blog 12

in the text "Happy meals" written by Michael Pollan he gives us some great short advice about how we can improve our eating habits.

The first thing he said that caught my attention was " Don't eat anything that your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food". I really liked this statment because now when I am on my own, living in my own apartment I have realized that my mum and grandmother have had such an big influence in what I am eating today. They were the ones who thought me what real food looks like. So this is something that is a part of who we are, what my family has eaten on a regular basis for generations. I would say it is very do-able because the diet contains a loot of vegetables, potatoes and real meat. I wish I could have my own garden just like they both have. I would grow my own tomatoes, vegetables, potatoes and herbs. Unfortunately my current living situation makes it impossible. Perhaps some day in the future when
I move back to my home country; Sweden or get an apartment here with a little backyard I could do it. It is something very special about eating things that you have grown yourself, It is all natural without anything else added and it taste like heaven. Right now I do not eat a lot of leaves just by the simple fact of that I have not thought about how healthy it is until I read this text, so even though I cannot grow my own at the moment I feel that it is very easy for me to start buying it to add more vitamins to my diet.

It is funny, he mentioned something I had never thought about before; we should try to stay out of the middle part of the supermarket because most stores are divided in the same way. He is giving examples of that they often keep fresh fruit on the walls surrounding the store while In the middle they keep processed food. I started thinking about how the supermarket I always shop at looks like and sure enough, they keep all the organic food on the edges of the store and the processed food in the middle. I buy organic things because I want to make sure that they did not put anything else in the food that I do not know about. weird numbers and ingredients i do not recognize freaks me out so I do my best trying to stay away from them. It may be a little more expensive but just as Michael Pollan says " those who can afford to eat well should", eating healthy can only do you good. I try not to eat so much processed food that is canned with large amounts of sodium and fat but it is hard to stay away from all processed food because from what I have learned Milk for examples is processed food. So this could be a little more challenging for me than the other advises that I was discussing earlier.

Since I was talking about how the stores are divided it hit me that in every single store they keep candy, twinkies and other snacks buy the cashier. I am guessing that they do this to tempt you to buy sweet stuff while you are waiting for your turn. This brings me to another advise from Michael Pollan "Don't eat anything incabable of rotting". I do not know if candy go bad, it often looses its freshness but it does not start to smell like real food does. So candy I can not stay away from, candy brings stars of happiness to my eyes. Other things like muffins or Twinkies I do not have any problems at all staying away from. To be honest they do not appeal to me at all, I feel grossed out just looking at them, especially after my teacher reviled the truth about them not being cab able of rotting.

I loved most of his tips that he shared with us in the text. The ones I found a little more challenging I will try to have an open mind to and do my best to follow them. Thanks to my grandmother and great advice I am happy to say that I believe that I will have a decent diet to pass on to the next generation of kids in my family.