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Jumping at the Boogey Man
Submitted by Dana on Sun, 2010-08-22 12:54
I'm fascinated by what scares people and what doesn't. For example: Trick-or-treating, one of the great childhood institutions of my childhood, is fading away due to modern fears. Parents are afraid of their kids going out after dark. They're afraid to have them knocking on doors They're afraid the candy may have been tampered with, some to the point where local authorities will x-ray Halloween candy for anxious parents.
Yet the crime statistics show no increase in crimes against children, and what crimes do occur are overwhelmingly committed not by casual contacts -- like knocking on the door demanding goodies -- but by people the children know: relatives, family friends, or "helpers" like Scout Masters, coaches, and, much-commented-upon, clergy, who seek positions of constant contact with children, with the idea of "grooming" them. Yet do parents panic at the idea of little Jared-or-Madison joining the Scouts or taking soccer?
Likewise, there is simply no reason to fear random candy tampering.
There is, however, reason to fear the candy itself. How is it, in a nation currently up in alarm about childhood obesity and diabetes, that we have -- at least in many places -- eliminated the truly cool part of Halloween -- running around the neighborhood after dark dressed up in costumes, ringing people's doorbells and demanding loot -- and kept the most dangerous part, the candy? Far, far better for the children if we'd kept the costumes, the running around, the visiting the neighbors, and eliminated the candy, making the default Halloween loot teeny toys and stickers and such. All of the anarchy -- and exercise! -- with none of the poison. Better yet, it would be one small move toward eliminating the terrible tendency for all holidays to become nothing but sugar-fests.
But I didn't plan to write about Halloween; it's a tad early. Though I suppose now I can just C&P the beginning of this article in a couple of months, huh?
It's just that I find the Halloween situation symbolic of the whole American attitude regarding illness. We're supposed to be terrified to eat raw cookie dough, 'cause it might have salmonella from the eggs. After all, we've just had a major egg recall, so raw eggs are super-dangerous, right? No mention of the sugar or the flour being dangerous, though, or the finished cookies, for that matter. Nor the fact that overall raw, uncracked, properly refrigerated eggs are pretty danged safe, nor that you can avoid quite a lot of the danger by buying local, small-farm pastured eggs.
Careful mothers wipe the handle of the shopping cart with disinfecting wipes before putting Peewee in the seat. Ignoring completely the question of whether the disinfectant itself is toxic, what do most Moms then throw in the cart? Sugar-laden highly processed cereal, juice boxes, cookies, chips, candy, kiddie yogurt with 2 grams of protein but 10 grams of sugar. You can be sure those same mothers will make sure hands are washed with antibacterial soap before a nice snack of cookies and juice.
Many young women I know are far, far more concerned with food handling issues than I am. I confess to being cavalier about raw chicken, prone to forgetting to put the mayo away for an hour or two, liable to simply cut the mold off the cheese and use the rest. Yet I never get sick to my stomach; it's been well over a decade. Maybe I'm just lucky. Or maybe it's because I don't eat "foods" that sap my immune system.
Did you know that you can no longer buy truly raw almonds in this country? They were banned in 2007, because of two very limited outbreaks of salmonella. What are labeled "raw almonds" have actually been pasteurized, either with steam, which at least is harmless -- or with propylene oxide, which is, among other things, classified as a possible carcinogen. So we're being "saved" from the dangerous microorganism by adding poison to our food. Say what?
Raw milk is illegal in most states. Indeed, in many states where cow share programs have been set up to allow consumers to get around the raw milk ban, much effort has been put into stamping out the effort, with raw milk being dumped down the drain. But hey, drink all the Coca-Cola you want! That stuff is safe.
And of course, there is virtually no talk at high levels of the simple fact that most food contamination problems are a by-product of big agribusiness.
I don't know whether to think these people are really sincere, and simply are, like most people, blind to the fact that it's the nice, neat, tidy, "clean" processed "food" that's actually poisonous, or whether they're deliberately trying to distract us so we won't notice. Either way, I hope you'll concern yourself with the right things.
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Fears upon fears
Lately I have noticed a trend I find to be rather disturbing. Some people are finally starting to get the idea that carbs are not good for them, but what do they do with this information? Instead of really looking into it, they simply ADD carbs to the list of things that aren't good for them. So many now seem to think, for example, that a low carb, low fat, low calorie diet is what they need.
A guy I know has a video channel on which he usually does cooking videos. It's quite popular. Recently, though, he did a video about healthy eating and weight loss, and started out by saying that bread, potatoes, sugar, and so on were bad. He then went on, a little later in the video, however, to say that people should also give up things like cheese and bacon. When I asked him why, he replied (of course) that it was because they are high in cholesterol and bad for the heart. I gave up arguing with him at that point.
People get used to believing what they are told is bad for them, and they seem to find it very hard to let go of prior concepts of what is bad for them. It's a big, scary world out there, and every day it seems another food is linked to some ailment or another. So for many, it's "So butter is bad for me, and now so is margarine. Guess I'll have to eat my wheat toast dry."
