A history of warfare, from WWII to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict.

Found this kind of cool, kind of scary link here - 10 “Healthy” Foods That Can Kill You, and it got me on my high horse. (by the way the rest of that site is pretty good, too.)

Why do we eat so much crap? And with that sentence, I am empasizing “crap” and not “so much,” since we all know that eating too much is stupid - but what we’re eating is alarming.

My wife and I went through 7 years of infertility between our first and second child. Now, trying was FUN, mind you - but we wanted a baby and we started looking around at all sorts of alternative methods to aid our fertility. I wore boxer shorts, I stayed out of hot tubs, we did in vitro, laproscopic surgeries, weird positions (I didn’t mind that part one bit) and all sorts of other stuff. Thousands and thousands of dollars later, and we had pretty much given up - until we spent 24 bucks on a book. We found that my wife’s estrogen balance had been thrown off, making it impossible to sustain a pregnancy, much less even getting pregnant. The cause? Her liver, which was all sorts of messed up because of our typical American diet. 2 babies later, and we’ve discovered that the medical community was wrong - and our diet was even wronger. (is that a word?)

I’ll get into my kidneys and gall bladder if you’re interested…

Why am I telling you all this stuff? Because I have no internal censoring device (see the Naked Bike Ride Ad for proof,) plus I have a serious concern for our kids and our society because of what we’re eating. It’s just not right, and it’s really pointless.

The number of preservatives we eat is ABSURD. Hormones in everything. Fat, calories and sugars are running amok. Plus, we spend far, far too much for crappy food - and it’s all in the name of convenience. We want our food fast so we don’t have to slow down and spend the 15 minutes it takes to make fresh, decent food.

I try to cook as much from scratch as I can. We still eat the occasional fast food, and we still eat out - but we try and we reduce our dependence on CRAP food as much as possible.

So, Freaks - I beg you to cook for yourself and your families as much as you can. It doesn’t take that much time - and it doesn’t take much money, either. We feed a family of 5 for about $80-100 a week on average. And we eat well. We’re generally healthy and we eat good food.

Our American diets are stupid, and we’ll all pay the price for it. Increased health care costs, buying bigger pants and paying $6 for a crappy combo.

If you’d like, I have a great chicken soup recipe that will feed you for several days for about $7. We all eat off it for at least 3 meals - plus, it’s tasty. Even if I do say so myself. So - to the end of making a difference, I’m starting a new blog that I hope to get some restauranteurs interested in - a recipe blog. If you have one, let me know and we’ll put it up. Otherwise, I’ll talk to myself and pass my recipes down to my kids via FreakinAsheville.com…

So there, I’ll step down off my soap box and get back to work. More cynnical Jimdiggity tomorrow…