Mono's, Di's & Poly's?

(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)

“Eat a piece of fruit!” my mother would squawk from the other end of the house.

My mother was a smart woman. We all liked cookies and she would bake cookies. But they were for special treats and not to be consumed by the hands full by gangs of ravenous pre-pubescent boys like my friends and me. So, they were cleverly kept in a cookie jar with a lid which no matter how carefully removed would clink and clatter. My mother had the keenest sense of hearing of anyone I’ve known. Try as we might to sneak into the cookie jar, even if she was outside puttering in her garden, there was no getting away with it.

Well, actually there was. After much trial and error my dad and I figured out if the two of us worked on it together and very, very carefully we could remove the lid without making a sound. For extra fun, after we’d taken as many cookies as we wanted we’d deliberately replace the lid with a loud crash. “Eat a piece of fruit!” would fly from some unknown port of call. We’d stand there and grin wildly at each other, stifling our laughs with mouths full of tollhouse or oatmeal raisin cookies. The sweetness of victory!

So today as I consider an afternoon snack and reach for the cookies most times (but not all) my hand in mid air comes to an agonizing, shaking halt. I put it in reverse, close the cupboard and get an apple. Ok… I’ll have a boring old apple. But I’m also glad knowing it’s a healthier thing to eat.

Lately I’ve been thinking about food, cooking, nutrition and that I’d sacrifice a lot to eat well. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, nutrition comes right after breathing. What we stuff and pour down our gullets is that important.

On one end of the spectrum, to know just what it is we’re eating we need to raise it ourselves. On the other end is the freezer isle at Walmart. This is where what they claim is food is designed by chemists and engineers to enhance manufacturing processes, shelf life and curb appeal and hence fill it with things with six and seven syllables and lot’s of mono’s, di’s and poly’s. Sugar salt and fat constitute the natural ingredients, three substances which we are instinctually attracted to. We are told these products are “convenient.” But how convenient are gastro-intestinal disorders, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, cancer and high cholesterol? The last time I took a prescription medication was in 1982 and that was Tagamet to halt the collision course I was on with a stomach ulcer. And this was a time when I regularly ate “fast” and “convenient” foods.

Mother Nature has been working on us and the fruits and vegetables and grains and beasts we eat as part of an ecosystem for a long, long time. I don’t want to be a farmer, so I ante up at the mostly organic grocery store in town for fresh raw ingredients. Then I go home and roll up my sleeves and sharpen my knife and cook. Ok, it can be a chore and it takes time, but cooking it turns out is one of the finest things to do for yourself and the people you care about. Good food and the cooking and sharing of it is love.

Gordon Bunker