Day 7 of my “365 Days of New” I remove all unnatural chemicals, preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, GMO crap and unhealthy food from my home. Then I realize I don’t really have much of that food in my house anyway. Theeeeeeeen I realized what I was really up to. Silly mind tricks!

Do you even know what’s in your food? Is the “food” you’re eating even really food, or is it just the sum of fillers, chemicals and genetically modified scariness? I’ll preface this by saying I’m a big supporter of “slow food” and but I also luuuuuurve fast food. I. will. fuck. some. Taco. Bell. UP. Still, I try my best to eat a diet free of all the gross stuff that makes so many Americans fat, depressed, sick and unhealthy. The danger is that sometimes when I’m feeling lazy, tired or whatever (drunk), I’ll get nasty with a big bag of chips right in my own bed. In order to avoid waking up next to an empty bag of BBQ Lays and feeling violated, I decided to dietary disaster-proof my home by completely eliminating all unhealthy and unnatural food from my kitchen. The bummer for me is I was eating clean for a while, but I let the poison creep back in. (More on that later)

Me, passed out on the table after drinking a chocolate milkshake AND eating a slice of chocolate silk pie

Knowing the contents of the food I eat isn’t new to me, but only because it started out as a necessity. My interest in reading labels started with a negative reaction to a popular, yet dangerous preservative called MSG. In case you don’t know, MSG stands for Monosodium Glutamate and is proven to be directly linked to illness and obesity. For my whole life, every time I ate fast food or ate at almost any every restaurant I’d get sick. I finally found out why. I’m allergic to MSG. Every time I ingest MSG I end up sick for days. I might have an more extreme and immediate reaction than you to MSG, but MOST humans – even if you don’t get visibly ill – cannot tolerate MSG and similar chemicals. If you don’t care about your heath but do care about being fat (My Los Angeles peeps, I’m looking at you!) here’s where it’s linked to obesity.

Most people mistakenly only associate MSG with cheap Chinese food, and don’t realize it’s  in SO many every day items we eat including: Doritos, Cheetos, Sour Cream & Onion Chips, almost all Lipton and Campbells products, almost all Ranch dressing and dips, chicken/sausage/mushroom items at popular chain restaurants and grocery stores, chicken stock/chicken flavoring/bullion cubes used for cooking nearly every dish in many restaurants AND your own kitchen. EVERYTHING at Umami Burger, EVERYTHING at KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Jack in the Box and almost all similar fast food and chain restaurants like TGIF, Applebees, Red Lobster, The Olive Garden, Village Inn, Denny’s – but even your local “mom and pop” restaurants too…etc.

OH… AND EVERYTHING AT CHICK-FIL-A.

I’m not writing this to be preachy. People should be able to eat whatever they want. I’m just writing this because so many people don’t realize what’s actually in the food they’re eating and might make a different decision if they were better informed.

Recently I dated a guy whose diet consisted of nearly 100% chemicals. Every single meal was like, McDonald’s or pasta – but the type of pasta topped with processed cheese and meat. I didn’t want to bother him with my strict food policies, so I started to just eat whatever he ate. I quickly found myself getting very sick. He actually said to me “You should see a doctor, because lately you’ve been sick almost every day.”

WTF? NO SHIT dude. We ‘d been eating unhealthy chemical-ridden food together every day for nearly a year and every time we ate, immediately after I’d roll around on the floor like a dying walrus. I decided to just “let it slide” to make life easier for us (him) and was literally making myself sick by doing it. When I told him I’m allergic to MSG and that chemicals make me ill, he looked at me like I’m some left wing food conspiracy theorist. He actually told me I was a food snob, called me a socialist (wth?) and said it was “cute.”

Today when I cleaned out my refrigerator it was easy in a way, because it was a return to what I already know works best for me. It was my choice to eat shitty food this year, so I’m just choosing to be healthier now. I also know I can’t date anyone who doesn’t care about what they eat or have basic respect for their own body ever again. If I’m going to be a socialist (um…??!) and a food snob, I might as well pick another stuck-up Commie to be my partner in culinary crime.

Well….this is awkward. The blog just took a weird personal turn about me trying to clean up my past relationship by cleaning out my fridge. Okaaaaay then. I suppose everything we say/do is usually somewhat about something a little deeper or possibly about something else. I guess it just took until the end of this post to figure out what I was REALLY cleaning out. Thanks for reading along while I figured out what stuff really belongs in the garbage. (Ohhhhhhhhhh… In your FACE, ex -boyfriend who loves cheeseburgers!) Just kidding. (No I’m not).

Just remember…