Eat Me, Drink Me, Fear Me

As a curious but also American teenager, I am well confused by our culture’s contradicting “food identity.” Some of us are constantly obsessed with leading a clean and healthy lifestyle, eating “superfoods” that don’t make us supernatural, but more “natural.” While some of us are indulging in the convenience-based diet that has been “super sized” with “Big-gulps” and “heart-attack” burgers. And of course, there are people like me, that prides themselves in having occasional kale salads and hates themselves for binge-eating mint chocolate chip ice cream at 11pm. However, in the skewed culture we live by, can any of the above be “correct?”

Is indulging in bacon as harmful as a cigarette? Does drinking coffee shorten your life? Are you “fogging your brain” with all the wheat you are eating? (Robson) Aside from the healthy and trendy food options like those organic, vegan, and gluten-free kale chips, on-going research and studies have made it harder to decipher “healthy” from “unhealthy”. Contradicting our understanding of the nutritional value of commonplace foods,online, print, and televised sources are accused of exaggerating the effects of eating everyday foods like bacon, coffee, and wheat.

As quoted by David Robson, “Evidence-based health advice should be constantly updated as new studies explore the nuances of what we eat and the effects the meals have on our bodies.” However, articles like those of Robson, although try to “cut through the confusion”(Robson) only emphasize the uncertainty behind what we are eating. For example, we’ve been eating wheat for the last 10,000 years, but media-talk of wheat allergies and sensitivity apparently paints wheat “itself as being toxic.” (Robson) Only 1% of the American population suffer from Celiac disease, a gluten allergy; nonetheless, anti-grain or anti-gluten trends have inaccurately misguided shoppers. Although research results can positively impact our life choices, our society is not only oversaturated with sodium and carbs, but also information.