I Am Going To Ask What You Put In My Food

I will sincerely admit that I check every label of every food I buy. I pick up the product, read the name and then turn it around to look at the ingredients.

I also ask the waiter for the ingredients of a dish that I am ordering at a restaurant. I know that it is a salad but nowadays everything can be called a salad.

I really want to know what is in my food. Why?

You may think that I might be a painful person to go grocery shopping with or that I will embarrass you if you ask me to go and have a nice lunch next weekend.

However, the truth is that food is getting complicated. New diets are being promoted, new allergies are being diagnosed, new ingredients are being marketed. People are choosing, taking sides and they are standing by them.

At stores, new terms such as organic, gluten free, non-GMO, cage free, kombucha or nato are spreading fast among the community.

Since I have an interest in the food industry I know what many of these terms means but someone who usually doesn’t go to the grocery store or doesn’t dine out often will stare blankly at many of these choices and make the best guess they can.

Many food products have health claims bigger than product names. Many food products have disease reduction promises bigger than product names.

Over the last few years it seems that the interest in the culinary experience has skyrocketed. From bringing new ingredients, to utilizing its properties for bettering health, preventing disease or promoting athleticism has propelled at an uncontrollable speed.

I have had servers and Chefs look at me with raised eyebrows when I have asked them about the components of a dish and I have had people stare at me when I have spent a comfortable amount of time looking at the labels of cooking oils.

I don’t care. I am the person eating the food and I want to eat food I trust.

If I read that a product is made with real honey it makes me think about how trustworthy our food is. So, if that product doesn’t claim that, isn’t it mad with real honey? What is fake honey?

Labels and menus attempt to make it easier for us to understand what we are eating. Especially, if it is the first time trying a new food. They are guides. They are knowledge.

Food cultures are very different across countries and before submerging into the adventure of trying new foods I often like to prepare myself for what is to come. A preference might not be concerning but an allergy can become terror when there is a language barrier.

I recently read a news story that in the near future we will have available a device that will literally allow us to read into a food item.

This will work as a scanning mechanism placed directly on the food. It could potentially reveal information about the nutrient content of the food, the type of food and any harmful specimens that may cause harm to our health if we consume the food.

For instance, it may be useful to know whether meat we are buying is essentially beef and not another animal. Similarly, whether those zero percentages that some companies so adamantly advertise are genuine. It can tell us whether those food labels are bluff.

Very recently, some major food chains have been haunted by terrible news that their food products have been infected with harmful bacteria. Moreover, day in, day out ,people buying mass produced food items have found undesirable things in their foods.

I definitely would want to use that device to know what is in my food and avoid any of these risks.

I read labels and I ask questions about the food I order because I want to enjoy my food. I don’t think that knowledge works against enjoyment.

Of course, I want to save me some scares and not eat a food infected with E.coli bacteria. I also don’t want to be cheated upon when I want to buy cooking oil from responsible brands.

I want to understand what I am about to eat or order so that I can then rave about it in social media. I want to know what is in my food to learn about nutrition because at school some us were not taught about it.

I think it is time we eat with knowledge.

If you enjoyed it I also blog at: www.sharinghealthiness.com

Twitter: @elsieSHealth