Something to Chew On

Over the last several months I have posted some food recipes on my blog, some healthy and some not so healthy. Those that are unhealthy, I've tried to make them healthier, an example of this would be the two cheesecake recipes I have posted. One is a chilled cheesecake the other is a chocolate-berry cheesecake, you can click on the links to see the full recipe for these.

In today's age, I am like many Americans, I am a busy single parent who goes to school, works, and takes care of my children. There are times when eating out would be so much easier than cooking a meal at home. However, when you figure in the time it takes to load up the kids in the car, drive to the restaurant, order, pay, either eat there, or drive home and eat, you have spent about as much time as it would to take to make a home cooked meal. The big difference between eating out and dining in is the cost and you know what goes into the food. The added bonus to eating at home, in my opinion, is that you can actually get your children involved in the cooking process. I do this with my peanut by giving her age appropriate tasks that she can do. Also, with this same thought is if you actually take your child to the grocery store with you and have them pick out the fresh foods they want to eat, they will be more inclined to prepare and eat those foods.

As a bit of a back story for this post, I was working on some homework for one of my classes, and responded to a discussion post one of my classmates wrote about on her children's school lunch program. This got me to thinking about my peanut's school lunch program and how I myself am not really all that impressed with it, as they have started a new program this year. Which in turn sparked a memory about watching a television show several years ago called Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution that focused the attention on those living in Huntington, West Virginia and their diet. I did find something on Ted.com that was published in February 2010, in which Jamie Oliver talks about 'stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. VA, and makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.' This was a very interesting 22 minutes of listening to Jamie Oliver talk about the dilemma with our diet. If you would like to check it out you can go here. If you want more information on the food revolution you can go here, also Jamie Oliver has an official website that you can go to and check out here.

The CDC has some interesting information over chronic diseases that are in the U.S. What's interesting about these diseases, is that they are very preventable. I think we just need to sit down and really look at what we can do to improve our lifestyle. I think that cutting out all the bad habits like smoking, or eating all the unhealthy foods all the time would be a good start. If we chose to buy the healthier foods and cook at home more often, exercise, and maybe do a few other things we could reduce how many individuals die each year from cardiovascular disease or obesity.