Healthy food - a luxuryBy: Alexandra

Most of us may or may not know; or we do not want to be interested in the underlying state of what we eat and what we drink. Generally, we mostly prefer to ignore what it is written on the labels and just consume what we like, regardless of whether it is good or not for our body.

This lack of awareness is worrisome and I want to shed some light upon this matter. What caught my attention on this issue was a TV show called “Romania, I love you” which debated on the topic of eating healthy and how this way of life is more expensive than buying groceries that contain certain additives in order to preserve them for longer time.

Firstly, I want to elucidate the labels used by the food industry, classified in: bio, eco, organic, natural and traditional. Technically, there is no difference between bio, organic and eco; it’s just that ”bio” is used in the English speakers’ geographical areas; “organic” is used in German and French speakers’ geographical areas and so on. “Eco” has also the same meaning. In Romania, the corresponding term is “Agricultura Ecologica” or Ecologic Agriculture.

What does “natural” mean then? Lawfully speaking, the word “natural” is just a marketing tool. It is mainly used for cosmetics that are not entirely organic, being somewhere in the middle between organic and non-organic. Have I gotten you confused so far? If the answer is no, I shall move on to “traditional”. I bet you have

seen in the supermarkets all kinds of salami, made on a 100 years traditional recipe. If you take a close look to the labels, you can see some contain food additives. Therefore I ask myself: “Did food additives exist on that time? How can this be a 100 years old recipe?”

There are so many terms and labels, that you sometimes just simply stare at them, confused, with a product in one hand and another in the other. You want to buy something healthy for you, but you do not know how to choose between bio, eco, natural, traditional, etc. What’s the catch with all these labels? Well, let me give you another small detail: according to the European Legislation, even in bio products some food additives are allowed, those that are considered not harmful for the human body.

So, in a nutshell, even bio is not bio. What to do then? Well, like most of us, we return to our roots, to the countryside, to the farmer that produces a small quantity of products and does not have the necessary money to buy a bio certificate, but maybe his merchandise is more bio than the one from the store shelf that has such a document. We go to the market, ask the farmers for home-grown meats and vegetables and try to cut back on the pastries, supermarket meats and frozen dinners.

Nowadays, there are even some small bio stores that actually buy from farmers and

check if they use or not chemical additions. The main problem is that bio products tend to be more expensive due to the high cost and extra care considered necessary.

All in all, I have some suggestions on how to try to eat healthier (because 100% healthy food is generally out of reach). Making these efforts is much better than doing nothing.

Therefore some practical Do’s are:

• Eat mostly home-made by trying to replace products bought from the store with the ones you can prepare by yourself, like tomato juice obtained from fresh tomatoes.• The only allowed substance added to preserve food should be aspirin.• Try to check the labels more often.• Do your shopping at the market, although it is quite difficult to identify the local merchandise brought directly from a Romanian garden and the imported products which are sold off as being Romanian ones.• Eat home-cooked meals as often as possible.

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