Cooking from scratch . . . it's too haaaaaaaard!
Late last week, I ranted spoke calmly and articulately about the values of cooking from scratch on a friend's Facebook note. Essentially, I pointed out that I don't think 'cooking' can be considered combined ready-made pizza dough, ready-made pizza sauce, and packaged cheese. I went on (as usual) to say that you still don't know what's going into your food, (not to mention you don't get to revel in the joys in kneading dough!), which largely defeats the purpose of cooking from scratch.
The response was to point out that if you're buying pizza from Pizza Hut, Papa Johns or Eagle Boys, there's nothing to stop them from bathing the pizza in grease, or using the lowest-quality meat. Furthermore, you can use low-fat cheese or veggies as toppings.
So I've been mulling over this response for the past few days, and have finally managed to pull together some semblance of a response. I think.
The first thing that stuck out to me was the resort to the 'low-fat' option. I hate low-fat food products. Largely because fat gives food a taste, and to me, if you don't want taste you should consider rice and cabbage as your source of nutrition. But compare the 'regular' and low-fat foods. I can guarantee you that that low-fat version will have at least 5 additional ingredients, none of which you can pronounce or spell. In place of fat goes sugar, sodium, and thickeners and/or emulsifiers (to make up for the lack of viscosity in your low-fat . . . item). Yum! And all that extra sugar? Gets converted to fat by your body if you're not burning it all up. Don't forget all that extra salt you're getting too.
You're also paying for lower-quality ingredients. Yes, really: the carrageenan, xanthan gum, locust bean gum, guar gum, sodium alginate that's put into your food is far cheaper than fat. Selling the 'low-fat' product for the same price as the regular version represents a considerable savings on the manufacturers part.
Which brings me to the low-quality meats argument. Trust me, the meat you're buying at Giant, Stop & Shop, Woolies and Bi-Lo is not high-quality. No, I don't care what the sticker on the package says. It's crap meat. Whole Foods is a better bet, but really, you shouldn't be eating any more of it than you have to. I can guarantee you that the meat you're eating, whether from Giant or Pizza Hut, is grain-fed meat. Not to mention the increased water use that grain requires, the clearing of land needed to grow soy, corn and grains (usually through burning, killing native species and releasing more carbon into the air), and the increased food miles involved in trucking grains to the animals, there's the simple fact that grass-fed meats are richer in antioxidants (like beta-carotene, which is why grass-fed butter is has a richer yellow hue), iron, omega-3 (so you can now ignore all those 'enriched with omega-3' products) and B12 (a necessary nutrient found only in animal products. B12 deficiency, which can take years to exhibit, causes irreversible nerve damage). Do you like antibiotics? Good, because animals are given tremendous doses due to the appalling conditions they're kept in (some antibiotics also increase feed efficiency. So farmers get more weight gain ,and hence more meat, per unit of food. Which represents a considerable savings on their part.). So not only are you ingesting totally unnecessary and unhelpful medications, you're contributing to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Farm animals also produce meat that has a far higher fat content than wild animals. Fat in meat is not inherently bad, but the ratio of meat to fat currently is far higher than it should be. Giant is unlikely to tell you exactly where the meat came from (yet another issue), but you can be pretty sure it's not from the wild.
When buying fast-food pizza, the premise the company will use to sell their product to you is taste and speed. It tastes good, and it easy and quick to make. when you buy meat from the supermarket, the company is largely focusing on price, but they're also going to emphasize the quality of their product, no matter how tenuous. Just because they don't mention the horrible conditions of the animals doesn't mean the animals are being treated well. They won't tell you that they chopped down acres of natural forest to make way for monocultures of soybeans and corn to feed to animals. In the US, companies are not required to label their products if they have GMO ingredients in them. Indeed, some companies have brought lawsuits on other companies for labelling their foods as 'GMO-free'. It scares the consumer, you see. You're relying on the company to tell you whether your meat is high-quality or not, which is no different than Pizza Hut or any other fast-food place.
The biggest risk to buying food pre-made, whether it's fully or only party-prepared, is not the obvious factors. Yes, you'll know that someone hasn't picked their nose just before making your pizza if you're buying the dough, sauce and cheese separately, and you can be fairly sure that there isn't a surprise dead mouse hiding amongst the mushrooms. But a dead mouse unlikely to be the thing that kills you. It'll be the build up of toxins and other crap (generally recognised as safe by the FDA only because it hasn't killed anyone yet). It'll be the lung cancer caused by years of breathing in shite air because the forests can been cut down. It might be the colon, breast or protate cancer caused by rBST (banned in Canada, Australia, NZ and parts of the EU) in the dairy products you eat.
Until we have legislation that assures the humane treatment of animals and requires clear and full labelling on all foods, I want my food to be as close to the original source as possible. I want to be able to speak to the person who grew it or made it, and that's only if I can't grow or make it myself. Putting together a pizza is a step better than buying it from a pizza place, but only in the same way that smoking 15 cigarettes is better than smoking 20 a day. It's a very very small step, and nothing more than that.
