You know it’s really pretty sad, but it seems like food is perpetually being viewed as the villain of bad health. The villain of the day appears to be wheat. It seems like wheat is in everything good, makes the mind and mouth feel like heaven but the body cry out for help. I don’t know about you, but this bothers me.
I’m hoping this will turn out to be a big fat lie, like when eggs were the evil incarnate and the sole reason for high blood pressure and heart disease. Or when fat was thought to make you fat. The mindset at the time seemed to be if you ate butter on your toast it would instantly manifest itself as a roll of fat around your waist! But now, a piece of warm bread right out of the oven is in fact the Grim Reaper come to call.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not mean to belittle peoples’ sensitivity or downright intolerance to foods. In fact, I take it very seriously as a chef. I also understand that every human being is different and a diet that works for one person may well send the next to the ER. I’m actually helping friends develop gluten-free pizza dough for their pizza restaurant. It breaks my heart to think of some little kid not being able to eat pizza at his or her birthday party.
What I wonder is: can we change the focus from “what we can’t eat” to “what we get to eat”. Thinking about the abundance of foods we CAN choose to eat could be the place to find some peace on the matter.
I think this is where The Chopping Block can really make a difference. People get stuck in a eating rut; purchasing the same things every week at the grocery store, making the same five recipes week after week, packing the same lunch for your kids day after day. It just doesn’t work for the long hall. Going to the grocery store and seeing any ingredient as something you could and would eat is a freeing place to live. Imagine knowing what to do with any vegetable in the market and having the ability to cook them in a tasty way! Imagine cooking not as a burden, but something you actually enjoy or even that you could do it quickly and efficiently. The Chopping Block is all about expanding enjoyment of food and the experience of cooking it. We are lucky that food is abundant in this country, so let’s live in that reality.
