"P" emailed me about juicing, acid vs alkaline foods, raw diets, and a few other food fad topics. She wanted to know why I don't promote the "obvious" benefits of juicing fresh veggies. Ok, ok. ....sigh.....
I'm old enough to ...(boy, have I've said THAT too many times) see dozens of food fads come and go. In fact, there are too many for me to remember them all. My first food fad that I can remember was the TV dinner. Everyone of my friends' families hopped onto the bandwagon for this one. Then the next craze I recall was the gelatin fad. My own mother's favorite gelatin dessert was the pineapple & sour cream in lime flavored gelatin. But we had plenty of dinners of gelatin molds using (not in the same mold) various ingredients such as corn, celery, tuna fish, cucumbers, carrots, olives, turkey chunks, mayonnaise. Somewhere along the line my mom dropped out of the fad.
Here's a crazy list of fads that come to mind, my mind. Lots of people, including many of my friends and occasionally even myself, participated in......
...tang
...fondue (first oil, then cheese, then chocolate)
...frozen yogurt
...crock pot meals
...bread machines
...goji berries
...algae
...chia seeds
...raw foods
...vegan
...paleo
...Atkins
...fruit diet
...wild food diet
..."the zone"
...alkaline diet
...gluten free
...juicing
...green smoothies
...fasting
...detox diets
...apple cider vinegar
...blood type diet
Some of the food fads actually proved to have merit, like the rave to consume blueberries nowadays. Are you old enough to know just how much the price has jumped on blueberries? Gee, I remember the days when we wouldn't buy them until the price got down to 5 pints for $10, and you didn't consider canning or freezing your annual stockpile until they went for 8 (or even 10) pints for $10. Now in "fad days", blueberries are really pricy.
I'm sure there's plenty more food fads. They come and go.
Getting back to the original question......juicing. I don't, as a rule. My body likes and needs fiber. It does best on the fruit or veggie in its entirety. While I might blenderize an entire food item into a smoothie or sauce, I don't throw most of it away via juicing it. No, I'm not into juicing nor see the any benefit of juicing for me.
I like my bread machine! LOL It's my one time-saver appliance. I have to admit that they do seem to be like exercise machines, popular items for Christmas gifts and New Year's resolutions, but soon finding their way to many a thrift store.
ReplyDeleteWe do have a juicer and have used it in the past. But it takes a lot of whole fruits and vegetables to make even one glass, and to do organic juices becomes very expensive to buy. In the past all the waste bothered me even though it went into the compost. Now that we've had pigs, I'd say that would be the way to go.
I wonder if the juicing fans count the number of fruits and veggies that go into their drinks. Instead of eating one carrot, you drink several. Sounds like a lot of "lunch" to me.
Delete"S" wrote in to say...
ReplyDelete"I'm surprised you forgot about Macrobiotics, that immortal monument to inedibility! It was the first one I ran into in SF in 1968 and it turned me off of food Fads for life! Yech. "
"Most extreme food thing I've ever done is switch to no oil but olive in my kitchen.....(baking got suddenly very expensive), but after a rough period where nothing had any flavor, I cannot go back to animal based fats. Butter I use sparingly and, as you know, whipped cream tastes like lard to me these days! Even other vegetable oils I find offensive. Very weird. I guess I'm just like the rest of them....
Even weirder is how some folks pour a religious fervor into what they like to eat. It is not just us; the French take it very negatively personal that we Americans need ice in our beverages. They would begin these passionate diatribes against cold drinks that amazed the starch out of me, but drenched their food in butter, etc. (Worse, most of them were quite skinny!) I could usually defuse the whole subject with a massive shrug and the statement that I really thought preference depended on what you had been used to as a child. And please pass the brioche..."
"T" said that she noticed that one of the current food fads is coconut water.
ReplyDelete