* FOOD PORN!*

   Let me be the first one that admits that I am a big time foodie. A foodie, you know someone who is passionate about great food. I love gourmet ingredients put together skillfully into masterpieces to be savored and enjoyed. And looking on the internet and bookstores and gourmet grocery stores makes me believe that I am not the only one. Cookbooks top the charts of national best-sellers and food blogs are so successful that they make their owners into celebrities. Customers pay huge bucks for fancy salt or 2 truffles imported from this country or that. Let's face it, our society is obsessed with food. But on the other hand our society also chastises food obsessions. This creates a conflict where people want to talk and read and post about food, but they don't want to be seen as constantly thinking about food for the fear of having others criticize them. Enter "but it's OK, because it's healthy" trend.


   I see this trend all over the internet. People post numerous recipes and "how-to's" on their blogs and social media pages. Many of these are "healthified" versions of ordinary recipes. I don't think many people would be brave enough to post a recipe for ordinary pancakes or mashed potatoes, but somehow making them with coconut oil, or egg-free, or adding sweet potatoes to the mix makes them OK to be flaunted on the internet.

   Don't get me wrong, there are numerous people with true food allergies that need special diet recipes to allow for them to enjoy some of the foods that others can. After all, Girly Monkey had a dairy allergy for 5 years of her young life. She was never able to enjoy regular ice-cream, or whipping cream, or chocolate mousse. But thanks to many wonderful recipes by skilled allergy cooks she was able to have homemade sorbet, and coconut whipping cream, and chocolate mousse made from avocados. She was able to feel normal at large family dinners thanks to me making dairy-free versions of what everyone else was having and bringing it with us to the family dinners.

   When I was pregnant with Little Monkey I developed pregnancy-induced vegetarianism. It meant that I was put off by anything that had meat in it, and it would make me sick. This lasted after I delivered Little Monkey and eventually I deemed myself a pescetarian (vegetarian that only ate fish and seafood). I had no meat products for 3 years, and it made family dinners like Thanksgiving, or Christmas very challenging. Not only did we not consume any dairy, but now I was off meat too. I was able to make some things using non-meat ingredients, following .... you guessed this, the many "healthy" recipes on the internet and in cook books. When I had a craving for sausage I was able to make meat-free one based on vital wheat gluten and veggies. When I wanted gravy I was able to make mock-beef gravy using many different ingredients and spices. I have to say that I got pretty good at it thanks to many months of practicing those fabulous recipes. And I am truly thankful for all those cooks who experimented in their kitchens so that I could make foods that would not make me or Girly Monkey sick.

   But this is not about those with food allergies. It's not even about people with food preferences. It's about all those "experts" expressing opinions about which foods are "better" for you. Regular cookies are out but the new ones made with oatmeal, sweetened with stevia, made with no butter are all the rage and since they are "healthy" go ahead and pig out on them every day. And don't even get me started on all the "special diet" diets. What are you in the mood for today? There is a diet du jour for you at every corner. Never been a fan of red meat, well how about listening to all those "vegetarian experts" tell you why not eating meat is best? Don't like cooking, how about "raw diet experts" letting you know that it's better for you anyways. Maybe you actually love meat and growing up, never understood why your mother made you eat that rice on you plate as opposed to giving you more meat. Guess what, there is a "paleo diet expert" to reinforce that you were right all along and that you never needed to eat that grain in the first place. And they all sound so very convincing. Pages of their books are filled with big, scientific words that make biology textbooks read like "Good Night Moon" book. Plus they have all those colorful pictures of all their recipes that make you want to rip out pages and consume them. How could an average Joe or Jane not believe in everything that the "experts" are saying?

   The problem is that there are too many "experts". And they don't agree on anything except the fact that they all believe that THEY are correct. Many of these so called experts know nothing about food except for the fact that they have tried some form of a diet and it worked for them (to loose weight, alleviate some symptoms, or feel better). But they have beautifully illustrated books or blog pages filled with artfully arranged (read "enhanced") photos of dishes to make even the least domestically-inclined man or a woman want to break out their Kitchen Aid out of it's original box and attempt to make it. And please don't attempt to contradict their findings since these dictators ... I mean "food experts" don't take to criticism well. You insult their family and you get a warning, you insult their knowledge of food  and you are banished from their presence. See, many of these "experts" believe that their way of eating (read "diet plan") is the only one fit for "smart" people who know what is best for them, and if you don't believe it then you must be too dumb to see it. My question is how did we ever survive for all these thousands of years without "food experts" telling us how to eat, what to eat, and when to eat? I bet a farmer in ancient Egypt didn't change his eating habits every week based on the new fad diet. I can just see a hunter 10000 years ago say to his hunting buddy, "I know that this buffalo is the first kill in 5 days but Joe from the tribe over the mountains said that buffaloes are really bad for you and that genetically we were never fit to eat them, so let's try for something else instead or starve trying!"

   The problem is not that we have not enough "healthy" foods to eat but that we have too many food choices to begin with. Diets are a problem of the wealthy! All over the world, there are people dying of starvation but in first world countries we have the luxury to sift through foods until we find some that we like, and then we justify eating that with quoting "food experts". Diets are not the problem of people who don't have enough food. Diets are a problem of people who have too much! Maybe if we all stopped buying into all these "fad diet experts" and started eating normal, whole, unprocessed (read "not commercially prepared") foods, and stopped spending our money on the newest "it's-the-only-diet-you'll-ever-need" books filled with pictures of "food porn", then we would have more money to buy a bowl of rice for that little, malnourished boy in Africa who really couldn't care less that his genetic make up does not support eating grains. He would probably take that "unhealthy" cookie off your hand too!