Are you going to eat this tofu wrap or can I give it to an animal to bury?

Eating healthy is not as easy as it sounds. From a beverage standpoint, how many options are really available. I like water a lot, but even I can only drink so much. You have pop or soda which is clearly not good for you. Some drinks are worse for you than others, but they still rot out your teeth. Diet pop is not much better. Less calories, but more sugar which makes you crave sweets even more. There's also been a controversy brewing for years now about whether diet pop causes cancer but honestly what doesn't these days (but that's a story for another time). So maybe you should drink the fruit juice pops which have very little fruit in them and once again mostly sugar.

I enjoy a good glass of milk now and then but too much milk is not good for you either. I also really enjoy chocolate milk which once again is healthy for you (more healthy than other choices) but on the other hand is really not. How about juice? Juice is great, but you have to make sure you get the right kind otherwise it's pretty much apple or orange flavored water with lots of sugar. I've never been a fan of tea. People are going nuts over McDonald's Sweet Tea lately. It's good for you, they say but once again incredibly sugary.

Coffee is not good for you either, no matter how many different forms they have it in now. They say coffee is an acquired taste. I say anything you have to take enough to wear down your body's natural gag response is not worth having. Besides caffeine is not good for you either. Which rules out all of those energy drinks which is pretty much sugar and caffeine shots. But try telling the parents and business people in this world that they can't have caffeine throughout their day and see how easily they survive.

Which brings me back to water. Purified water is good, even though the water is treated before it even comes to your tap. I had a friend that used to run everything through her water filter and then boiled it. That seems a little excessive to me. Maybe after we've survived the nuclear winter we'll have to resort to those methods and probably much, much more. The problem with water is there is an entire industry based on a product that you can get for virtually nothing. Who knows what is actually in the bottled water and how healthy is it compared to your local drinking water. Just because they say it comes from a mountain waterfall doesn't make it true. Avian backwards will always spell Naive.

The bottom line is, it's so much more expensive to eat and drink healthier. Those who have to scrimp and save can't afford an extra $2 a helping to make sure they get organic fruits and vegetables. So many places are catering to a healthier lifestyle. McDonald's salad loaded up with what they serve (cheese, chicken, bacon, etc.) is just as many calories as their cheeseburgers. Middle class has an obesity problem because it's so much cheaper and easier to eat things that are unhealthy for you. You get more for your money and that's what it comes down to a lot of the times.

Growing up, I heard a disturbing thing from one of my health teachers. As is general knowledge, red meat is bad for you. Most people will not dispute this or even really try to argue. What about Chicken? Chicken is pumped so full of hormones that it's not that much better. Farmers want their chickens to be big so that they can make more money. A friend told me that growing up he heard a story about this young boy who loved chicken. He ate chicken all the time. So much that he developed breasts because of all the extra hormones. My friend told me he gave up chicken for a long time after that. He still eats it now, just in moderation. Back to health class, fish is healthy, right? With all the pollution in our water, the fish breathe that in and then you digest it. Which brings us to vegetables. Eating a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle is supposed to be extremely healthy except they never seem to have as much energy as the old fashioned meat eaters (This is where Tim Allen would grunt "Oh, oh"). Farmers use hormones to grow our vegetables as well to make them bigger and grow faster. They are also experimenting with cloning food and who knows what kind of side effects those foods are going to have.

The bottom line is that everything is bad for you in some form or another. The trick is to take everything in moderation. The only alternative is to not eat.