I know there’s a lot of battles out there among women when it comes to the great food debate: granola wives, organic mommies, junk food moms, wives who order out every meal… And for something so necessary for our existence; there sure are a lot of options available to the typical American.
And, with that (thanks to the internet), many Americans enjoy spending time becoming educated on their own choices. What’s the upside to this? Plenty. Access to ordering FitBits and other health-geared technology, the ability to access multitudes of information from nutrition research, healthy recipes, and success stories of people who have made healthy choices and built online communities for sharing.
The downside (thanks to the internet), is the proximity of good writing skills to actual research. As a woman, the idea that I’m never, ever, ever, ever, EVER good enough has been dropped into my attention like a nagging cold. And yes, I have parlayed into some of them – once a quick weight loss center during my early career, atkins in college, to juicing after watching too many food documentaries one weekend, and once to paleo (but I was training for a half marathon, and I was convinced it would give me more energy to train with) (but I ended up spending all my energy trying to plan and cook all my meals). I never did buy into the gluten-free thing, or the organic thing. That all just seemed like excellent marketing.
My suspicions about organic foods were confirmed after I met my now husband and his friend. Both are highly educated; my husband with his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and his friend with a Ph.D. in biochemistry (I think, whatever it is, they are both brilliant and researched). Listening to them bitch about the food industry, and vague terms about GMO were so very vague and misleading, and how organic isn’t that much better.
Enter ASAPScience, a YouTube channel I’ve been following since I ran a twitter account in higher ed continuing education – in which I desperately, desperately always needed content to share on the department twitter feed. The video is pretty short, but highly educational.
To close: In my experience, the ugly head has shown: The more extreme you seem to be with your eating habits, the more like a complete asshole you sound to those not hip to the game.
