How Corporate America Makes Us Unhealthy

The coupons section of the Sunday paper, for many, must be a treasure trove of money saving goodness. Where else can you get multiple sections of coupons and savings every single week. And on the things that we need to subsist on [namely food], no less! Only in America, right?

I used to think that coupons in the Sunday paper was so great. You can clip and save a ton of money when you go to the grocery store. But over the last 15 years, there have only been a handful of food coupons that I have actually used. Why? Don't I want to save money? Am I happy to pay retail for food? But if you look at the coupons that Corporate America [Nabisco, Coca Cola, etc.] are handing out, they are telling you what you want to eat. And you know what? It's scary. I would say for every 10 food coupons [I'm not talking about make up, dog food, and useless supplements] I see, there are only 1, maybe 2 items that I would even eat. And not on a regular basis. The coupons you see are mainly frozen foods, processed foods, buy-more-than-you-can-eat-so-you-can-save-$0.50 kind of food. Even though there are granola bars, Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisines out there to be had and saved money on, it is loaded with sugar and sodium. Two ingredients I think we can use less of.

But how can a family of 4, with a single income survive without some savings? How can Timmy and Sally get their nutritious meals without costing mommy and daddy a king's ransom? Well, our food industry has solved our problems. They have kindly sent coupons of their own foods to our home every week. How thoughtful of them to give up some profit for the sake of a family to buy already packed meals at a discount! Once again, Corporate America has come to the rescue.

It really is a bunch of crap. Corporate America, out of their need to increase shareholder value and the bonuses of their upper management, has taken America's health to the limit. Sugar, sodium, and preservatives have ruled the food industry for years. And our minds are force fed, every day, that our time is too precious. Too precious for anything and anyone. Cooking? Puh-lease. I get that when you have a family, it takes every last ounce of energy out of you. And I'm not about to stand on a soapbox to say that life is easy or that everyone in this country can knock out meal after meal in their kitchen with organic products and made-from-scratch meals. But damn, we have got to try. The amount of sugar and sodium that is in that prepackaged crap we call food is not investing in our health. A home cooked meal of fresh ingredients doesn't have to mean an 18 course tasting menu from the French Laundry. It does take more time to prepare, mentally, what needs to be cooked. But I'm with Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, and Anthony Bourdain on this one: Cook SOMETHING. The amount of money you think you're saving by buying crappy frozen foods, no matter how many coupons you clip, cannot be compared to the money you're really saving by making your own spaghetti sauce and freezing that instead. No, you cannot freeze it for 3 months, but you get to control the salt, sugar, and other ingredients you're eating.

I'm not against all sugar and salt because heck, I love going out to eat. But we never buy frozen foods as a meal. NEVER. Our lives cannot afford it. No matter how many coupons we clip and no matter how much money we think we're saving. We have to bring cooking back into the homes in our country. Our lives depend on it.

Being Uppity and Loving It

If having afternoon tea at the Grosvenor House in Hyde Park, London makes me snobby or uppity, my response would be to quote the once beloved but later maligned Marie Antoinette, "Let them eat cake [brioche]!" Which is to say, "I don't care what you think."

No matter how you feel about afternoon tea, you must overcome this colonial travesty of the upper crust drinking tea and eating scones with clotted cream while the oppressed locals work in the fields. That is a separate issue than the dining experience itself. When done well, like the Grosvenor House Park Room in London, it is one of the quintessential experiences of what the British has brought forth to its colonies - India, Hong Kong, just to name a couple. However, if legends be told is true, it originated in Portugal, only to be brought to England when Catherine of Braganca married Charles II in 1661. It wasn't until Anna Maria Russell, Duchess of Bedford, transformed afternoon tea into more of a meal in the afternoon than a refreshment. Of course, many Brits don't normally take in the afternoon tea ritual anymore, but nonetheless, it is a tradition that's been well kept, even if the people who partake in the tea now are tourists.

History lessons aside, when the tower of morsels come to the table, one can only imagine what it must have been like to be a Duke or a Duchess back in the 17th or 18th century. The main attraction, of course, is the tea itself. To me, there's nothing finer than eating a scone/finger sandwich/pastry and washing that down with an English Breakfast blend with the right amount of milk and sugar. That is, I'm told, the proper way of taking tea. And to be even more proper English, to drink and eat from fine china is the penultimate of enjoying afternoon tea.

We definitely got all that and more at the Park Room in the Grosvenor House. For about 2 hours, we embrace that dining experience as much as anything else on our trip. To me, it's not just that it's English afternoon tea, but that it has to be properly done. You can't just throw in any type of tea. You can't serve it with a Starbucks scone and say you've had English afternoon tea, although I am sure many do that nowadays. It's got to be with fine china, loose leaf teas, finger sandwiches comprised of cucumber, salmon, and egg salad, and an assortment of scones and pastries. That's the way a duke or duchess would have it. Anything else would be, well, uncivilized.