It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician. ~Meryl Streep

For those of you who missed it, this past week’s episode of Top Chef was all about healthy cooking and healthy eating. It seems like we are constantly hearing stories these days about increasing obesity rates, especially in children, not to mention other health problems that go along with eating well, or rather, not eating well.

There really doesn’t seem to be any point in denying the problem’s existence. We can no longer chalk it up to personal body image conflicts, though these certainly don’t help matters. So then, what has caused this collective weight gain?
Eating healthfully is not a one step process. Our food journeys through stages of production and harvesting, preservation and handling, buying, preparing, and lastly consuming.
Let’s start at the beginning. Now, I am no expert, but lets see if we can track one food item from beginning to end. How about an apple.
We start at the orchard. There is a seed, and skipping the birds and bees of plant growth, we will eventually have an apple tree. But wait- what about the pests? We might spray a pesticide to ward off those nasty insects. And to ward off all the weeds that might out-compete the tree itself, we add some herbicides to the mix. Nothing can prevent the apple from growing in peace- at least until it is pickin’ time.
This is where it starts to get complicated. The apple has a variety of directions to go, each of which I would like to explore a little.

1. The beautifully plump, red apple takes a short drive down the dusty sunlit lane to a roadside fruit stand. There it is bought, washed, and consumed for a light and healthy afternoon snack. Simple enough, no?
2. That same red apple gets packed into bushels of produce, placed on a truck and shipped 200 miles away. The apple arrives, a little older, and a little bruised, perhaps, but relatively little harm was done (except for the gas emissions resulting from the truck ride). That apple is bought, taken home, eaten for an afternoon snack, or perhaps baked into a pie. That pie, combined with all that butter and sugar (trust me- there’s a lot of both), tastes mighty delicious. One after-dinner slice quickly turns into 3, each decreasing in size, but 3 nonetheless. True, the fruit has vitamins that are definitely good for you, but the butter and sugar are also good for those love handles.
3. That same apple from that orchard gets shipped off to the nearest juice-making factory. They do whatever they do at those types of places, and the next time we see that apple it is in juice form. But don’t forget about the sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup that got mixed in, too. Adds to the flavor, you know- and the tummy.

Food has a variety of avenues towards becoming our enemy these days.
There is always a danger these days of unhealthy pesticides and the like, which affect our heath in different ways- not necessarily in weight gain or cholesterol, but in chemical balances.
There are health dangers in the ways we prepare our food. Often we use too much of certain ingredients, especially in places where substitution is possible. Why not cook with olive oil instead of a stick of butter or find another condiment to use instead of mayonnaise? (Even if Hellman’s claims the health benefits of its product, I am just not a fan of mayonnaise at all.) How about holding back on the amount of sauce you slather across those ribs, or on top of those Chinese noodles.
With all the processing our food goes through these days, you can never really be sure of what you are eating. High fructose corn syrup is one ingredient that I think everyone can live without.

One of the best ways to insure healthy eating is to make your food yourself. I know this is impossible in certain cases- not everybody has a garden for fresh fruits and veggies. But you can make sure that what you make with your food has healthy ingredients, is cooked in a healthy manner, and most of all, you can make sure that your meals have enough of each food group- as cliché as that sounds.