*Rant alert*

So I've been reading blogs and articles along with becoming a stay-at-home mom.  With that staying at home job I've been working on cutting our budget and looking to blogs and articles to help out.  That isn't what my rant is about but I read a couple of blogs this morning that posted pictures of their pantries and it brought up thoughts and frustrations again about our American food supply at grocery stores.  Now, I will not make any claims about being totally organic or that all people should eat one way or another.  Wouldn't that be boring?  But, I'm getting very frustrated at the lack of ingredients in a store versus the processed, boxed, prepared foods.  Look at your store sale flyer.  What is on sale?  Ours has a very small meat, produce, and dairy section and a very large canned and snack food section.

Canned foods are great for stocking up.  Snacks are yummy.  I get that.  But my word!  How are you supposed to eat anything real or homemade when the ingredients either aren't there or cost a rather lot of money?  A couple of years ago we visited Austria (which we need to do again) and I loved the grocery stores there.  You know the middle aisles we have in our stores here?  The row after row of ready-to-eat cereals, canned goods, potato chips, boxed meals that you just add water to, or the microwave meals?  Those don't really exist over there.  While we were there we didn't really think about it.  The stores were nice, fun to shop in, and had a great meat section along with a wonderful bakery.  And then we got home and went grocery shopping.  Bakery?  Not really.  A small deli with lots of donuts and fried foods.  Butcher? Kinda.  Certainly not the whole back half of the store dedicated to it.  Soda pop aisle?  Oh ya baby!  Snack foods?  Yep!  Boxed and frozen dinners?  Yep again.  Produce section?  Yes, but kinda small.  Organic foods?  A few.

All of that and I just keep shaking my head when I hear the reports about how obese our world is becoming.  I say world because it isn't just America any more.  And you know the worst thing about all of it?  People that need the good wholesome food the most are the ones that generally can't afford it.  Compare the box of mac and cheese to the price of a pound of beef and some produce.

And to continue the rant... No one has time, the desire, or the know-how to cook.  Okay, so not no one.  A few do, but certainly not like years past.  As a general overview people don't cook anymore.  They warm stuff up but they don't cook.  It used to be that a fast meal in the home was under an hour to prepare.  Now?  People want under 30 minutes.  Don't get me wrong.  I understand that desire.  When you've just gotten home from being at work all day and things need done around the house and you have to get up and go to work early again in the morning, you don't want to spend the evening cooking.  You want to eat to fill the void and be done with it.  Just because I understand it though doesn't mean that I think it is a good idea.

I think the microwave has been a huge driving force behind a lot of this type of eating.  As has the television.  But even more so I think it is just human nature to always be looking for the easier route to accomplish a task, hence the Industrial Revolution.  We all like things that make our lives easier.  It doesn't mean that it is necessarily better for us, just that we like it and we'll use it.

I don't have solutions for it all.  Certainly not for the whole country or world.  But I think if we all try to remember to slow down when we can, eat real food when we can, and don't always take the easy way out maybe we can be a healthier person all around.  So I'm going to try a few things myself.  In addition to baking our own bread once a week I'm going to try to reduce the number of hours in front of the computer and t.v. and try to get walking around more often.  I want to use more dry beans in our meals, use more fruits and vegetables, and get more active.  I dislike how sedentary I've become so I'm going to try to change that.