I remember growing up it was common practice to eat breakfast and dinner at the dining room table together. We very rarely ate fast food more than a couple of times a year and ate at a sit-down restaurant as a family only on special occasions. My Mother would cook pretty much everything from scratch and there were always raw, cut-up vegetables on our plates. Despite having 3 kids, she always found time to make nutritious, whole meals.
Times have changed and our food is becoming tainted with more and more chemicals every day. Pesticides, fungicides, hidden MSG and genetically modified ingredients are in pretty much all processed foods nowadays. Corn syrup has taken over and sugar is rarely seen as an ingredient in sweet, processed foods. Fast food is ground up animals, bones and all, bleached, dyed and smashed into patties of chicken. Antibiotics and hormones are pumping into our cows, making our milk and our meat more dangerous than ever. I am not over exaggerating or using these disgusting descriptions to make it look worse than it really is- this is just the beginning of what our food is becoming.
So what can we do to teach our children that this is not how ‘food’ is supposed to be? Food powers our bodies and our minds to LIVE. The food and water that we consume literally give us life and the ability to think and act cognitively and rationally. How are we supposed to have the energy we need to live our life productively, and the mental agility we need to be at our best when the sources we have to fulfill those things are of little nutritional value and their integrity has been compromised by chemicals and their genes have been changed into something other than our earth creator intended? We need to show our children that corn syrup-filled cereals and ‘processed pasteurized cheese product’ are not real foods and will do nothing to help our health.
With eating fast foods and quick easy to prepare pre-packaged ‘foods’, comes spending less time with the family in the kitchen and at the table. Less time to cook together. Even if it’s here or there, dinner is also spent separated from one another either physically or mentally more often. Think: When do you have time in your day, where everyone is gathered and winding down to fill their bellies, that you can stop and just be together? Dinner is the perfect time to enjoy each other’s company and connect what was not connected throughout the day. Dinner does not only need to be nutritious, whole foods. Dinner needs to be a connection with your family members that might not otherwise take place.
We need to continue to teach our children to cook nutritious meals with fresh organic produce and ingredients. We cannot sit back as our parents might have done with us- things were much different even just 10-15 years ago. Our parents didn’t have to warn us to choose our foods carefully and be sure to eat organically whenever possible. Our foods were healthier on top of us being oblivious to some of the now-known dangers. We need to teach our children what some of society doesn’t know about and most of society doesn’t seem to care about when it comes to food. We need to protect our food supply by speaking up when changes need to be made and demanding organic, sustainable and healthy foods. We must be conscious of what we consume. Not only can it have negative health impacts in so many ways, if we don’t do these things, it can have lasting and even permanent effects on our health and well-being.
The words you are what you eat were never more important as now. We need to instill health and wholesome foods in our children and they will do the same for theirs. We can change the food industry and our health one plate at a time.
Naturally Mama. 