Sometimes, I love Oprah

Oprah has the ability to springboard ideas from an enormous platform. She can take an idea and make it understandable and relevant to her viewers, thus spreading a message to an audience that would otherwise be unwilling to hear or unable to understand.

A few days ago, Oprah did a show on the movie Food Inc. Food Inc is a mind-blowing and frankly scary documentary about the TRUE source of our food, the means by which it is obtained, enhanced, and grown at a ridiculous rate. My local grocery store sells chicken breasts that are about the size of an adult foot. That is NOT NORMAL. The only way to grow chicken breasts that big, and that fast, is to pump the chickens full of antibiotics so they can survive. The result is a chicken, lying on its chest, unable to get up, with a bone and organ structure too immature to support the weight of its muscles. That chicken is squashed in with thousands of others, never seeing sunlight or even able to eat bugs or worms or anything that is part of a NORMAL natural diet. They are covered in feces, full of chemicals, and then we eat them. But hey- they're CHEAP!!! You can get a HUGE package of chicken breasts for next to nothing!! So not cool.

For just five seconds, I wish we could all close our eyes and imagine that same scenario, but this time, fill it with cats. Caged for life, never seeing the sun, covered in feces, squashed in like sardines, unable to walk because we've genetically manipulated their growth so that their muscles are enormous... Five seconds is about how long that would last, because no one would EVER let that happen. But because chicken is food, we allow it. I am ashamed of my part in this.

I don't eat beef, but Oprah went on to talk about the part in the documentary where they discuss beef. Beef is fed corn so that it will mature faster, be bigger, have more meat. But without a NATURAL diet of grass they must be pumped full of antibiotics to not get sick. Who eats that? You do. Wonder why the straight-up penicillin of our youth no longer works and the pharmaceutical companies have to work so hard to produce stronger antibiotics? Your answer is in your food chain.

It's funny, but one of Oprah's guest’s rules is simple: don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. HALLELUJAH!!!!

What about "you can eat whatever junk you want, as long as you make it yourself". YES!!! Because it's a pain in the butt and you'll eat the right amount if it's not at every street corner or vending machine.

EAT REAL FOOD. If a third grader can't read the ingredient list, move on.

It feels so good to see some of my philosophies discussed in such a huge forum.

Think about what you eat. Think about where it comes from, what it's doing to your body, what was required to get it, and what the ultimate price is to your health. Apparently Americans now spend about 9% of their incomes on food, half of what it was a hundred years ago, and they now spend twice as much on healthcare. HELLO!!>?!?! This Western diet was introduced about a hundred years ago- this diet of processed EVERYTHING- and since then, the population has reduced its health accordingly. And this fad of low fat everything? That's what MADE and IS STILL MAKING everyone fat. Fat doesn't make you fat. Processed CRAP makes you fat. We took fat out of everything, and replaced it with sugar. All those low-fat items? LOADED with sugar.

Oh, I am just so passionate about this subject, I'm sorry if I'm ranting. It just makes me crazy that people can't see what they're doing to themselves. I pray I never lose this passion of mine, because it doesn't take long to stop bucking the trend, and join the hoards of people, headed for the trough, ready to slop down the next cheap meal.

Sometimes, I love Oprah