Slow Food
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:09 pm (Helpful, Physical)
What sort of amazes me is how much time and energy it takes to eat well and be mindful about things. For me, even after I had pretty well gotten the bingeing under control, I still had a problem with fast food and not, of course, because it tastes so much better than its opposite. (Whole food? Slow food? Speed-impaired food?) Fast food is just easier. It’s quicker to satisfy. It doesn’t involve washing dishes or storing leftovers in little plastic bowls which you then, also, at some point in the future, end up having to wash. Again.
Sure, I watched Super Size Me and was appropriately — even righteously — disgusted. I read Fast Food Nation and nodded my head along the whole way. I still wince when I think of my granny — an old farm girl and my favorite republican hippie — and the whole fresh foods that she insisted on eating and preparing for herself and for us. I know all about trans-fats and about french fries whose first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup and about the whole unfortunate Mystery Meat situation. Cheese substitutes. Formed patties of mincemeat resembling, on some alien planet, a chicken breast or a pork rib or a “nugget.”
It’s not that I don’t understand why fast food is bad for me. It’s just that I work 13-to-14-hour days and I get tired. It’s that I want to spend the weekend with my boyfriend, cuddled up and watching Buffy. It’s that, when you get right down to it, I sometimes lack the mental and physical energy it takes to plan ahead, have ingredients on hand, scrub, pluck, bake, scrape, and scour my way to healthy living.
PastaQueen talks about this very phenonemon in her new year post, stating that:
It will take time: I don’t just mean this in the sense that it will take a year to lose 50 pounds, though it will assuming you lose a pound a week, a safe and attainable rate. I mean you have to take time out of your day to exercise and prepare food.
Fast food is fast for a reason. It is fast in every way. It is quick to deliver what precious few nutrients it contains, then burn out and become lethargy. Become insulin overload. Become fat. It is quick to digest, due to the absence of fiber and natural ingredients. It is first in and first out, in a way. It is fast.
But, I’m trying to eat slower now. Slower in every sense. I’m trying to eat foods that digest slowly, that release their nutrients and energy slowly, that last longer, that require more work. I want to eat this slower food, well, more slowly. To savor and enjoy it. I am not, unfortunately made of money. I cannot hire a personal chef to prepare this food for me, and a maid to clean up the dishes afterward. So, in the service of slow food, here are some things that have helped me on those days when I’m in Danger of Drive Thru.
