It was while I was watching Ken Burn's excellent documentary, "Jazz" that, when I was not entranced by the music, I began to notice, what good physical condition the majority of the people were in. I'm not just referring to the jazz musicians, or the people jitterbugging. I'm talking about the people walking down the sidewalks. Now, some of the scenes were from the thirties, a time when many would have struggled to get enough to eat. Many of the photographs were taken in poor rural areas, where people , were most likely struggling to survive, yet, there were still archival photographs and film footage from the 20's and 50's showing people, who appeared to be well-dressed, and seemed to be relatively slim. I mean, relatively, when you look at people walking the streets today. The difference, there were relatively few bellies peeking over waist bands in those early picture.
Now this is obviously not a scientific study, or even a wide enough sample, to draw any conclusions, but it has stirred my interest. I believe that by paying attention, through observing the world we live in, and the glimpses of history that are available to us, we can develop an understanding about what is taking place in our world and discover a means to find actions that we can take to move us towards a safe and healthy environment.
So this week, I decided that I would begin to look at the changes in the food system that have taken place over the past 70 years. The ideal place to start was with the favourite past time of so many North Americans, snacking. Snack Foods , who doesn't have a favourite snack? How many hours of television watching have you logged while munching on your particular history in western society. If you are concerened about allergies to wheat for example, there are gluten-free snack that you can buy. There is no need to deprive yourself of participating in the snacking frenzy that has overcome so many millions of people, perhaps, it is time, to slow ourselves down long enough so that we can answer this question: What impact is our obsession with snacks having on us?
