To eat or Not to eat, that is the question...

Ok, this is a vent.

Articles and websites like the following are starting to get on my nerves:

• The numerous news stories on the "poison milk scandal"
• http://www.smh.com.au/news/health/nuts-allergy-advice-feeding-the-crisis/2008/09/25/1222217431065.html
• http://cleanerplateclub.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/sweet-surprise-the-corn-industry-apparently-doesnt-know-whats-wrong-with-high-fructose-corn-syrup-but-i-do/
• http://www.sweetsurprise.com/
• etc. etc. etc.
• such as the eat fish/don't eat too much fish debate...

Start solids early? Start them late? Start on very few choices or just start them on the lot? Toilet training too early will harm their self-esteem?? As my dad was saying, in the "good old days" who ever heard of the concept of food allergies? He certainly didn't know of anyone that had them? Why the heck is it that these days there are so many cases of fatal allegies in people when we are being more "awared" and "careful"?

In our generation and generations before us, we all grew up, more or less healthy to a point of being a functional member of society.

I grew up with:

• powdered formula milk,
  
• cots with led-laced paint,
  
• sleeping with pillows and on our tummies while being covered in a mountain of covers in winter
• 2nd hand smoke
• drinking alcohol at a tender age of under 10 (granted it was like 1% alcohol)
• Drinking water when I was 2 months old
• having rice cereal in my bottle at 2 weeks old
• eating eggs and all sort of meat and vegies by 6 months old
• learned to walk in non-AUS-standard complying wooden walkers
• was potty trained by a year old
  
• I ate pretty much everything that was put in front of me
• I definitely drank heaps of fruit juice...

Everyday, there are new research/findings on what we should or should not eat, how everything around us will eventually kill us (although just being born, will eventually kill us anyhow), or how much evironmental footprint each of us is leaving on this planet just by existing. So, what to eat, and what to feed our children? Is it because that people have lost the ability to use their common sense and started to feed their babies on a diet of nothing but potato chips (read that story in MX a couple of months ago)? Or was it because companies have lost all sense of morality and started adding not only cheap substitutes but poison (See the poison milk powders in China) to the foods and other products they make?

I want to believe that most of us is capable of using our brains, afterall, it took millions of years to get our brains the size that they are today. I want to believe that companies don't JUST want to make money, that some maybe still have a thread of humanity left (afterall, they are run by humans, aren't they?), and try to do the right thing. But the world is so so F***ED UP right now, that everyday, news stories are making me doubt it all...

Well, I will continue to feed my baby fruit juice, I will continue to supplement her with formula (just not the "made in China" variety), I will continue to make sure she has a balance diet (even including sugar, potato chips, fish, nuts etc. etc.) I will however make sure I make most of her food, and as she gets older, to keep her away from processed food and fast foods as much as possible. Personally, I don't believe any particular food is evil, be it sugar, corn syrup, salt etc. I do however believe eating everything in moderation.

I solemly swear from now on to filter out media hypes about what to eat and what not to eat. I shall live my life with moderation in diet, exercise and hard work. I shall teach my children to do the same.

I do sincerely wish though that companies and the people who run them can find it in themselves to do the right thing and not poison our children...