The idea is to compare what a week’s worth of groceries costs and consists of for families in several countries.

That the American family featured spent $341.98 was not surprising. And while the difference is arresting, it was also not surprising that a family in Chad spent a mere $1.23.

Economic disparities aside (and after visiting in some very poor places, believe me, I’m not forgetting those disparities), something else is striking.

More money spent on groceries does not mean more food, it means more (perceived) convenience. And if anything, it means worse food. In fact, the poorest families actually eat (percent-wise, at least) more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Check it out for yourself.

The poorer families (or at least the ones spending less), actually have more real food. The photos are filled with fruits, vegetables, rice and grains. And while the Mexican family would do well to reduce or eliminate their Coca-Cola intake, it’s clear that the American family stands out as being the only one filled with junk food, and an appalling lack of fruits, vegetables and other fresh food.

Obviously these photos are not a picture of every family in each society, but they are also not aberrations. The Italian family’s food reflects choices that are based on a food culture that has been developing for centuries. It involves lots of fresh foods.

So many American families eat the junk food and products that make claims to fast, easy meals because they are supposed to be cheaper, and easier, than cooking from fresh ingredients. It’s primarily Americans (and maybe Canadians, who aren’t pictured) who have bought into this idea. Local plantains carry the day in Ecuador. Fresh vegetables win in Egypt. The Mediterranean diet persists. And so on.

I understand that this web page is not a scientific study, that it is merely one piece of information related to a topic that is much bigger. But it is reflective of the bigger issue. The notion that to get dinner on the table we need to order pizza, grab Burger King or start meals from a box, or the idea that we can’t afford or don’t need or don’t have time to use fresh fruits and vegetables has been cultivated in this society by the major “food” companies. Our sense of what is good to eat has been perverted.

Looking around the world you can find many different diets (I don’t mean of the Atkins kind), and many ways of eating and balancing foods. There is not a single best way, such as “French” or “Mediterranean” or “Japanese.” But you can point the finger at America and see that there clearly is a wrong way. Land of the free, home of the obese.

For all of the effort and money that has gone into fighting the tobacco companies, the food companies have caused harm just as bad or worse with none of the repercussion. They will be the next target. Nonetheless, an entire culture has lost its way with what food is, with what we, as human beings, should be eating. Yes, it’s a matter of personal choice – and plenty of Americans are now choosing fresh, real food – but each food “innovation” comes at a price. A very high price.

I grew up with a homemade dinner on the table virtually every night of the week. Sometimes it may have been leftovers; one time-saving strategy for two working parents my mom used was to make a lot of food on the weekend or days she had the time. It may have been re-heated, but it was still homemade, good food. There was always at least one vegetable, and no meal was complete without a salad. We read labels; there were always fresh fruit and vegetables in the house. Everything may not have been made from scratch, but it was close.

My in-laws are the same, and perhaps even more so. They go through a lot of pasta, but you will never see a jar of sauce (unless it’s been made by the nonni). Meat or fish during the week is done simply and easily, without the assistance of Hamburger Helper. The reality is that it doesn’t take long to put some fish fillets in a baking pan, coat them in a bit of olive oil, bread crumbs, garlic and parsley, and then put them in the oven. Similarly, it takes almost no time at all to slice up some chicken breast, toss it in bbq sauce, and put that in the oven. Vegetables cook quickly; salad is a cinch when you wash all the lettuce on the weekend and only have to grab what you need for the nightly salad.

I’m not advocating fancy meals every night. But in one hour or less you can put a very good, very fresh and even healthy meal on the table. It may take a little more planning and a change in buying habits, but it’s worth it. It’s better for you and the planet, and better still, the result is tastier meals.

To this day, my grandparents produce the least amount of garbage of anyone I know. They compost everything organic, which makes for wonderful soil for their amazing vegetable garden in the summer. They keep and re-use every piece of string, ribbon and piece of wrapping paper. They wash and re-use every can, glass jar and plastic container and bag. They do actually own things like plastic wrap and foil, but I am quite certain sheets of those items are washed and re-used as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if the boxes of food wrap they do own have lasted them several years.

This re-using habit has to some degree been passed along to my parents and now me, living in sin in Chicago. Like my parents, I re-use large yogurt containers and pickle jars to store my used frying oil. On both sides of the border, we keep takeout containers because they make great vessels to give away extra soup and other leftovers to friends, and then I don’t have to worry about asking for my container back. And like my mom, I also wash and re-use re-sealable storage bags, what I more commonly call Ziploc ™ bags even though it may not always be a Ziploc ™ brand bag. This is much like people say Kleenex™ for facial tissue, Post-it® for sticky notes and Velcro™ for, uh, hook and loop fasteners. Because that’s what I call Velcro when I want to avoid using the trademarked name.

It has occurred to me on occasion that if my family and me were to suddenly stop the practice of saving plastic yogurt and take-out food containers, plastic storage bags and all sorts of other items one would never find naturally occurring in nature, our respective landfills would probably have to close after the garbage delivery from our homes. Or maybe, we could start our own aluminum factory. We keep and re-use that much plastic, aluminum and stuff that other people fill their landfills, or blue boxes that get diverted to landfills, with.

