Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Nutritional Facts are there for a reason.

I was shocked, SHOCKED, when I started looking at the Nutritional Facts on food labels. Back to my Mr. Wizard line of cooking logic, can you say definitively that you know what you are consuming? Caloric intake aside, the amount of additives, preservatives, coloring, flavor enhancers, etc., is alarming. So alarming I'm not even going to throw an expletive in this sentence because you should be cursing the next time you check the nutritional content of your favorite foodstuffs.

When you are shopping for the week at your grocery store, you should be taking the time to look at everything you plan to consume. How much sodium does this contain? How large is a "serving"? What kind of fats are present? Does it contain sucralose, sugar, cane sugar, aspartame, high fructose corn syrup? What does enriched bleached flour mean? Partially hydrogenated oil, yes or no? White or wheat? Wheat or whole grain? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself and investigating for your daily diet. Though I'll eventually be covering most if not all of those questions, why the fuck are you waiting for me? Do something for yourself and learn how to buy food, for fuck's sake!

Your diet, following the Mr. Wizard rules, should be made up primarily of things you recognize the names of and that, theoretically, you could have produced yourself. Chicken should look like it's a bird and not shaped into some random cute dinosaur. Vegetables should look and taste like vegetables, and not like salt and butter. Cereal should be grain based and not something a cartoon character covets.

Grow the fuck up! You are an adult, eat like one.