Prepare a Meal

The meal I planned for myself was breakfast. I prepared this meal about three weeks ago when I went home for Easter. The meal that I wanted to eat was a large bowl of cereal and maybe some fruit and toast. However, after reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, I decided to take on the challenge of making a meal that was a little bit more healthy for me.

The parts of the meal I was going to make consisted of an egg-white sandwich, oatmeal, fruit and some toast. I first heated up the stove in my kitchen. I separated the egg-white from three different eggs and then poured it on the pan. While that was cooking, I took out a container of Quaker oats we can in our cabinets that looked like they hadn't been touched in years. I placed a good amount in a bowl and added low-fat milk until the bowl was 3/4 full. I then placed this in the microwave and set the time for about 3 minutes.

Next I grabbed a banana that was sitting on the counter and some strawberries that were in our refrigerator. I washed the strawberries and sliced them and the banana into a bowl. Also I put the toast in the toaster. I returned to the egg-whites and cooked them until they were ready and then placed them on a bagel. I took the oatmeal out of the microwave and the toast out of the toaster. I added a little brown sugar to the oatmeal and I toasted the toast with margarine. I then put it all on the table and began eating.

While I was eating I was pretty proud of myself for how good everything tasted. After the meal I felt pretty satisfied but then I asked the question to myself, "Was that really that healthy?"

I realized that it was a step up from my usual breakfast in and out, but the foods I was eating were mostly unhealthy. The eggs were from a local farm about a county away from our neighborhood and the banana was healthy but not much else. The margarine has high trans fat, the oats from Quakers was high in sugar, and I found out that the strawberries had been exposed to all kinds of chemicals to enhance their size. Overall, my meal was about 50% unhealthy. In Kim Evan's article, Take a Look at the Chemicals in Processed Foods, she talks about the dangers of these chemicals and how they are related to other illnesses like cancer.