I was relatively healthy until my wife returned to school. You see, instead of becoming a librarian (which was the plan all along), she became a nurse.
My health hasn’t changed, but now I’m preoccupied by the health risks of everything. Alisa knows too much about what drives The Body Machine. And she says she wants me to live a long time.
But I don’t know what’s good for me. This is a special bother when it comes to food. Alisa tells me that Frosted Flakes are deadlier than Honey Nut Cheerios, but the labels claim equal deadliness. So why can’t I have Frosted Flakes? They’re terrrific.
It’s not just me
Apparently, according to “Is It Healthy? Food Rating Systems Battle It Out” by Andrew Martin in The New York Times, a lot of us are feeling frenzied by the decisions in the supermarket.
It makes me wonder about the consumer ethics:
Food used to be either “food” or “health food.” And there was “ethnic food.” Now, however, “health food” is invading the lives of most of America, the ones who always just ate “food.”
Who really knows what any of this means? Food is labeled as “smart” or “healthy” or “gut fer ya” without any standard nomenclature.
Do we even know what is healthy? Cigarettes used to be good for us. Even history’s most popular U.S. president once encouraged us to smoke. When Woody Allen comes back as the Sleeper, will we have realized that broccoli is deadly?
Now, buying groceries is more than figuring out how to feed the folks at home with tasty grub. Now, you are either making folks immortal or you are trying to kill them.
In my life, this all began with peanut butter (“Choosy Mothers Choose Jif”) — and toothpaste (Four out of five dentists prefer Crest”).
Where is it going?
I know where it’s going. If I want Frosted Flakes, I have to keep doing the family grocery shopping.