Kale? No thanks! I’ll stick to my coffee…

As I gulp down the foul tasting smoothie which reminds me of pulverised green tree frog or toxic algae bloom, I try to ignore more bad news on what is ‘supposedly’ meant to be good for me. For example, kale was the new superfood, until we found out that eaten raw it will build up your oxalic acid intake (which is bad) apparently we are meant to lightly cook it first. If the experts think Im going to lightly steam my kale first at 7am they have another think coming.

So I swallow the stuff, consisting of kale, ginger, turmeric, half a banana, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, almonds, iodine, chia seeds, flax seeds, goji berries, hemp seeds, spirulina and a dollop of coconut oil for good measure. I whizz it all up in the Nutribullet with filtered water and gurgle it down. I do this most mornings, and supposedly I look young, vital and have a spring in my step. The truth is that I’m knackered by 11am and ready for some seriously restorative coffee drinking along with a toxic tim tam.

We hear about these brilliant super foods which will give us energy, longevity and better health, and then a few weeks/months/years later we find out that it is toxic and we shouldn’t be consuming it. Remember when we all went on the low fat bandwagon. It had to be good for us, the ‘experts’ said so, didn’t they? And the experts cant be wrong, can they? And they’re not wrong, that is for the period of time that they are ‘right’ and we all follow them like browns cows. Then suddenly the diet myths are debunked. Margarine is a chemical cocktail of horror, low fat yogurt is made palatable by large amounts of sugar so no wonder I wasn’t loosing any weight.

So we return to good old great tasting butter with relish and the skim milk is out the window. Then I read the next findings, milk is considered to be bad for us and actually leaches the calcium that we need from our bones? Is this true or true for the next few weeks? And then we have the poor old cattle which bring us our steak. Are they grass fed or fed with GMO/chemical laden grain? Apparently the grass fed beasts produce less ‘stressed’ meat. I feel stressed just thinking about it. We are encouraged to eat strange sounding foods like quinoa, gluten free flour and macca powder. Nothing is safe. Even chocolate must be 90% cacao and fair trade derived with no palm oil from deforested palm oil trees and homeless orang-utans.

Free range eggs from chooks that have got their claws and beaks into some dust, insects and grass and looked up to see the sunlight before going off to bed. Sow stall free bacon from pigs that have not been forcibly mated, imported berries that have not been grown in Chinese sewerage, food miles on massive articulated trucks, mercury laden deep sea fish, GMO’s, chemical spraying, organic or local grown, food combining, eek the list just goes on and on. The buzz words become the ‘why bother’ words. Its just all too hard.

Once upon a time we got some veg from the garden or the shops and had spuds, peas, carrots and a few nice grilled chops for dinner. We had some nice ice-cream and jelly for desert and didn’t worry that the tinned fruit came from a BPA lined tin or that the jelly came from horse’s hooves. Our cuppa wasn’t made from organic, unbleached trade aid tea bags and our coffee just came from granules in a jar. Our bread was white and bouncy, and our jam was fruit and berries with a whole lot of white sugar. Cakes were flour, sugar and eggs and we had one slice for afternoon tea as we were all pretty active so didn’t put on weight. Yet insidiously chemical catastrophes have inveigled themselves into our food and when I look at obese young women loading their trollies with soft drink, frozen pizza and convenience foods I admit I am saddened by this as their overweight and undernourished kids listlessly hang from the trolly or squirm with chemical induced energy. Is it too late to get back to sensible, well balanced eating which does not require a degree in chemistry to understand or a bank heist to afford.

Alas, it is all just a bit too hard for this over sixty year old. I will keep drinking the pond slime as it’s a sort of insurance that might stave off some of the ills of ageing, but it’s going to take some restraint to refrain from the flat white and caramel slice which just might be my afternoon tea if I’m lucky.