If there is one thing I am passionate about in this world, it's food. And by food, I don't mean McDonald's or Betty Crocker or Tombstone Pizza. I mean REAL food. Food that doesn't come with a laundry list of ingredients, or if it does, I have had all of them in my own pantry at some point in my life.
I began cooking while in the midst of my college career partly because I was tired of eating spaghetti, and partly to impress a boy. Well, that boy is long gone, but my love for cooking hasn't left.
Shortly after I began teaching myself to cook, I became a vegetarian, just to try it out. As I began searching for different things to cook to still get all the protein and vitamins and minerals I needed, I started to actually learn about food and where it came from and what was in it. What I found appalled me.
In my omnivorous state, I had never paid attention to what was in my food, because I was just blindly eating. Food is food, right? But once I started being more aware of what I ate, I became more and more concerned about the state of the whole food economy. How was it profitable for KFC to sell a "burger" made entire out of meat for only a dollar, while organic meats cost a small fortune in the grocery store? Why did a head of broccoli cost more than a Big Mac?
Well, the long and short of it is that those things are not real food. I refer to them as "food stuffs". They're so cheap to make because they're more made of chemicals than actual food. If you would like more information on this, I would recommend watching Food, Inc. It's a fantastic documentary all about the food industry.
So, now that my eyes were opened to what people were putting in their bodies day after day and making connections between this and the obesity epidemic and super high rates of cancer and cardiac disease being the number one killer in the nation, I have sworn off food stuffs; this has just fueled my love for cooking.
By cooking, I know exactly what's going into my food, without having to spend hours in the grocery store reading labels. Now, all this being said, I don't propose that everybody become a hardcore gluten-free raw vegan who says screw everyone who isn't. I actually am really annoyed by people like that. While being vegan or gluten-free or raw is healthy for a lot of people, it's not for everyone. Heck, I'm not even vegan or gluten-free! But I do propose that people start knowing what's in their food and where it came from, and a vegan diet certainly helps you be more aware of that.
I'm also a big believer in not necessarily eating "healthy" food, but just eating real food! This is a big reason why I chose to do a baking blog, and not a cooking blog. I have a relentless sweet tooth, and if I sit down and eat a bag of Oreos, I feel awful about myself, but taking a few homemade cookies to work with me as a snack I am totally okay with. Once again, it's just about eating real food!
Real food makes being healthy so much easier, and it makes you feel so much better! I hope to inspire you to be food conscious.
