Thursday, September 17, 2009

Fuck You, Food Court

I pretty much always make my lunch and bring it to work, for a number of reasons: to save money, to eat healthier, to eat awesome food instead of crappy processed shit, etc, etc. With the warm weather I've been going with simple sandwiches like hummus, tomato, and cucumber on whole wheat with a piece of seasonal fruit. Last night I got home past my bedtime and a bit tipsy so I didn't have time to make my lunch before work. There is literally a brand new food court right outside the door of where I work, so I figured if I was willing to compromise a bit, the whole forgetting to bring a lunch thing would be of little consequence.

Turns out my definition of "food" differs significantly from popular understanding of the word. There is an appalling lack of healthy, veg-friendly choices. There's a Chinese food place where every vegetable is accompanied by either chicken or beef. There's a stir fry place that doesn't have any tofu. There's a pizza place, which is relatively veg-friendly but not terribly healthy. And finally there's a sandwich place, which thankfully made me a veggie sandwich, despite its nonexistence on the menu.

So I complained about this conundrum to a friend of mine, who decided to write what was supposed to be a humorous blog about my problem. He began with the sentence "I know a girl who can't eat lot."

BIG mistake.

I am in no way a picky eater. I am convinced that I have more variety in my diet than 95% of the American population. Just because I don't eat meat, and I prefer not to eat processed, food-like shit, does not mean that I "can't eat a lot." Just the other day I went to the farmer's market and could have bought any item of produce there and made a meal out of it. (For the record, I went with green peppers, eggplant, onions, tomatos, scallions, and pears. The veggies have yet to be used but the pears are fucking AWESOME.) I totally resent the idea that because what I eat falls outside of what is mainstream that I'm necessarily disabled or hindered. I eat almost every cuisine and pretty much every vegetable or fruit. I may have some atypical guidelines for what I will or won't eat, but within those guidelines I like and consume virtually anything.

Furthermore, I've been biking to and from work 5 days a week, walking my dog Xavi 2 to 3 times a day, and trying to get my marathon training on track. I demand a lot of my body and don't see the fucking point of putting low quality fuel in it when I'm so dependent on its functionality. I think this is kind of a silly analogy, but would you put shitty gas in your car if it needed premium? Fuck that. Only the best for this girl.

This is less a recipe than a rant, but it relates to food so I feel somewhat justified. Just for good measure, here's a pic of last week's farmer's market haul and the little guy:

1 comment:

  1. On a related note, I don't understand how some people can say that healthy eating is a crock. It seems basically common sense / intuitive that the things we put into our bodies effect how they work, and that usually, the things that work best are the things that have been evolving on the earth with our species for millenia rather than these shitty processed foods we decided to make up sometime in the past century. Hello, humanity... DUH!

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