Also, fat is not the devil. Fat is good, and your body needs it. If you have to resort to low-fat products in order to be healthy, you should be eating more broccoli, not processed bits of low-fat plastic resembling cheese.
The response was to point out that if you're buying pizza from Pizza Hut, Papa Johns or Eagle Boys, there's nothing to stop them from bathing the pizza in grease, or using the lowest-quality meat. Furthermore, you can use low-fat cheese or veggies as toppings.
So I've been mulling over this response for the past few days, and have finally managed to pull together some semblance of a response. I think.
The first thing that stuck out to me was the resort to the 'low-fat' option. I hate low-fat food products. Largely because fat gives food a taste, and to me, if you don't want taste you should consider rice and cabbage as your source of nutrition. But compare the 'regular' and low-fat foods. I can guarantee you that that low-fat version will have at least 5 additional ingredients, none of which you can pronounce or spell. In place of fat goes sugar, sodium, and thickeners and/or emulsifiers (to make up for the lack of viscosity in your low-fat . . . item). Yum! And all that extra sugar? Gets converted to fat by your body if you're not burning it all up. Don't forget all that extra salt you're getting too.
You're also paying for lower-quality ingredients. Yes, really: the carrageenan, xanthan gum, locust bean gum, guar gum, sodium alginate that's put into your food is far cheaper than fat. Selling the 'low-fat' product for the same price as the regular version represents a considerable savings on the manufacturers part.
Which brings me to the low-quality meats argument. Trust me, the meat you're buying at Giant, Stop & Shop, Woolies and Bi-Lo is not high-quality. No, I don't care what the sticker on the package says. It's crap meat. Whole Foods is a better bet, but really, you shouldn't be eating any more of it than you have to. I can guarantee you that the meat you're eating, whether from Giant or Pizza Hut, is grain-fed meat. Not to mention the increased water use that grain requires, the clearing of land needed to grow soy, corn and grains (usually through burning, killing native species and releasing more carbon into the air), and the increased food miles involved in trucking grains to the animals, there's the simple fact that grass-fed meats are richer in antioxidants (like beta-carotene, which is why grass-fed butter is has a richer yellow hue), iron, omega-3 (so you can now ignore all those 'enriched with omega-3' products) and B12 (a necessary nutrient found only in animal products. B12 deficiency, which can take years to exhibit, causes irreversible nerve damage). Do you like antibiotics? Good, because animals are given tremendous doses due to the appalling conditions they're kept in (some antibiotics also increase feed efficiency. So farmers get more weight gain ,and hence more meat, per unit of food. Which represents a considerable savings on their part.). So not only are you ingesting totally unnecessary and unhelpful medications, you're contributing to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Farm animals also produce meat that has a far higher fat content than wild animals. Fat in meat is not inherently bad, but the ratio of meat to fat currently is far higher than it should be. Giant is unlikely to tell you exactly where the meat came from (yet another issue), but you can be pretty sure it's not from the wild.
When buying fast-food pizza, the premise the company will use to sell their product to you is taste and speed. It tastes good, and it easy and quick to make. when you buy meat from the supermarket, the company is largely focusing on price, but they're also going to emphasize the quality of their product, no matter how tenuous. Just because they don't mention the horrible conditions of the animals doesn't mean the animals are being treated well. They won't tell you that they chopped down acres of natural forest to make way for monocultures of soybeans and corn to feed to animals. In the US, companies are not required to label their products if they have GMO ingredients in them. Indeed, some companies have brought lawsuits on other companies for labelling their foods as 'GMO-free'. It scares the consumer, you see. You're relying on the company to tell you whether your meat is high-quality or not, which is no different than Pizza Hut or any other fast-food place.
The biggest risk to buying food pre-made, whether it's fully or only party-prepared, is not the obvious factors. Yes, you'll know that someone hasn't picked their nose just before making your pizza if you're buying the dough, sauce and cheese separately, and you can be fairly sure that there isn't a surprise dead mouse hiding amongst the mushrooms. But a dead mouse unlikely to be the thing that kills you. It'll be the build up of toxins and other crap (generally recognised as safe by the FDA only because it hasn't killed anyone yet). It'll be the lung cancer caused by years of breathing in shite air because the forests can been cut down. It might be the colon, breast or protate cancer caused by rBST (banned in Canada, Australia, NZ and parts of the EU) in the dairy products you eat.
Until we have legislation that assures the humane treatment of animals and requires clear and full labelling on all foods, I want my food to be as close to the original source as possible. I want to be able to speak to the person who grew it or made it, and that's only if I can't grow or make it myself. Putting together a pizza is a step better than buying it from a pizza place, but only in the same way that smoking 15 cigarettes is better than smoking 20 a day. It's a very very small step, and nothing more than that.
Also, fat is not the devil. Fat is good, and your body needs it. If you have to resort to low-fat products in order to be healthy, you should be eating more broccoli, not processed bits of low-fat plastic resembling cheese.