How Far Away Have We Gotten from Our Food?

I ask this question because my daughter recently had a conniption because she found bugs on her organic celery stalks. When I walked into the kitchen to find out the cause of the commotion, she, in a rather shrill voice exclaimed, “There are little black bug things on my celery!”

My response, “Okay, wash them off.”

Let me interject here, my daughter is a very bright, hard-working and intelligent gal. Imagine my surprise when she looked at me with the deer-in-the-headlights look and said, “Huh? What are you talking about?”

I then had to explain to her that bugs are a natural part of the organic produce life. Celery grows in the soil and bugs live in the soil. The disgust on her face said it all. “I thought they would clean it off or something.” To which I replied, “They did.”

“But there are still bugs on the celery!”

“Yes,” I answered, “they sometimes don’t get them all.”

“Well, they should!” With that, she left the celery on the counter, refusing to touch it again!

Tsk, tsk, tsk. When will they (my family) learn? No matter how much I share my health journey with them, sometimes they’re a little slow on the uptake. I took the celery, washed it and used some in my morning juice.

The McNugget Syndrome

I call this the McNugget Syndrome. We are raised in a Chicken McNugget society. We are so far removed from our food that we cringe at the thought of a bug in/on our produce. However, we feel perfectly comfortable eating highly processed, chemical laden, toxic Frakenfood.

In my daughter’s defense, she has come a long way. The fact that she went to the store to purchase organic celery is commendable. She is taking steps in the right direction. This bug incident is just one small detour in her journey to healthier eating.

Next, I’ll try to get her to eat a type of lettuce other than iceberg…