I have come to find it astonishing how many products are thrown into supermarket trolleys every week without anyone seemingly giving a moment’s thought to what is actually in them. I even find myself watching other shopper’s conveyor belts to marvel at the assorted items of processed food wandering inevitably towards their bags and then their stomachs.

Convenience Food

Convenience food has been a decidedly bad innovation for the western world. Not only do we a situation where everyone is getting fatter because of their poor diets but they are damaging their health further by eating foods that are astonishingly high in salt, sugar and chemicals. If you cook your food yourself from scratch you can easily avoid all of the nasty ingredients and you at least know exactly what is in your meals.

Lazy Food

I find some choices particularly amusing and indicative of just how lazy we have become in the kitchen. Why would anyone need to buy prepared roast potatoes when making your own only requires 2 minutes of effort and yields much tastier results? You can even buy vegetables which have already been peeled and chopped. These have undoubtedly had preservatives added to ensure they stay fresh for a reasonable period of time. No thanks!

Horse Meat

Heaven knows what harm we are doing to ourselves feeding our faces with all those horrid ingredients and yet few people seem to care. The horse meat scandal should have been a wake-up call because that whole debacle served to illustrate how little we know about what we are eating. There was such a huge outcry about the whole episode and yet horse meet of itself is not harmful, in fact it is nice to eat. Why did people get so upset about a bit of horse meat in their burgers when the other ingredients are so much more of a scandal?

Bath Time Blues

The problem doesn’t stop with our food either. Who hesitates to think about all the potential nasties in cosmetics and beauty products or our shampoos and body washes? What about the fact that these things are tested on animals? These are the products that are supposed to clean and beautify us and yet they are often packed full of chemicals that leach into our bloodstreams and will do us no good at all. Indeed the list of chemicals found in bath and beauty products is really scary. Investing in natural products may cost more financially but you have to wonder what the true cost of the cheap alternatives really is.

The more I found out about mass produced food and toiletries the less I want anything to do with them. I might be feeling a little over sensitive as people aren’t exactly dropping dead all around me but I can’t help thinking that somewhere along the line the human race is going to pay for its bad habits and that not enough time has yet passed for us to understand the consequences of what we are doing to ourselves.

Article by Sally Stacey