Watching your eating habits when you’re pre-occupied is much harder to do when you’re not. I figured this assignment would be best is observed in two different kinds of days: A school day vs. a workday. My findings peaked my interest.
Every morning before I head out to DVC at 8am, I wake up, eat breakfast, and then pack myself a lunch for later. Breakfast usually consists of a glass of organic orange juice, a cup of natural yogurt, a whole-wheat bagel, and a banana. The only corn I managed to discover in this portion of my meal was the degerminated yellow corn meal and xanthum gum blend. I was a little surprised to find these ingredients in my whole-wheat bagel.
For lunch, I pack an organic apple, a cheese stick, grapes, carrot sticks, and a luna bar. I was expecting the luna bar to have some form of corn included in its make up, but surprisingly, it didn’t! There were many soy ingredients though.
When I arrive home at 6pm in the evening, I fix myself a veggie burger with a side of steamed veggies. I figured I would find a decent amount of corn made into my burger, but there was more mushrooms and cheese than any corn. I wasn’t sure if I should be surprised or not. I mean, I was eating a vegetable burger! You’d think that there would be corn in a veggie burger!
My school days seemed to leave me with very little corn in my diet. I was happy to learn that my diet contained nutrition that isn’t merely fillers in my food, but actual minerals and vitamins.
My eating habits at work were the complete opposite. I am employed with Starbucks Coffee and most of the time during my long 8 hour shifts, I eat what ever is available to me there. It may sound weird, but I’m not much of a coffee drinker. Two years with all the espresso beverages you want leaves you burnt out on caramel macchiato’s. When I arrive to work, I snack on a banana with a strawberry banana smoothie. What’s better than having some banana with your banana? For lunch, I’ll nuke a breakfast sandwich in out warming oven. This is probably the most corn-saturated item in my diet. Its roll includes white degerminated corn meal, the egg on the sandwich was probably taken from a corn fed chicken, and the bacon that probably came from a corn fed pig. Since I’ve discovered this, I’ve limited my intake of all of our breakfast sandwiches and lunch sandwiches. I can say that my days at work don’t aid my nutrition much. I know that I have the ability to bring a lunch and provide myself a more accommodating meal, but it’s so hard when you know that there is an easy lunch waiting for you at work. This experiment has definitely made me more aware of my corn tendencies and what ways I can go about improving my diet.
Not so much corn, walking in your diet. I enjoyed the different aspects of your eating life: home vs. work. You show how you have much better control over what you eat when you do the shopping yourself versus when you have to eat what is in front of you. Regardless, however, it sounds like you already make many conscious food choices, such as the organic yogurt. If you ate regular fruit flavored yogurt, like Dannon, on the other hand, you'd be consuming more corn, as it contains high fructose corn syrup.
ReplyDeleteYou also raise the point about soy. While not covered in Pollan to the extent that corn is, I think soy is also extremely prevalent in our foods, as your food diary shows. Thanks for the picture of your eating.