I'm Not Much Into Health Foods

I had kind of a revelation, regarding the difference between "healthy foods" and "health foods." It seems that when you lose that Y, you go from the territory of reasonable foods (fresh fruits and veggies, whole grains, nuts, legumes) and into the domain of horrific concoctions which boast unsubstantiated health claims, are prohibitively expensive, are subject to food trends even more so than normal foods, and are usually only consumed by lunatics with a neurotic preoccupation with their health. Foods I would put into this category are things like goji berries, spirulina, wheat grass, many varieties of vegetable based "smoothies" or juices, the vast majority of foods marketed as "raw", and the awful beverage I just finished drinking, Kombucha.

 

 

 

I got blood orange flavored, because regular Kombucha would have potentially killed me.

I don't remember why I ever drank Kombucha before. I guess I must have been at some weirdo restaurant, and was tempted by the fact that it appears like it would be a delicious and refreshing beverage. People, DO NOT BE FOOLED into trying this stuff! According to the Bucha website: "Kombucha is an ancient Chinese brew made by fermenting organic teas with a live culture of yeast and bacteria." Yum! :-/ What the website fails to mention is that it's taste ranges somewhere between apple cider vinegar and a foot. 

Anyway, when I started this project, of course I put Kombucha in my List of Hated Foods, and I figured that I should see if I could make myself learn to like it. But at this point, I have changed my mind. The whole point of this experiment is to teach myself to embrace all reasonable foods that people enjoy eating, because they find them to be delicious. And I realized that, by my own criteria, most Health Foods are automatically disqualified from being considered! I mean, NO ONE eats these things because they think they taste good! They eat them because they are obsessive about their diets and often, because they are crazy! So, I hereby absolve myself from having to learn to like anything that I feel comes safely under the umbrella of Health Foods. Screw you, Kombucha!

That said, I'm still going to agree to subject myself to at least one meal at a raw restaurant. Not only because I already bought a Groupon to one ;-), but because I've actually heard otherwise normal people swear they have had good meals at raw restaurants. My personal experience with raw restaurants was that it was ridiculous garbage, and one would be a fool to buy into the whole Raw Foods Hype. But I'll try it again, if only so I can smugly say, "I told you so!"

Don't get me wrong. I've been trying VERY hard over the past 10 years to eat a pretty healthy diet. I eat kale like it is going out of style. I eat a green vegetable with every single meal I eat. I generally only snack on fruit or nuts. I'm not giving the finger to doing your best to eat a healthy diet.... it's just the trendy, expensive, marketed to rich white people, bad tasting stuff I'm giving the finger to.

I only included this photo because I want you to spend the rest of the day haunted by this image.

And now, off to make my healthY dinner of Tofu Vegetable Curry.... no health foods included!