain. Let's just be clear... the weights we maintain are the weights we CHOOSE by our behaviors! *WE* decide what we are willing to do to be at a certain weight.

135 pounds on an average heighted woman (the average female height in the USA is 5'4) is not too skinny. It is not un-maintainable. This is a fallacy propagated by people who don't like the reality of being that weight (eating healthy, eating clean, being active). You would have to be almost six feet tall for 135 pounds to be underweight by medical standards. At the average height, you'd have to be at around 105 pounds to start being considered underweight.

(I will make a disclaimer and say people like Norma who are at a higher weight than they would like because they are badass bitches in the gym with killer muscular bodies -- the above generalizations do not apply :D)\

Edited to add: I think there are a WIDE variety of weights that people of all heights look good at and are healthy at.... I just don't like the bullshitting that what are actually normal weights are "too skinny" or "emaciated" to justify staying at a higher weight. The term emaciated bothers me, too, because there really ARE emaciated people in this world... and no one in this weight loss world I've entered comes close. /end edit

I just want people to start taking some ownership.

These are OUR choices, OUR bodies, OUR lives.

Let's stop fooling ourselves.

We know what real food is. But in this world, most people are too used to being force fed crap by big corporations and started to think, somewhere along the line, that artificial sweeteners and weird oily chemical substances were food. Just because they taste good (because they are engineered to!) doesn't mean they belong in our bodies.

Take care out there, folks!!