Have you ever really thought about what you’re putting in your mouth? I mean, we all counted the calories as we starved ourselves for spring break. But have you actually thought about what “fuel” you’re giving your body to
work with?

On your next trip to Meijer, actually look at the endless shelves of food and do more than search for the yellow “sale” stickers. Take some of your favorite (and most-consumed) foods and look at the ingredients label. You probably won’t see “whole wheat” too often. If your list of favorite foods looks anything like mine, high fructose corn syrup, calcium benzoate and phosphoric acid probably will appear more than a few times.

Just a general rule: If the ingredient is too long to pronounce, chances are it’s not good for you or the environment. The words with 15 syllables that take five minutes to pronounce have come into existence with the push for corporations to manipulate food into having three-year shelf lives while exhibiting that wonderfully chemically enhanced taste. Processed foods, which take up a large portion of any major grocery store’s inventory, are incredibly energy inefficient because each additional step manipulating the original food item takes energy. Lots of energy.

With a highly globalized food system, rarely do we consume foods that are locally or regionally grown and manufactured. If you ate an orange this January while 10 feet of snow fell on your apartment building, I’m sure you could conclude the orange traveled quite a distance to land in your wide-open trap. As many of us know from our ventures to Panama City Beach, a road trip from Florida isn’t as cheap as we’d like. Compare the gas consumption needed to get an orange from Florida as opposed to getting an apple from Michigan. And Mother Earth doesn’t appreciate the extra greenhouse gas emissions.

And yes, as much as I hate to admit it, eating red meat doesn’t help either. To put it simply, the more cows we demand, the more methane — produced by the cows — is in the air. The more methane in the air, the warmer the earth becomes. With more humans eating meat every day, we’re looking at a pretty hot planet in the years to come.

What you’ll find as you dig deeper into the plethora of options your grocer has to offer is that although marketing and advertisements tell you otherwise, a lot of what you’re buying is pretty much the same. Corn and soy-based products take up an enormous part of the food market. And while I have nothing personal against corn, I do have something against mass acreage of Iowa countryside being plowed to feed into our addiction to the fertilizer-hungry crop.

If I sound even remotely legitimate, I urge you to check out author and food advocate Michael Pollan. He’s a guru when it comes to this stuff, and he’s coming April 12 to Wharton Center.

What I would like everyone (including myself) to start doing is consistently be aware of what we’re consuming every day. Should we all start eating nothing but locally grown, in-season fruits and veggies 365 days a year? Probably. But with a college student budget and actual lives we have to make time for, let’s talk a little more realistically.

Let’s start being aware of what we’re putting in our bodies. Let’s think of the whole picture when we take a bite out of that imported steak or 70-year-old Twinkie. Let’s start prioritizing real food with real health benefits that do less damage to the world around us.

Rob Couch is a State News guest columnist and journalism junior. Reach him at couchrob@msu.edu.