Opinion

Are greens worth the green?

Healthy food becomes more expensive, less appealing

By Sean O'Mara

Posted on Sept. 21, 2006, at 12:00 a.m.

Health foods are a multibillion dollar a year industry in the United States. We see them every day, either on commercials or on the Internet, or when we’re buying food in the grocery store. I too have recently decided to try to eat healthier, giving up my beloved meat for grass, twigs, dirt and whatever else they put in that stuff.

My freshman year, I nearly got a standing ovation from my friends at Stodder Commons when I got a salad one day. So off to Hannaford and Sam’s Club I went and bought all the vegetables, fruits, cereal and rice cakes money could buy and I’ve actually been eating them. I’ve only run into one small problem. All the food I have has less fat and calories, but does that matter if I end up eating double or triple in health food than I would have eaten in regular food? Am I really ahead of the game if instead of a small package of Oreos, I gorge myself on an entire bag of Pirate’s Booty? What about having four or five bowls of Honey Bunches of Oats instead of one bowl of Easy Mac?

I’m a psychology major, not a nutrition major, so my idea of fruit and vegetables is that they are sugar water in various shapes, sizes and colors. I guess I just don’t get why this food doesn’t seem to hit the spot.

I find myself, even now, sitting at a desk strewn with the discarded husks and pits of plant products that I’ve eaten in the last hour, and still I just end up hungry. Is it really just the fat from meat that fills one up, or is there some chemical they could isolate and inject into a vegetable? What about artificially flavoring fruits?

Call me crazy, but I think that we should take some of the money we have previously invested in propping up dictatorships around the world and spend it growing bananas that taste like pot roast.

As the world’s only superpower, we have the ability, nay, the responsibility to lead the way in obscure fields of science like this. Basically, I just need something more from health food.

For example, what is the deal with those rice cakes? If I was stranded on an island with a crate of rice cakes, I doubt I would survive. I would probably have better luck eating the crate. I probably would not notice a difference between the rice cakes and the Styrofoam packing peanuts.

I was even more dismayed by the discovery that I could have purchased a steak for less money than a large bag of lettuce.

What happened? Have I not eliminated a whole step here? I’ve eliminated the middleman, or middle-bovine if you will, and gone straight to the plant. So why doesn’t it cost less? I would imagine it takes less work to raise plants as opposed to animals, while I’m already out on this limb of things I don’t know anything about.

What I want them to do is take the extra money they are obviously making on health food, and make food that makes me feel like I’ve actually eaten something.

Sean O’Mara is a third-year psychology major.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 21st, 2006, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.