How and what a person consumes in terms of food and drink is a personal choice. I’m not going to judge anyone else for chowing down on chemical cuisine. Nor am I going to glorify a person who is a total saint in their nutrition practice.

“Everything in moderation” is what I think is the best approach. Striving to have a healthy balance and not overdoing it with the extreme in either direction.

My aversion to using food and drink “products” containing natural flavor I found out is a real issue after eating two different bags of potato chips within four days of each other. I could taste the different taste between the Siete chips with three real food ingredients and the Deep River regular chips that use canola or safflower or cottonseed oil.

Though the Deep River didn’t use natural flavor I could taste that their chips tasted funny compared to the taste of the Siete chips.

There’s a chemical taste to food using natural flavor too. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) calls natural flavor a drug like crack because it’s an addictive food additive. The EWG goes so far as to say this.

I ordered the Nutrition Action booklet Chemical Cuisine that lists the chemicals in food products that cause ill health like common caramel flavor. The other chemicals in the guide are too numerous to list here.

It can appear that I’m nuts writing about this repeatedly. This shall be the last time I detail my thoughts on the topic of natural flavor. Though trust me real food tastes better.

I would like to say that it’s because I’m Italian American that using chemicals to cook food with leaves a distaste in my mouth. And of course, too I’m a fan of the Slow Food movement that started in Italy at the time of the rise in fast food restaurants there.

I don’t use a microwave either. It’s a matter of personal choice. In the coming blog entry I’ll talk about Choosing Sanity over Vanity in adopting a nutrition practice.

For one as a person who weighs 107 pounds I don’t like when other women tell me either that I’m too thin or else tell me “That’s good!” for fitting into a size 2P. My workout routines and weekly eating plan are not habits that I think 90 percent of Americans would want to adopt.

For the 212 loyal followers to this blog that I have after WordPress deleted the inactive accounts I think the readers who’ve stayed on this long might be the ones getting value from my approach.

Takes what works and leave the rest as the saying goes.

I eat well to feel good. That’s the story.