Surviving The 21st Century -

Surviving The 21st Century - TV Dinner Anyone?

I like food, I always have. I like to cook, but I doubt I am quite up the the standards of the people on TV. The only cooking school I have attended is the Culinary Institute Of Hard Knocks. I enjoy puttering around in the kitchen, it offers a sense of peace and tranquility to my usual world of deadlines, panics, and other mayhem that I call my life.

There are many people that claim ‘they cannot cook to save their life’. They are wrong. There are thousands of ‘bullet proof’ recipes that any klutz would be challenged to screw up. The other often used excuse is ‘I don’t have time to cook’. This is not true, there are countless dishes that take only a few minutes to prepare.

One thing that I have discovered is that even the most complex recipes contain relatively few ingredients. The real key revolves more around technique, heat and timing. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of herbs and spices, they open a whole world of culinary adventure. However, even in the most world renown kitchens the chances are that the number of herbs and spices used is a relatively small number. If it exceeded 25 I would be amazed.

The Big Food corporations on the other hand have different ideas. I was sent this photo of the ingredient list for a frozen TV Turkey Dinner.

Sure, it is ready in 5 minutes, but what the hell are people eating? My list of ingredients would be Turkey, Potatoes, Vegetables, Bread (for the stuffing), and Fruit, flour, milk, and butter. I’d likely use sage and rosemary as herbs for the dressing and turkey. Salt and pepper on the savory dishes, and maybe some sugar and cinnamon in the desert.

In some ways the amusing thing is that even if I wanted to recreate the box TV dinner at home I could not! I checked out my local supermarket and was unable to locate most of the ingredients! They were fresh out of MSG, HFCS, and I thought they were going to call the cops when I asked about Anti Caking Agents.

The real question I have is that if all of these things are so good for us (the FDA says they are), how come they are not on the store shelves?

Of course it would be easy to poke holes in the FDA and USDA, one only has to look at present and past leadership to see that membership to this club is a perk for Big Food and Big Pharma. One can only assume that the FDA shares much in common with the FAA, who have been in the spotlight recently. Excuse the pun, but the rash of snoozing Air Traffic Controllers has been a wake up call!

Mannie Barling and Ashley F. Brooks, R.N., are the authors of award winning books – Arthritis, Inflammation, Gout, Crohn’s, IBD and IBS – How to Eliminate Pain and Extend your Life (Books and Authors 2010 Best Books in the Health, Diet & Reference Categories) and Mannie’s Diet and Enzyme Formula – A Change of Lifestyle Diet Designed for Everyone (Blogger News Net 2010 Best Health And Nutrition Book Award winner) available at HowToEliminatePain.com, Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and other booksellers around the world.

The authors’ latest book, It’s Not Your Fault – Weight Gain, Obesity and Food Addiction is now available at HowtoEliminatePain.com, Amazon and booksellers everywhere.
 
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