Although I’ve carried on the practice of washing Ziploc™ bags here in Chicago, I have to confess I am not as diligent as my mother and grandmothers about drying the bags as soon as I am done washing them. I have an aversion to drying things in the drain board (we’ll save the reasons why for another post or therapy session), unless I am trying to be a proper dinner guest who pitches in to clean up after a meal. In my home, I put the washed but wet bags over items, such as bottles, on which the bags can hang open from and dry over a period of a couple days BECAUSE I CAN. Once the bags are dry, I am happy to squish them into the second drawer of our kitchen cart where we store them.

It’s important for me to digress here and tell you about this kitchen cart because it is the mother of all kitchen carts. It was purchased from JC Penney when we figured out we’d be moving into the apartment we are currently renting. The lack of kitchen counter and cupboard space compelled us to get something so we can indulge in our love of chopping, prepping and mixing things. It’s been, by far, our favourite large size and higher-priced investment. I am sure it is something we’ll keep even after we move out and move on. I probably don’t wipe down the stainless steel top as lovingly as I should but I do very much enjoy having and using the mother of all kitchen carts.

Last night I was putting some dishes in the dishwasher and tidying up in the kitchen, when I noticed the bottom (fourth) drawer of our lovely kitchen cart was slightly open.

I’m a little freaked out by drawers or cupboards left open. This is not because I have an obsessive compulsive disorder but because open drawers and cupboard doors mean either
a) I might bang my shin or head on the cupboard or drawer because I don’t expect it to be sticking out or open, OR
b) The monsters and creepy things that hide in there might get out at night and come get me. Seriously. This fear is a carry over from my childhood that I just can’t seem to shake. We all got our things that freak us out, OK? So don’t judge my thing and I won’t judge yours.

So to prevent any bruised shins or monsters from climbing out while I was sleeping, I leaned down to close the deeper and larger bottom drawer of our kitchen cart only to discover it wouldn’t close all the way. We keep an assortment of baking tools and cooking utensils in that drawer so I figured one of those must not be all the way in the drawer. I moved things around and tried closing the drawer again. It still popped out about two centimetres from where it should be.

At this point I realized the drawer was bouncing out whenever I tried to close it all the way. This “soft” resistance made me realize something, well, soft must be preventing the drawer from closing. I noticed the Ziploc™ bag we keep our sifter in (re-sealable bags are good for more than just food!) was poking out so I folded the bag more tightly around the sifter and pressed it down well below the top of the drawer thinking this would resolve the problem. But still no luck on the drawer staying closed.

Then it occurred to me: perhaps something had slipped out and was behind or underneath the drawer tracks. I couldn’t imagine what it might be but it wasn’t unfeasible since I had had this happen to me before with the chest of drawers I keep clothing in. I am sure you’ve experienced this. Usually the culprit is a piece of clothing that has been skimmed off the top of an overstuffed drawer. It lodges itself in the back of your drawers preventing them from closing all the way. The exercise of pulling out clothing drawers to retrieve jammed items often leads me to find clothes or underwear or socks I thought I had lost or given away. That’s always a nice treat.

So I pulled out the bottom drawer of our kitchen cart and there to my great and wonderful surprise was a plethora of re-sealable storage bags, some of which you will be happy to know were Ziploc™ brand. I started pulling them out, delighted with how many kept coming. I noted most were the large size bags we put, well, large items or quantities in, and some were the smaller size, the ones you can fit a big block cheese or sandwich in.

As you might recall, I mentioned that we store the washed Ziploc™ bags in the second of four drawers in our kitchen cart, this second drawer being a much shallower drawer, compared to the deep one I had been fighting to close (you can see the size difference here). It had occurred to me in the past that it seemed like the many bags I had stuffed in that second drawer always seemed to be used up whenever I went to retrieve one. I always attributed it to j. using the bags or me not realizing how many I had already used.

No, instead our washed re-sealable storage bags have been collecting below the bottom drawer of our kitchen to a point where we had amassed 21 of them.

j. was asleep on the sofa when I bounded in to tell him of my discovery. I, of course, woke him up to tell him the story of our fascinating hidden re-sealable storage bag collection. Ironically, it turned out he had been thinking all this time that I had been using the bags that seemed to so quickly disappear from the second drawer.

This morning I thumbed through the pile of bags I’d left for myself on the counter to admire. I like my quirky habit of washing bags that I learned from two generations of my family. j. has now started washing bags and proudly announces to me when he has washed bags that are in the sink. I think he does it because when he’s washing other things the bags usually get sucked into but not through the drain, causing the sink to fill up with dirty dish water. But at least he’s proud to be doing it! I’ll take all the small domestic victories I can get.

I looked at the space in our second drawer where we usually stuff our washed bags. How could I have thought that space was big enough to store all these slippy and slide-y bags? We certainly won’t need to buy any new re-sealble storage bags for a while, but I will definitely have to get creative with where I store them so I don’t lose track of so many again. Better creatively stored than in the landfill, I say.