In other words: Whole Foods sells unicorns.
Have you ever turned the package over that holds the roast chicken you just bought at the supermarket and read the ingredients? If so, were you really surprised to see some of them?
Xantham gum? Broth with a set of parenthesis full of unnatural ingredients?
What if we're not as much obese in America as we are inflamed?
::shudder::
Fact = In 2007 I went to Italy to visit the town my dad grew up in. We still have family there. It's kind of close to Pompeii and Amalfi - very rural. The food I ate was grown and raised really nearby. Possibly in the town I was in or an adjacent one. We ate WELL. In Italy and to Italians "Food: Love" If you don't eat the food Nonna is giving you (that she MADE): you are rejecting her love. True story: my Nonna still believes I like these gross Italian cookies she makes because I pretended I liked them once. Because I love her. All that being said: we ate WELL. SO well, that even though we went for a "passeggia" after every time we ate, it definitely couldn't have dented the caloric damage in the slightest. My cousin Angela and I noticed something after this trip: we both had LOST weight. About 3-5 lbs, actually. We were floored. All our lives we knew what the repercussions of an eating bender like that were. We had, after all, lived in these bodies our whole lives. And taken said bodies on many an eating bender... so, why, on this trip, were we spared? We had to believe it was the quality of the food we were eating. It wasn't labelled "organic" ... it just WAS organic. The cows ate grass and weren't pumped with hormones. The produce was grown locally and wasn't genetically modified. We resolved to buy organic at home. As all good (and costly) habits go - we've since succumbed to what's normal, convenient and, most of all, cheap in America. What stays with me about that trip's culinary leg, though, WAS the quality of the food. I remember taking a walk with my dad and climbing up the clock tower steps in the center of Candida. We pulled blackberries off of the vine that grew all around the steps of the tower. We popped them into our mouths right there on our walk. These were, hands down, the finest berries I had ever eaten in my life. They were tart and perfect and stained my hands red. They were in season and they hadn't traveled hundreds of mile to get to me. They were ripened on a vine in the sun and they also were not assaulted with harsh and unnatural chemicals.
I wish it were easy, convenient and economical to eat like that so effortlessly. Picking it off a vine. Being served it at one of the many cousins' houses in town. Buying it while out in Avellino. You can't count on all of that here in America.
This got me all nostalgic so here's some pics from that trip:
Candida all lit up for the feast. August is official "we're on vacation now" month in Italy and it's freaking awesome.
I think I took this from the clock tower.. but I forget.
Looking up the main street in town toward the building we stayed in (top left)
Pics that make me laugh parts 1 and 2
Myself, Nonna, Angela
This, to us, looked like an S and M dungeon but it was probably for wine and cheese and stuff
Airport exit signs made me laugh
Famiglia!
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