Real Foodies: How We Are Marginalized and Why We Shouldn't Be

We are the weirdos, the snobs, the strict ones. We are Real Foodies. And so many people try to make us feel wrong, or weird, or fringe. Some of us revel in it, making revolution where none need be. But why do we feel the need to act like the drama geeks of the nutrition world (full disclosure: I was a drama geek in high school... and college)? Why are we constantly treated as inferior or difficult by the cheerleaders and football players of the industrial food system?

Marketing. America is the land of marketing, of logos. Quick, think of some bold, graphic food logos or packaging. Were they American? Did you think of the golden arches? Of that pigtailed red-headed girl on the Wendy's sign? Of the red bullseye? We are getting our food choice from advertising executives and industrial-food shills, rather than from the home wisdom that served our ancestors for millennia. But we are the weird ones, because we turn our noses up at fast-food for lunch in favor of the lunch we packed with love and thought. Why is it considered an eating disorder to put some thought into your food ahead of time? Perhaps if more people were concerned with planning meals and eating at home, we would have found some of the small economic cutbacks easier (full disclosure: the economic crisis did not hit me -- I don't even make enough money to be furloughed at my university).

We should not have to "fight back" or create a food "revolution." Because we are not revolutionary. We are the ones who are trying to get a crazy, upside-down world back to sanity. Seriously, what do you think our ancestors would think of most of our food? Even if you remove all the obvious monstrosities of modern food science, they would be aghast that so many of us eat so many of our meals prepared outside the home. Now that we have television, and computers, and mp3 players, and so many other ways to stimulate ourselves, we find ourselves cutting back on the time we spend preparing and enjoying one of the basic needs of life. Why not cut out an hour of TV at night and make a really special dinner? Or wake up and prepare a loaf of bread instead of checking your email right away?

Why have we outsourced our health while using the time we save to further our sedentary lifestyles? You may think I'm weird, but your great-grandmother thinks you're the weird one.