Food blogger Justin Cascio wants men to eat better, and the first step is learning to cook.
On Salon.com, Emma Mustich talks to Tracie McMillan, the author of “The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table,” about whether we have the inalienable right to eat fresh food. While in Thomas Jefferson’s day, the poor ate less fresh food than the rich, now most American single guys spend less than one percent of their income on fresh produce, but up to half their food dollars on eating out.
Working class people get apathetic about making healthy food choices, which is why we have to make the food that is available, better than what we’ve got. If you’re in an office, chances are you have more ready access to a soft drink and a candy bar than you do to a salad. It’s not our choices that are to blame, says McMillan, but the system that allows industry to feed us in ways that are unhealthy, unregulated, and unsustainable. To fix our diets, we have to fix the system.
That doesn’t mean you have to wait for your drive-through to start serving kale to start eating better. You can control what you eat, and spend less, by cooking for yourself. Don’t know how yet? Start by learning to make just one dish that you like to eat, and expand your repertoire from there.
Need more reasons to head for the kitchen instead of the takeout menus? Here’s reason #5 you should learn to cook, from Summer Tomato’s “8 Reasons Regular Guys Should Learn to Cook”: “Food Network star Guy Fieri has bad hair, bad clothes and douchey sunglasses, but the dude knows how to cook. Are you going to let him upstage you like that? Of course you aren’t.”
I think cooking also gets easier as you learn. You start to learn what things might go well together and learn to be creative with making meals. I’m pretty horrible with being creative, I like following recipes, but my boyfriend is very good at taking 3 things from the fridge that are about to go bad and turning them into a fantastic meal. And he’s not a chef or anything, he only recently started becoming interested in cooking after he moved off-campus into an apartment with a friend who is a very serious cook.
@ Morgan — at issue is the origin of the produce at Wal-Mart. This article is quite terse, and there’s a lot out there about all of this. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when the subsidy system makes a cheeseburger cheaper than a pound of bok choy.
what does this have to do with Walmart? You can buy fresh produce at Walmart…
Not my Walmarts. No fresh. Freezer case is mostly prepared foods full of sodium. Aisles a bit better, cereal, rice, but a lot of prepared food there too.
Yeah, I cook very little but I still eat pretty healthy. I eat largely a raw organic diet. My wife “cooks” for the family but only very healthy meals. Our version of “cooking” includes making interesting salads, green smoothies, and dozens of other healthy meals. It works well for us.
Drinking something green? Not so good. Eating green things, that’s cool. But then again there is the assumption that men don’t cook. Iron cheff? ummmm, mostly men? Chopped? Usually three guys and one gal? Cheif cook in my house? ME = man who has several heart healthy cook books as well as cook books for diabetics.
As a farmer, and a person with a kitchen garden, I would encourage everyone to expand the range you have of fresh ingredients. Even a jar of pesto and spaghetti is okay, but OMG, spaghetti with fresh basil, some parm, and olive oil, throw in some kalamatas and home grown or from the farm tomatoes, yee-hah!~
+1
🙂