My Body Wasn’t Starving, My Mind Was.

Mind Over Processed and Pre-packaged Matter

For a girl who plans her day around her meals, food is one of my greatest sources of happiness. I look forward to visiting new restaurants on the weekends or revisiting old favorites at the campus cafeteria, but for four days I had nothing excitingly delicious or satisfying to look forward to. My body wasn’t hungry, but my thoughts were.

As a curious teenager I have the right to experiment with my diet and that’s exactly what I did over spring break. As a part of a cleanse, I replaced all solid food consumption with a fresh concoction of beets, carrots, ginger, and chia seeds in between large doses of water. So, for four days not only did I almost forget the satisfying sensation of a large meal, but I also gained a different perspective on food, eating,and our diets.

Other than the American facade of lit fast-food drive thrus and classic diner meals, our daily diets are supplemented and sometimes solely constructed of pre-packaged, processed, preservative-laden foods. In fact Nestle USA, an American brand that may resonate in our minds as ‘the chocolate company’, actually sells food to 97% of U.S. households. As one of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, Nestle USA conveniently stocks our kitchens with DiGiorno pizzas, Hot pockets, Lean cuisine, Haagen-Dazs, Toll House, and even Gerber for the little ones (Ferdman). With all this readily available and relatively inexpensive food, it’s hard to criticize the nutritional value or lack thereof, but with all the resources, technology, and knowledge we have about health and food it would be stupid of us to ignore the injustice we are doing for our bodies.

Now I have to admit, I have eaten many of Nestle USA’s products, but abstaining from both the good and the bad foods for nearly 100 hours, I began to entirely question what I should and want to eat. However, in searching for an answer I realized our country’s food identity crisis.