Kenna Morton's Journal, 06 Nov 23

Totally agree. I am always worried when I see mom or dad eating very healthy and letting the kids live on garbage. I'm not saying that mom, dad, or the kids shouldn't have treats but every meal should not be fast food and junk food. My parents served healthy meals. I served my son healthy meals almost every day. After menopause when I ballooned after a very difficult time in my life up my son did too. We went on an exercise and diet program and he lost 125 pounds and was very lean and got a black belt in taekwondo. Unfortunately he moved away and now has a very unhealthy diet and lifestyle and his weight is back up. He doesn't even know I have lost 40 pounds.  

I would also add: try to pass on your cooking skills. Otherwise they will be reliant on all those convenience ultra processed foods when starting out as young adults. 

Caveat: I've never had kids. But I've struggled to understand the logic when I see someone trying to eat healthier, but they feel compelled to keep junk in the house for the kids or grandkids. I had more junky food than I needed growing up, certainly, but we also had solid, home-cooked meals. I'm floored by the rise of what I call "kid food" -- the idea that kids can only eat chicken nuggets and gogurt and the like. I'm also floored by the amount of snacking  

Excellent post. It is so easy to get caught up in what the major food companies are trying to sell us.  

I agree with this post. I grew up before the explosion of fast food restaurants. We never had sodas or flavored sugar water in our house. We drank milk, tea, and water. Grown folk also had coffee. All meals in my household were prepared in our pans. I remember when the first fast food restaurant moved into our town. Us kids were thrilled. For the first time, we were exposed to cheap, affordable junk food. Sure, candy was available, and we brought our share, but we never looked at it as food. The fast food chains pushed sodas with every meal and won. I believe that the standard American has changed for the worst. Many young parents who were raised on fast food are feeding their children the same fare. It seems that some of our older generation remember when food was food... 

I grew up a long time ago, and we had a garden plus we lived in the Yakima Valley in Washington State. we could go to other farmers and buy what we didn't raise, plus we had all the fruit but citrus available to us. we had k our own chickens, ducks, pigs, and beef! what a way to grow up and be healthy.  

It would maybe make life a bit healthier for everyone if many families did not need 2 incomes just to survive. If you look at MIT's Living Wage Calculator and compare the median annual wage required just to survive with the median average wage in that same area, you start to notice that the time required to cook (even though it is cheaper) is not easy to come by. McDonalds is fast and relatively cheap. Once you are exhausted and overwhelmed, it is so hard to think straight and make a plan to live and eat healthier foods. It is a nuanced problem. I agree that eating healthy is wise and cheaper but the reality is that it is hard to get to that place when you are overwhelmed and exhausted. Time is what people need. A lifestyle that is not just about daily survival is what would help. Some people are just keeping their heads above water. 💙 Love this post, Kenna. Thank you for letting me vent! ha ha😅 

And yet many people have the latest and greatest car, phone, TV, gaming equipment, GYM equipment, vacations, TV subscriptions. There are choices to be made. Plus, if we got rid of candy, so many treats, eating out, fast food, sodas and followed portion control, quit snaking—- there would be money for actual food.. and if we applied the same principles to many of the things we by like fancy phones and TVs, gamin equipment, there would also be more money in the budget. Choices, choices, choices. And a McDonalds type lifestyle can also include increased cost of the medical care required to deal with diabesity related issues 

Time yes, unity. But I think there's also lack of knowledge and a lot of brainwashing by food industry marketing. I came out of my childhood home with a rudimentary knowledge of cooking, but also the mindset that it was just something you did as part of being an adult. A lot of people, for one reason or another, go out in the world not knowing how to feed themselves beyond throwing chicken nuggets and fries in the oven. And I think a lot of people buy into 2 lies pushed by the food industry: that unhealthy food is cheaper and that healthy food doesn't taste good. Honestly...if you get away from eating it, a lot of it tastes kind of gross. I was broke enough in college to sell plasma for grocery money, but still fed myself healthier and cheaper than how the majority of people eat today. It is nuanced, and I believe most people do the best they can. I think marketing has an awful lot to do with it  

There is so much truth to this. Unfortunately, we live in a society where “even fresh fruit is bad because it has natural sugar.” My grandmother lived to be about 6 weeks shy of 102. She was not a big eater, and didn’t have a weight problem. She ate just about anything. She always told me “All things in moderation.” She also told me that “Food cooked at home is always better for you.” She kept sweets and chips and all sorts of things in the house. I need to remember to do things the way she did. (The literal second half of her childhood was spent in the Great Depression.) 

writingwyo, I love your comment on this topic. Marketing is a toughy, for sure. Marketing can be a way for good folks to hear and believe what they want to hear and believe. At the end of the day, taking ownership of your life and making the decisions about how to best live your life fall to the individual. Being open to the idea that other perspectives exist and that there is more than one truth might help cut through confusion. I 100 percent agree that people are doing their best given their model of the world. I (often) personally benefit from the reminder that my experience is not all there is. Thank you💙 

I think everyone reading this post would be interested in the book "The Ancestral Diet Revolution" by Chris A. Knobbed, MD. He believes seed oils are why fast food and processed foods are so unhealthy. 

I’ve heard the excuse of using drive thrus because of time, exhaustion, etc., but all that does is make the case for food prep. Plan ahead and cook a double batch to freeze. This is the one topic that sets my stomach in knots— feeding kids the same foods that make their parents fat. Life is hard enough for teenagers. 

I grew up when boxed foods first became a thing, and had not baked a cake from scratch until just a few years ago. Sadly I still prefer Kraft over homemade mac and cheese. I think many of us need to spend time retraining our palette. 

Plus let's mention that sweets and carbs are habit forming and outright addictive. If kids have goldfish, gummy bears(fruit leather), and ritz peanut butter crackers available at every moment, they're being trained to eat sweet junk. When an actual meal comes their way, they're not hungry, and in part because the real food is not sweet. Parents don't realize that they are training their kids to only like hyperpalatable foods with no nutritional value. I see it with my grandkids and it makes me sad and mad. Their dad makes himself high protein pancakes with low sugar syrup, while he feeds the kids white flour pancakes with maple syrup (no protein and spiking their glucose levels), then buys them a donut mid morning and wonders why they get cranky. 

so very true everyone, it is so sad to see, not to mention the expensive restaurant foods that are full of sugar, and fat, etc. can be brought to your door via Uber Eats and the like.  

juildy -- for a different perspective on seed oils, Layne Norton and Gil Carvalho (Nutrition Made Simple) delve into the studies. In randomized human trials, seed oils are benign or beneficial