Trying to understand real food

There has been a certain post floating around in my head for months now. I've hesitated writing it because I was afraid it would open up a can of worms.
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This post is a plea for information and also a rant, so please bear with me.

Real Food... Huh?

The first time I ever heard of organic food was when I watched Jon and Kate + 8, you know, before she went completely and totally crazy.

I never really thought anything of organic food. Little by little I would see something advertised as organic. Maybe it had been there all along, or maybe I just now noticed it because I watched Jon and Kate.

This was all a couple of years ago. I noticed one of my facebook friends lamenting that they couldn't find any food that did not high fructose corn syrup. Then I kept hearing about the documentary Food Inc. I was never a big fan of documentaries such as these because I always felt it over-sensationalized everything. So I never watched it.

Pretty soon this organic and real food stuff was everywhere I looked. On the news, in social media, advertisements... you name it.

This brings me to my first question.

Real Food... Why Now?

With this trend of throwing out processed foods and eating real food seeming to grow more and more I am starting to wonder.. is this just a phase?

Has the real food craze always been around and I've just been living under a rock eating my Doritos and Spaghettios? 

I have read so many articles and blog posts about parents not allowing their kids to eat processed foods... at all. No Oreos, no candy, no nothin'- not ever. They claim that when they do allow their child to eat this stuff it's like Dr. Jekkyl and Mr. Hyde; their kid is no longer recognizable in their demeanor.

I think back on my childhood eating habits. I know I ate Oreos, chips, Hamburger Helper, Fruit Loops and Kraft Mac and Cheese. But my mother did not fed me this food all the time. I loved fruit and cheese. My mom was always encouraging me to try new foods. She never let me drink pop. I never really liked to drink milk until my mom used a little mommy trickery and put milk in a wine glass for me to drink from. Worked like a charm. 

Moderation is a good thing, right? So my honest question is why are we moving away from moderation of real food and some processed food and right into no processed foods at all? 

Thinking on that question just opens up even more...

Why now is a bag of popcorn or Oreos considered cancer-causing?

Is the obesity epidemic more because of food choices or parenting choices?

What is different about the eating habits of my generation (I am 28 years old) when we were kids compared to the eating habits of children nowadays? Why wasn't there an obesity crisis when I was younger?

Why do we hear more about food allergies and gluten intolerance? Was I just sheltered in my tiny rural town? I had never heard of these problems until just a few years ago. Have food allergies and gluten intolerance become an increasing problem? If so, why?

The Un-Appeal of Real Food

  

I have all these questions. I have a few friends who are very into the real food lifestyle, but I wanted to get a wide array of information. That was a big mistake. The interwebz are filled with "experts" and I encountered a lot of vitriol toward the kind of food I was regularly eating. I was giving myself a death sentence by eating Spaghettios. I was a little turned off by some real food advocates. This is going to be blunt and vulgar, but a lot of the people who advocated the real food lifestyle were self-righteous assholes. The ranting and raving annoyed me, so I just removed myself from the subject. 

Annoyance turned into pissed-offness when I kept seeing graphics and charts and snarky memes aimed at parents who fed their kids anything that wasn't real food. I couldn't escape these sort of attitudes. Basically, according to these people I was poisoning my children. Charts and "research" were showing how quickly my child would die of cancer and how unintelligent they would be in the future. While some bloggers were trying to educate the masses and rally against big evil food corporations they were making me feel like a horrible mother. Here I was feeding my son, who I love so deeply and fiercely, chicken nuggets FROM A BAG. I was giving him TARGET BRAND FRUIT SNACKS! But I had already set him up for disaster when I gave him Gerber rice cereal when he was 4 months old. God forbid if I had used formula instead of breastfeeding him! He'd be a zombie! I do try to give him healthy options. We rarely eat fast food. Still, my budget and lack of cooking skills forces me to dig into the processed food quite often.

I wish that some of these advocates would stress how awesome real food is for your body and how it makes one feel better instead of using it as ammo for tearing each other down. I wish advocates would use their passion to change things for the better. Save your fighting words for those big corporations and regulations that make it nearly impossible for families like mine to afford to eat real food.

Getting Over It and Moving On

It took me awhile to realize that real food is just another cog in the mega machine in the mommy war. My sensitive nature makes it hard to buid a thick skin and just ignore the bitterness and criticism. I've got to put on my big-girl panties and just realize that people advocate in their own way.

Thankfully my real-life real-food friends are very kind. They are enthusiastic, but in a "Wow, this granola tastes yummy and I made it myself!" way instead of the "Wow, this granola tastes yummy and won't give my children and me brain tumors!" way. Many of my friends admit to eating McDonalds or indulging in a Mountain Dew on occasion. Only a time or two have my feelings been hurt, but that's just because I am very sensitive when it comes to my mothering skills. Motherhood is one of the hardest things in the world. I'm constantly worried that I'm going to screw up my kids.

I am about to start my journey with Weight Watchers again. Lately I have been feeling so lethargic and crappy. I know WW will force me to think about my food choices again. I lost 30 lbs the last time I was on the program and I felt so good... physically, mentally and spiritually. I guess exercising and eating fruits and veggies will do that to you. So now I am ready to learn about real food. I am ready to serve healthy options to my family. I want to know the answers to the questions I asked but really don't know where to begin. I want to keep it simple. I don't want to dive too deep into politics (because it seem that's where everything comes down to nowadays.)Who is Monsanto and why does everybody hate them?

So here I go, gathering info for my real food journey...

Wait, you can eat second breakfast when eating real food, right???