While my boys were growing up, the wave
hit. Food City, Bi-Lo and Kroger all got very small “health food” sections. I would visit every time I went to these stores, hoping for some new product to take home. Eventually, we even got natural and sometimes organic Hamburger Helper, the epitome of processed, mainstream dinner in a box! Now almost all the biggest and worst commercial brands have a “healthy” or “organic” version of their most famous “foods.” There are healthy body and household soaps, cleaners, candy, snacks, frozen meals, canned foods, pretty much anything you could want, right there in the regular stores and in the regu- lar aisles, not relegated to a little, out-of-the way, 4-foot section of shelf space that makes us feel like segregated freaks. Gone are the days of buying a huge 50-
pound bag of some unusual co-op grain and splitting it with all your friends or eating it for the rest of the year, even after it gets infested with weevils or pantry moths. My dad would say bugs added extra protein, as he cooked it, bugs included. Now, you can just go down to the same store everyone else goes to, although I still pre- fer to support coops and the mom and pop stores.
Now is a much easier time to get healthy.
The big agriculture companies know that people are more aware and health-conscious. They started losing their market share and didn’t like it one bit. They want it all and they want it now! So, they made their own products and bought out a lot of the companies that were doing it “healthier.” Beware! Many of the products that claim to be healthy are not! We still have to take responsibility and read the labels! Look for hid- den sugars and chemicals some PR firm re- named.
When my kids were young, there weren’t
very many options, but we did develop some fa- vorites. My adult children still look for the Hain Carrot Chips we kept as a staple, but I have to order them online. Almost none of their friends would even entertain the notion of trying them or any of the other weird, hippie items at our house. I always made them have at least one bite of something we were having for dinner, but I kept backups for the really picky kids. Once in a while there was the daring friend who tried and
liked our weird stuff. Much to my delight, they would go home and ask their parents to buy it for them afterwards. Maybe now, they’re standing in the
healthy section of the grocery store, thinking about weird mom that cared about their health and made them try weird stuff. Maybe they smile when they’re buying that healthy food for their own kids. My dad may be smiling too, sat- isfied with his little contribution, and watching the evolution of his junk-food junkie. See Daddy?! I really was listening when you said I would kill my pancreas if I kept eating all that sugar! I still struggle, and even though I proba- bly made some lame defensive comment at the time, I am now saying that to my kids and get- ting “ignored” and making them annoyed with my caring. Funny how those things re-cycle. Maybe
my dad is somewhere looking on and singing one of the songs he played when I was growing up. In his signature, out-of-tune voice I hear “We are stardust, we are golden. And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.” After all, if not for him, there wouldn’t be “The Rock-n-Roll Health Chick” trying to make you and the world healthier! It is now easier than ever for you to make better choices. So, please do! Rock on and take back your health! •
Electra (The Rock-n- Roll Health Chick) is an Integrative Health and Nutrition Consultant and Coach, specializing in the health of musi- cians. She is the co-cre- ator and host of “Rockin’ Your Health,” which is heard on FM radio, is streaming on www.ElectraLandRa-
dio.net and is archived
at
www.OurHealthRevolution.net/radio. You can find her online at ElectraLandRa-
dio.net, on Face Book at ElectraLand Pro- ductions and Rockin’ Your Health Radio.
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