Fast food

Today, let's zoom in a little and discuss a more everyday life matter.

I'd like to feed the debate about the low quality of American food and the much higher quality of the average French meal (as everybody knows.)


More on typical Parisian hyper carbohydrate over there.

Now, about the Minnesotan average meal...

...well, it's not that it's not healthy.

Where I buy my food, in that upper middle-class area of Minneapolis they call "Uptown" (Frenchies, don't start building up theories, "DOWNtown" is even more well-off), roughly everything that sells at the grocery store around the corner is certified organic.

In fact, some people here are so concerned about eating healthy food that in that grocery store, they sell a fair amount of their ORGANIC fruits and vegetables pre-PEELED, including BABY carrots ! (Guys, what don't you understand in "The peel is the part of fruits and vegetables that contains the most vitamins and trace elements" ?!) They also spray their fresh produce section every other minute with what I assume is water, to make sure that all the nutritive elements left are rinsed away.

But just in case a few of these suspect micro-whatevers have escaped deep cleansing at that point...


... well-informed, open-minded, progressive people like the person who let me her apartment still have special products in their kitchen cupboards to DETOXIFY fruits and vegetables before they eat them !!!

The label on the one I found at her place specifies that it's made of natural ingredients and its purpose is to "remove pesticides, chemical, heavy metals, dirt, wax and bacteria" of the surface of fruits and vegetables. OK. But I mean, if they're ORGANIC... ?!! And already PEELED ???
And if not, do you really think you can avoid ingesting pesticides simply by washing the SURFACE of your food ?

[If you answered "yes" to the previous question, please click on this link, then click on "voies d'exposition" on the animation.]

The thing contains -I quote- "Water, Surfactant (plant derived), Citric Acid." In other terms, it's basically diluted lemon juice. Plus a little detergent. Which probably explains why on the aerosol bottle, it also says "Caution : Eye irritant. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN."
And why, all in all, these solutions do no better than tap water when it comes to eliminating germs and toxins, according to recent scientific experiments -you can go directly to the three bottom lines headed "Summary". In fact, certain experiments say these products sometimes "do worse" than plain tap water and apparently, the United States Department of Agriculture recommends not to use any of those, but to "wash fresh produce under cold running tap water".

At this point, I'd like to address a message to my health-concerned friends, whether American or not : "Don't worry, folks ! Fruits and vegetables are NOT DIRTY ! They're just FOOD !!! Some of them grow in the ground, but THAT'S OK !"

And you know what ? Actually, I don't think the average American meal is that unhealthy compared to the French one.

It's just twice the size.


I will be working out for a while.