Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading.
Thank you for reading! We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.
Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
Please purchase a subscription to continue reading.
Your current subscription does not provide access to this content.
Sorry, no promotional deals were found matching that code.
Promotional Rates were found for your code.
I was driving across town, listening to the radio, when this guy came on to tell us how bad everything is, and as evidence he pointed to the shortage of baby formula on our grocery shelves. My first thought was: the fact that he’s pointing to that is more of an indication of how bad things are than the actual shortage of the formula.
Let me state, right up front, this is not an article about whether or not a woman should breastfeed, or how or why certain physical issues with mother or child, or lack of support at home or in the workplace, or policy issues might necessitate the use of formula. No, my focus here is not on canned baby food; it’s on packaged food in general. It’s on why we buy it despite it being less nutritious, less delicious (though that’s a matter of taste) and even when it costs more.
The first reason why, and we all know it, is convenience. People are busy. And busy people find it hard to fit eating into their schedules, or their kids’ schedules, so they want something they can do quick and without much planning or effort — something that’s easy to store and that won’t go bad any time soon.
Though it doesn’t appear anywhere on the list of top-selling products, convenience is perhaps the thing that corporate America has been selling most aggressively since the end of World War II — the idea that we need to buy products that will make our lives better, easier and more comfortable so we don’t have to spend as much time or energy doing things. Which is fine unless, in the process, we end up losing the myriad benefits that come from doing those things, and at the same time introduce new problems that come from not doing those things.
We saw it happen with office jobs. On the surface, it seems an easy way to go — sitting down and not having to work so strenuously.
Come to find out, sitting all day presents other health hazards, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, colon cancer, osteoporosis, lipid disorders, depression and anxiety.
I’m sure there are corresponding negative impacts, besides the obvious environmental ones, that go along with buying packaged foods.
Still, few of us enjoy the luxury of having gardens, cows and chickens on our property, fields of grain or groves of fruit and nut trees outside our door, or a fresh pond filled with fish, and some of us have neither the time, interest nor inclination to harvest and prepare food. So we all, to some extent, turn to processed packaged products.
The key, I think, is understanding the spectrum of processing — the difference between a minimally processed fresh potato, a moderately processed bag of frozen fries, an ultra-processed box of mashed potatoes and the worst artificially flavored, colored and preserved snacky potato thing you can buy.
Which leads to another reason for why there is so much packaged food: education, or the lack thereof. (You know how people like to talk about what’s wrong with our educational system, and what should and shouldn’t be taught in school; I hereby nominate “ingredients and labels” as a worthy topic of instruction to help people learn how to read labels and make sense of the products on our grocery store shelves.)
It seems, a huge percentage of Americans, at all education and income levels, don’t make the connection between diminished nutritional value, harmful chemical additives, chronic sickness, and the billions and billions of dollars spent on health care.
Certainly, convenience has its benefits, but it also has its drawbacks. While it may save time and effort, it also further immerses us in the rush-rush world, and crystallizes the belief that we don’t have enough time to stop and breathe and cook and eat and enjoy and savor the moment …
… and that, to me, is a bigger problem than not having baby formula on the shelves.
That said, I feel for the people who rely on it and who are now victims of price gouging, but that’s another story for another time.
I don’t know what it is, but in the past few months, I’ve been breaking shoelaces right and left. And since I’m usually rushing out the door when it happens, I end up just retying the two frayed ends together, figuring I’ll replace them the next time I’m at the store. But the ones ...
Like the gold prospector who came upon the highest mountain and decided to name it McKinley, despite the fact that the natives called it Denali, and had been doing so for centuries. It didn’t matter, though; 21 years and three Presidents later, the U.S. officially designated it ... Mt. McKinley.
In one of his many lyrics that are both timeless and ever-timely, Dylan sings, “The times are a-changin,’” but if the Sunshine Protection Act makes it through the U.S. House of Representatives, and if President Biden signs it, then, come Nov. 2023, the times won’t be changing anymore — or at least the clocks won’t.
If we’re not as happy as we used to be, then maybe it’s because we’re not as warm and friendly as we used to be; maybe we’re not caring about or helping people, or we’ve stopped being interested in learning; or ...
Ron Colone can be reached at ron.colone@gmail.com
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.