Yesterday, Ryan and I went shopping for breakfast to eat on our road trip. We opted for bagels because they travel well and they satiate. After scrupulously reading all of the bagel labels to find the one without a lot of sugar, we finally settled for a generic whole wheat bagel.
Whole wheat has got to be healthy and fibrous right? Wrong! The next morning, as I pulled two bagels out of the bag and proceeded to break the two pre-cut slices apart, I felt revulsion rise within me. These bagels had a glossy, gummy, manufactured look that made me distrust their integrity.
As I smothered organic peanut butter over one half, I glanced at the bagels food label and read the appalling fact that the third ingredient in these 'whole wheat' bagels is High Fructose Corn Syrup. WHAT!?!
First, I was shocked, not because food manufacturers inject whole wheat bagels with poisonous HFCS ( I knew this already), but shocked that this package had innocently made it into my shopping basket after I had mindfully steering away from bagels with added sugar, I had let the most potent and toxic of sugar additives slip past my scrutiny. After forgiving myself for paying to eat garbage for breakfast, I gloomily took a bite from my prepared bagel.
After taking a bite from my bagel, I was surprised at its lack of flavor. It had no real taste. I chewed on the gummy, gooey, uniformed dough with little pleasure or satisfaction. Although a bread-like substance, it did not taste of yeast or even grain. It mostly tasted like peanut butter.
As I thought more about it, I became upset and not because I willingly ate bagels with added HFCS for breakfast (because they did fill my hunger) but for the fact that bagels have HFCS in the first place and that no matter how many packages I read, all bagels have HFCS or added sugar. I became angry that such a simple and wholesome food as bread has been degraded for convenience and efficiency. To ancient civilizations bread was the source of life and these civilizations made it with a simple mixture of water, yeast, grain, and salt. I expect gummy candies and soft drinks to have high amounts of added HFCS, because that is how they are made, there is nothing 'real' or 'whole' about these foods, so when I buy them, I know without a doubt, exactly what I am paying for. Bread, on the other hand, labeled as 'whole' wheat made primarily out of grain and HFCS has little 'real' about it. I expect faux foods to carry this toxin, I do not expect it to be a common ingredient in my bread.
These bagels had no real taste, no real nutrition, more like cake than bread, and we buy them every day to feed ourselves and our children because its cheap food and sometimes its our only option. This must end.
Interestingly, the French Revolution reportedly broke out after Marie Antoinette insensitively and condescendingly exclaimed, "Let them eat cake!" in response to her hearing that the French people were starving to death because of the outrageously high price of bread. The French responded to her apathy with a fight for liberty, equality, and fraternity. And they not only succeeded in achieving these ideals, they also dethroned and decapitated Marie Antoinette, and they lowered the price of bread. (In many ways, they got their cake and ate it to...).
In America today, Marie Antoinette's words, spoken more than two hundred years ago, have sadly come to fruition because of our apathy. Sadly most of the food we find in the grocery stores is not food but engineered, heavily sweetened, or heavily salted psuedo-food that satiates without nourishing. Much like the French people of 1789, we are starving to death because we have traded in wholesome bread for cake--- and it is making us a sick and fat nation. It is our turn to step up and fight for our right to eat good food.
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