The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Immunity

'Make sure you ask him about the peanuts!'

I yelled at M. as he got into his car in the driveway, the neighbours in the adjoining yard looking at me as though I was mad. He was off to his Tuesday evening with C., the doctor. Can I just say that I love knowing someone in the medical profession? You ask him a medically related question over dinner and he answers honestly. You ask any of them in the confines of an office and they tell you what they're programmed to.

I wanted M. to ask about the stuff I wrote about in the last entry, because it's bothering me. I am beginning to understand more and more why we should all be gardening our organic asses off, why we should have pet chickens in a pen at the back, and why we might want to have a cow roaming around the yard. I've never been one for all the 'eat organic!' movement, just like I never cared much about trees or air quality before, but now I'm on the road to changing, probably because I'm getting older and coming out of the self-importance of my twenties. I ate the high fructose corn syrup and I was overweight a good deal of the time. I was around people who smoked incessantly, regularly choking in their presence when not on the verge of vomiting. I was there for the beginnings of the video game era, sat on my bottom for hours playing Galaxian and PacMan and Q-bert. I suppose my generation is the one which started all the nonsense, and for this I am profoundly sorry.

So, M. came home at about ten o'clock and gifted me a brownie with walnuts. I had just baked chocolate chip cookies and was full on those, but I accepted the brownie gratefully. He told me C. had actually bought it, and I felt even more obligated to eat it. When I spied the nuts in it, it served as a reminder.

'Did you ask him about the peanuts? The autism? The allergies?', in between bites of highly unnatural sugar.

'Yup.'

'And?...', I asked impatiently.

'They don't know.'

Oh.

Turns out that even C. is astounded that there isn't more study about this, and that he freely admitted that twenty odd years ago he hadn't known a single person with a peanut allergy. What was once a staple in the North American diet is now something which isn't allowed near a school or daycare centre, and this is troubling since it is a fairly protein-rich substance which could be counted on when times were especially tough for people financially. The general theory is, though, that this has to do with the fertilizer being used, that it is seeping into the produce and compromising it chemically. It's all the 'experts' have come up with so far, but there is indeed growing concern in the medical field and he expects greater scrutiny in the near future. As for autism, again, no real answers, but it is legitimately on the rise, and no one knows why. He didn't say it was a food or vaccination-related issue, but I'm going to put my theory out there that it's probably to do with both, to some degree (though, as Aaron suggested, it's likely often misdiagnosed, much like all the other 'issues' out there. Though, I feel I need to mention, every kid I know who has been diagnosed with it are definitely compromised intellectually). Unnatural substances in our bodies are probably going to mess us up, no? And, apparently allergies are over-diagnosed, commonly mistaken for 'adverse reactions' which are the body's natural way of responding to something it doesn't 'like'. You eat a bad clam and you'll have an adverse reaction, but it doesn't mean it's an allergy. He also said that if the wee one is indeed allergic to amoxicillin, it doesn't mean the allergy will last forever and also that she's not allergic to penicillin in general. We'll find out for sure next week at her doctor's appointment, which we scheduled after he told us not to accept the penicillin diagnosis until a formal test had been done. If there was a shift change, they probably just wanted to make a quick assessment and get you out of there. They shouldn't have let you go without a definite answer. It's all so overwhelming, this new age of allergy. What makes me angry is that we're likely responsible for all of it.

What scares me, though, is that the human race as a whole requires roughly twenty-five per cent more food than what the planet can produce, which means this synthetic age of food stuffs is not only going to go on, but we may not make it without it. I say plant your own garden, and maybe, especially to us Westerners, it's time to eat less. Get a chicken. Maybe a cow. God, I hate cleaning the cat litter. Can't imagine cow dung in the backyard, though of course, it would be organic fertilizer.

I am actually astounded that I care about this stuff, honestly.

They didn't discuss diabetes. As Aaron also suggested, and I quite agree, the problem is that people are too fat. They're eating garbage and whining when they end up sick as a result. Really? You paid $3.00 for a hamburger and fries and you thought it was actual food? You drink pop every day of your life and wonder why your teeth are falling out? Why is everyone so stupid?

The thing is, I grew up on hamburgers and Kool-Aid and everyone thought it was normal. Maybe it was, then. Maybe I was eating actual meat and the sugar was natural, I don't know. Somewhere along the line, though, things have been manipulated. I read an article in Scientific American a while ago in which they talked about how McDonald's puts the flavour into their food. The factory where the flavours are 'developed' is the same place where perfume is made for different companies. When you're eating there, you're eating a chemistry experiment, essentially. And, their new ad campaign for the $1.00 soda? Why would anyone need to drink that much soda? It's a marketing ploy that encourages you to abuse yourself, if you think about it. It's hard for me to feel badly for people, though, who develop an illness which they willingly brought on themselves. You smoke, you get cancer. You eat too much, you get diabetes or heart troubles. You take drugs, your brain turns to mush and you're wearing diaper in your older years unless you die before you reach that point. I realize, though, that it's not so simple to stop yourself from doing it. That much is obvious. If it were, no one would be slowly committing suicide through what they deem pleasure.

I have trouble with it, too. I like sugar in my tea, and though I've cut down some, it's still probably ridiculous in the eyes of purists. I love butter and mayonnaise, and though I've lost twenty-two pounds in the last couple years and kept it off, I know I could lose a bit more. I stopped eating ice-cream, red meats, cheese and anything high fat because I began to experience pain with it, otherwise I'd probably still be doing it. I feel better without it, though. I don't want to go back to it. I keep my daughter's diet as simple as possible, and she hasn't been in a fast food restaurant, yet. I don't want to be the one who introduces her to it. I don't do everything right, but I'm working on it. My general feeling about obese people, as callous as it sounds, is that they did it to themselves and they have to take responsibility for that. Like I said, I've struggled with my weight over the years, but I can accept that all of it was my doing. No pill, no shake, no perky spokesmodel with a menu plan, is going to take the weight away. The only thing that works is a balanced lifestyle. Eat properly, exercise a few times a week, stay healthy. Why are the simplest things in life the hardest for us to grasp?

I was driving the wee one to school this morning and M. was in the passenger seat next to me, and I noticed the teenagers walking along the sidewalk.

'Look!' I exclaimed, 'fat, fat, fat, a little fat, and whole lotta fat!'.

M. sighed as he noticed the five of them, huffing and puffing their way along the rain-soaked cement.

'If they only know how hard it's going to make things later,' he said quietly.

Yeah.

And yet, I ate that brownie last night with gusto, even though I didn't really want it or need it, not once thinking about what it might do to me or how it didn't taste like actual chocolate.

I'm not immune.