Am I the Only One EXHAUSTED by my FOOD?

So, for many years, I've read about, researched, tried and trued many ways of making my family more healthy Eatons (no pun intended:). It's been a very slow process and hasn't always been appreciated and certainly not embraced by the majority vote of the Eaton household.

I do consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to nutritional information. I do, say, know they exist and what are considered the "super foods", I am well aware of the "dirty dozen"; the difference between whole wheat flour and whole grain wheat flour. I even know that heating olive oil completely changes it's cells at the molecular level and that it goes rancid rather quickly and can actually be toxic. I know about wheat grass and flax seed. I know a perfect amount of nuts in your diet is healthy, but too many is adverse (isn't that true for so many things?). I know the recommended amounts of vitamins and minerals and particularly protein in the USDA food pyramid is out of date and desperately needs fixing. I even know the difference between omega 3 fatty acids and omega 6 fatty acids (we need to eat more 3). I know that 8 in 10 people over the age of 25 are overweight and a rather scary percentage are morbidly so! I also know lots of other tidbits and facts that influence the way I feed (and not feed) my family on a daily basis. I also get quite confused sometimes and try not to jump on the nutritional trends. I NEVER believe in omitting whole groups, like carbs, from any diet. No offense, but who really thinks a diet without fruits and veggies is healthy??

I can also say, for sure, that I drive the baby Eatons nutty with talk about the nutritional values of foods and making good choices. I actually hate it when someone mentions the word calorie. I think Americans are obsessed with this word! I don't want my kids hung up on that word; it's almost considered a curse word in my house. I try every day (and sometimes fail miserably when I sit across from them chowing on a cheeseburger at the local dive) to make good choices that I can feel good about for their little bodies, but it is all consuming sometimes and painfully uphillish.

I have no idea how much of my energy is wasted, bathed in guilt for : breaking down out of convenience and making a bad choice, not shopping 100% organic, not shopping 100% natural, buying products with either preservatives, too much sugar or too much fat. The guilt really sets in when I allow myself to shop the middle of the super market. Sometimes I feel like a processed food addict. Like what it must feel like when the alcoholic visits the wine aisle. I was, after all, a child of the 70's and I do like an Oreo Cookie!

I also experience high guilt when I take them out to eat and allow them to order mac and cheese or chicken nuggets or the absolute worst thing ever: a soda... Every Mom in this country must know this feeling. I do it most, out of fear that if I with-hold it, it will become the forbidden fruit, the holy grail and consume their thoughts.

The truth is, these kinds of food and drinks are killing us, but we're almost powerless as mothers to stop the fast moving train. I, for instance, am certainly going to be criticised by someone for worrying too much and not allowing my kids to be kids. BUT since when did kids need chicken nuggets? And the real question is, why do I succumb to the peer pressure and kid pressure and feed my kids (and me too) absolutely toxic food! YES, toxic. That's what it is. Let's revisit the above noted statistic that 8 in 10 middle aged people are overweight. How do you think we got here? Or why almost 9% of our population (yes, total population, a whopping 25.8 million children and adults) have diabetes? Or, the scariest by far, our children will be the FIRST generation ever to have less life expectancy than their parents!

Alarmed?

I feel like I fight a daily battle against my arch enemies with names like: high fructose corn syrup, calcium sulfate (google this common bread ingredient), enriched flour, aspartame, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, sodium nitrate, I could so go on and on and on...

What is sacred anymore? We can't even feel safe buying raw fresh foods (foods our farmers have grown from the earth) from the produce section without the organic stamp. Farmers are feeding our plants with chemicals, spraying them with harmful pesticides and genetically altering them! Meat is an entirely different ballgame altogether when you have to wonder if it's been treated cruelly, fed grain instead of grass, pumped with steroids and antibiotics or altered some other molecular way. Even fish could be raised on a fish farm and even fed GRAIN TOO!

American food is the most dishonest product I've ever tried to consume!

And do we even need meat at all? I've read reports that our food pyramid has way overestimated our daily protein needs. AND we've totally overlooked as a nation the fact that you CAN get protein in other places. Like greens, for instance!

So, my question is this:

Should my food exhaust me?

As a Mother, I'm exhausted. Is anyone else?

And if so, why aren't we doing something about it?