I'm really hoping the people of the future will look back at current nutrition and dietary concepts the way we today look at bewildering medical practices of the past, like trepanning and bleeding. Which is to say, I hope the people in the future finally get a clue, although it doesn't look like this particular future is going to happen any time soon.
Regarding food handling issues, I am the same way. I don't have a poultry cutting board that I must never cut veggies on, I recently left my mayo out overnight and then continued to use it with no ill effects, I don't compulsively sterilize my counters. I'm not in the least worried about raw eggs in foods. In order to have a good immune system, you must challenge it, otherwise you WILL get sick when you leave your perfectly sanitized environment. I haven't even caught so much as a cold in years, and I find it rather interesting that many of the people I know who are frequently sick are rather compulsive about keeping things sterile in their homes. They think they will get sick even more if they don't keep things sterile, I think they are getting sick so much BECAUSE they keep things so sterile in their homes.
Oh, no worries about the cheese mold, by the way. Mold on cheese can't hurt you, even if you don't cut it off. I have a chunk of Parmesan in my fridge right now that is rather moldy on the sides, and I don't even bother about it when I grate it into something. The surface I grate is not moldy, and I don't worry about the little bit of mold that grates off from the sides. It doesn't hurt anything. Many cheeses are allowed and encouraged to mold, and prized for it, remember.
Jumping at the Boogey Man
...and then there's azo dyes, admittedly less common these days. both my (now in their early twenties) children were/are highly sensitive to these poisons - in so much processed 'food' it's unbelievable. My daughter, a talented dancer, couldn't walk in a straight line if she'd eaten anything containing tartrazine; and my lovely son turned into a first-class brat if he swallowed it. He came home from school with a detention slip one afternoon (aged 13), as he'd walked into class chewing sweets. being loud and obnoxious and refusing to listen to the teacher. So what was he chewing? Oh, sweets! Where did he get them from, as I certainly didn't give him any, and I'd told the school he turned into anothe person if he ate rubbish? The sponsored vending machine in school! Well, the vending machine was sponsored by a sports company, and it provided welcome cash to the school, so that's okay, isn't it?!? I'd succesfully closed down the tuck shop in their primary school (aged 4-11), but secondary school (12-16) was (literally) a different ball game.
Everything sounds logical in
Everything sounds logical in theory until your baby is the one you have to send out in the night in order to prove you arent a scaredy cat, LOL My kids always go trick or treating and it bothers me because I dont like them eating all that candy, but I dont want to take the tradition away so I let them but I walk with them. But I do actually think about the people that my daughters spend time with, the coaches and girl scout leaders etc and often I am there helping out as are other parents. Believe me EVERYONE thinks about THAT. Ask any parent and they will tell you. There are some who just throw their kids at whatever adult wants to watch them, but those are also those that say "ok be back at midnight have fun trick or treating on your own" and shut the door while 7 yr old Gary trots off to go trick or treating alone.
I realize you were making a point here, but I have kids and felt you should hear from a parent that no one least of all parents are resting on their laurels about what is good for their kids. In todays society we are so overburdened with working at the same time as raising kids to prove we are worthy to the world (she is a stay at home mom? shocking! she must be lazy!) that there is little time to research every single thing that goes into their mouths and we cant actually hover over them 24/7 to make sure no one shares their candy with them, nor can we ostracize them from the soccer team by saying "yes I know everyone is having juice boxes and rice crispie treats but you must have this low carb yet delicious to an adult, flax bar and water...." !!!! The best we can hope to do is strike a balance by providing mostly healthy things at home.
All that said I do wish raw almonds and raw milk were more readily available, I hear you on this. The problem is not that we don't want it or dont recognize that over processing on its own with poisons is killing us, the problem is, where is it and how can we get it quickly on the way home from work at 5 pm?
When my kids were tiny, they ate scrambled eggs for breakfast all the time. Now my teenager wont eat eggs because they told her at school that eggs will make her fat. For the last 15 years I have been discussing with my family the benefit of fat, and how bad sugar and processed food carbs are, during this time my mother died of diabetes at age 55, and yet my husband does not believe me, nor do the kids. Why? Because the government keeps pushing grains, the schools push this too (once my daughter said a teacher told her her lunch was not healthy because it contained only cheese and meat and strawberries and required a "sandwich" to be complete). I become exhausted when my husband holds up yet another box of cereal and points to the heart healthy label on it and tosses it in the cart.
Mothers are trying, be certain of that. Its just that everything seems stacked against us.
Mothers Are Trying
Fair enough, and I apologize to all the mothers who are, indeed, trying. Even the ones who are afraid of the wrong things are trying, of course. I've just spent too much time, I guess, in online conversations with women who are horrified by the idea of eating anything a second past its expiration date, or by people who don't wipe down the kitchen with antibacterial cleaner every time they cook chicken.
I also heard the lunch bag horror stories from my sister the teacher, who for years taught 2nd grade at an expensive private school -- you know, the kids who came to school with nothing but chips and cookies, but Mom was sure that was okay, 'cause it was oooorgaaanic.
Food Fear
How about the biggie, Fear of Fat! Low fat dressing, low fat milk, low fat cookies!