Changing the way one eats

The industrial method of food production in our country is creating a widening gap between real food and mass-produced, genetically altered fake-food. The food found at the local grocer is wrapped in plastic, waxed, canned, boxed or shrink-wrapped and is chemically and genetically altered to grow faster, look identical to all other food and force-grown in unnaturally mass produced factories with names like "Farm Fresh" and "Country Grown."

These unnatural and unhealthy foods are consumed in minivans and SUVs heading to soccer games, swim lessons or dance class. Engineered food is eaten at coffee tables and in bedrooms watching reruns of, "Sponge Bob Square Pants," or while playing inactive, mindless and passive video games. Stop the madness!

I offer six behavioral changes to save our children, their mental and physical health as well as our culinary sanity.

1. Invite our children into the kitchen. Children who prepare their own food eat more adventurously and welcome new flavors into their diet. If your child is a picky eater, allow them to shop and prepare the family meal with you.

Instead of fast food chicken nuggets dipped in ranch dressing teach your child the "Slow Food," method of eating and prepare panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) breaded baked chicken with a Thai dipping sauce instead. Eating healthy begins with learning how food is made and sampling new flavors. Avoid fast food and start a "Slow Food," movement in your family.

When a child works with their hands they tend to also move their mouth. If your child struggles to talk about their day at school, escort them into the kitchen and the words will come. Other advantages of children cooking include learning measurement, math conversions, sanitation, manual dexterity, science, safety and manners.

2. One needs to grow and eat locally. The 100-mile diet focuses on the bistro concept of eating. The bistro concept suggests the food we eat be grown locally and consumed seasonally. Perfectly round and red hydroponically grown tomatoes taste nothing like the earth grown backyard, sweetly misshapen heirlooms from which they were genetically designed.

If it's not in-season, it should not be eaten, with one exception - the frozen, canned or dried vegetables, fruits and herbs from our summer gardens or from local farmers are wonderful alternatives when fresh fruits and vegetables cannot be found.

Children reach puberty at a young age. Most biologists agree ingesting meat treated with hormones cause early onset of puberty. Pesticides and herbicides, genetically reengineering and growth hormones have no place in a healthy diet. To avoid unnatural food, consider growing or raising your own food. Growing one's own food requires a few pots, seed, water and some dirt. Hundreds of dollars of food can be grown from a small dollar investment.

3. Sit down and eat as a family. Eating as a family welcomes conversation, offer opportunity to teach manners and dining etiquette and is a great time to introduce new foods to a child. Eating together saves money and saves lives. The averages family shares 46 percent of their food budget with restaurant owners. Teens who eat four or more meals with their family a week have higher grades than their solo-eating peers and children who eat at their dining table five or more days a week have lower rates of smoking, drinking and illegal drug use compared to families which eat fewer meals per week together.

4. We need to change our school lunch program. Education should not end when children leave their classroom. Options for improvement include teaching children the source of their food, using locally grown produce and protein, field trips to farms and ranches, using reusable containers and eliminating waste and serving foods which promote thinking and brain maturation. Other options include implementing a "Farm to School," program, serving meals family-style in the cafeteria, promoting manners and eliminating individual service disposable plastic containers.

A teacher in Illinois is eating school lunch for a year and blogging about it (http://fedupwithschoollunch.blogspot.com/). The blog offers a first-person view of unhealthy eating. To view trends in changing the school lunch program visit http://www.ecoliteracy.org/downloads/rethinking-school-lunch-guide.

5. Get back to the earth - garden, raise chickens, shop local farmer markets, visit local farms, orchards, vineyards and ranches. A new movement called, "Urban Poultry," promotes raising laying hens in backyards of urban areas. Eggs from hens allowed to move in their environment and feed naturally have dark orange yolks, thick shells and taste as an egg should - deliciously creamy. I order my eggs from a local small farm. Cracking open hard-shelled green, brown and speckled eggs with my granddaughters makes everyday feel like Easter morning.

6. Eat sustainable foods - food that is healthy for consumers and animals, does not harm the environment, is humane for workers, respects animals, provides a fair wage for the farmer and supports and enhances rural communities is sustainable food. Mass grown, industrially prepared food hurts everyone - the consumer, worker, environment and animal.

Fuel to move the food, chemicals to maintain "freshness" of the food in transit, loss of nutrients and flavor, poorly paid pickers, butchers and harvesters; inhumane treatment of animals and changing the genetic makeup of food damages human dignity and separates the end user from the notion of sustainability.

I love teaching my grandchildren to cook great food, prepared culinarily correctly from the freshest ingredients found close to my home. To ensure I continue to have the opportunity to purchase and grow healthy, great tasting, nutritiously fresh food locally, change needs to happen.

Consumers must purchase fresh, locally grown food. Heirloom and genetically unaltered seeds must be available locally for the home gardener. Kids need to cook at home and plant their own vegetable garden. The school lunch program requires rethinking and the dining table must be set for dinner. Consumers decide product availability through their pocketbook. If we continue to buy it, it will continue to be provided. If we demand sustainable food, it will be provided. Demand it.

Bill Rutherford is a psychotherapist, public speaker, elementary school counselor, adjunct college psychology instructor and executive chef, and owner of Rutherford Education Group. Please e-mail him at bprutherford@hotmail.com and check out www.foodforthoughtcda.com.