We have to be responsible for the food our families eat but how can we tell what food and drink is good for us when advice keeps getting changed? First bread is good for us then it isn’t, then chocolate is good for us then it isn’t. Things like eggs, butter, bread, potatoes, flour and meat used to be our basic diet, now all these things are not good for us. At one time we are told to drink plenty of water, then we are told we shouldn’t drink the water in our taps. First we were given orange juice and milk at school, now these things are not good for us or our children. We have to look for all these different numbers in our foodstuff. We have things like E numbers, C numbers, A numbers; then, of course, there is all the names we are supposed to remember for these numbers. If we were machines then we might be able to remember them but as we are just human beings it is impossible to remember them all. And when we go out to buy our food it would take us all day in just one shop if we stopped to look at the numbers on the tins or packets; and the writing is so minute you need a magnifying glass to see them. And do we really need to take something like that with us along with shopping bags and the rest of the paraphernalia. Of course, even if we had the time to stop and look at all these numbers do we understand which ones are good for us and which ones are not? Why can’t we go back to our basic food and drink so we know what to buy? People say vegetables are not good for us because they are sprayed with pesticides, also our fruit is sprayed with pesticides so that isn’t good for us either. Yet they tell us to eat five fruits or vegetables a day. How can we? And of course there’s our meat. Animals are given food to make them grow faster and to make them fatter faster, so meat is not good for us. There is salmonella in chickens, salmonella in eggs, sometimes in cheese and on the odd occasion in milk as well. How are we supposed to know when our eggs, milk, cheese and chickens have got salmonella in them and when they have not? Companies advertise on bottles of drink that there is no added sugar in them, but we are told these drinks rot our teeth, so how are we supposed to know if they have too much sugar or not?

By Rita Joel.

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