ReNe: so rice is not "normal" food

On our last trip to Whole Foods the other day to buy coffee, I picked up one of those free 'food & nutrition' type magazines lying past the checkout counter.

It's pretty crappy. Oh, it was prettily done (full color and all, on semi-glossy paper -- and I know how much all that costs after having worked as an editor before), but the content leaves much to be desired. For one, there wasn't anything new or informative. There's the usual 'how to lose weight' articles that can be boiled down to two main pieces of advice: (1) include certain types of supplementation because these nutrient are lacking from your 'normal' diet, and (2) eat organic. Fair enough... but this leads to the second complaint: there's something a little off about the advice. For example: one of the reasons why you can't lose weight could possibly be due to the lack of sufficient chromium in your diet, something that is normally found in the bran of grains and discarded during processing and hence lacking in 'our regular diet'. So, the solution recommended is to include chromium supplementation... Why not simply eat whole grains instead? Page after page, tucked in-between the lines are 'buy this supplementation' or 'eat organic'. Why shouldn't I be surprised? I did pick up this magazine at Whole Foods (an organic supermarket) after all. And I do know it is better to eat organic food. I also know buying supplements is (probably, though not always) more expensive than buying unprocessed foods. Hmm.

By the time I was half-way through the magazine, I hadn't learned anything new. Then I came across a few lines that were rather... insulting. It was from an article about gluten-free cooking. The writer's daughter had food allergies.

"......no what, barley, oats or rye products? No eggs? No dairy? ...... came to the stark conclusion: We would be eating rice three times a day for the rest of our lives...... How could we sit there eating "normal" food when she had to eat...rice?" (the last pause was the writer's, not a skipping over of sentences)

Hey. Rice is not "normal" food? More than half the world eat rice regularly, and many people do eat rice three meals day as part of their usual diet, thank you very much. Yes, I know the writer was not being deliberately insulting and that the implication was more careless than anything else. After all, I would be horrified if I knew my food choices would be severely curtailed as well, but well, it just struck me as rather... carelessly ignorant. Especially since she's supposed to be a nutritionist.

And yes, I do know that rice isn't part of the 'normal' American diet. Still, I'd read enough and I didn't bother with the rest of the article (or magazine).

The irony that this 'organic and environmental' magazine is printed on colored, semi-glossy paper (which makes it hard to recycle) does not escape me either.