My strolls through Barnes and Noble... and the natural foods store

I have been asked to give a healthy eating presentation at church next week. I decided that I wanted to actually OWN the handful of books that have led me to think the way I now do, and to set them out for people to look at and leaf through. I also wanted to see what else was out there on the topic of clean eating, whole foods, "real" eating, etc... I found Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. I've checked it out from the library a dozen times and decided that frugality is silly when it comes to this book. I MUST own it. I also found Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels. I didn't find any other books that I'd recommend or set out as an example of my beliefs.

I looked for new books, too. I found NOTHING. There is a book called The Eat Clean Diet by Tosca Reno. She won't use butter and she does use white flour, white sugar, and white pasta. How is this clean? Other books, whose exact titles I forget now, claimed to be "whole foods" cookbooks but contained dessert recipes using white sugar and white flour. They also contained white pasta, arborio rice, meats full of nitrates and sodium, vegetable oils, margarine, and other foods I don't consider "whole." Apparently, if you only use a little, these foods become "whole" all-of-a-sudden.

I found vegetarian cookbooks loaded with ingredients I won't use. Sure, there's no meat on the plate, but there's margarine and refined oil and processed cheese and a whole bunch of other crap I found "sugar free" cookbooks full of Nutrasweet and Splenda. People don't get that replacing one refined product with another even more refined product isn't smart. I did find a couple of books that I might have considered except they used at least two ingredients in every recipe that I'd never heard of or that I KNEW were expensive or difficult to find. There really is very little out there, in the mainstream bookstore, for people who want to eat "close to the earth," but who also have restricted time and resources, like me.

Prior to this visit, I found myself walking through our huge, beautiful, food co-op. I went there for rapadura. It is the only place I can buy it, locally. I was frustrated as I wandered aisle upon aisle of processed, packaged foods that say "all natural" and "organic." Are people really fooled by this? If Paul Newman makes your oreo cookie from white sugar and white flour and calls it organic is it suddenly a health food? Gluten free organic cheese puffs are still cheese puffs. Organic mac and cheese made with white pasta and some cheese-product is still not real food. Makes me crazy, I tell ya. And what I kept asking myself was, "who buys this stuff?" Are there people willing to spend $3 a box for organic mac and cheese with zero nutritional value instead of .79 cents a box for the non-organic version? Don't they see that fake food without pesticides isn't much better than fake food with pesticides???

Gaaaah.....

thanks for listening.