May I FINISH please?! Part One

This was going to be one long post, but I realized the first topic alone could stand on it's own...

Yesterday I was having a conversation with a nutrition enthusiast who does public speaking on the topic. I brought up my pet-peeve about the health food industry and asked him his opinion. Now, from years of being interrupted, I do tend to be very brief in making my initial point just to lay the groundwork before I get interrupted. Then I like to go into more detail. I started by expressing my frustration in the lack of interest in the food industry in educating consumers on the sodium related health problems and not providing convenient choices for people with those problems. If you are diabetic or avoiding fat or cholesterol, there are foods made and marketed just for you, but there is very little out there if you need to avoid sodium.

The problem with talking to experts is that they immediately assume you know nothing about the field they are experts in. He cut me off there to tell me that people can't expect grocery stores to tell you what you should and should not be eating. He further went to say that if I have a health problem and expect food makers to cater to me rather than getting educated about how I should be eating and learning how to take care of myself, that is my own problem because there are plenty of natural low sodium foods I could purchase and prepare on my own.

STOP THERE! (He actually did stop there and left shortly thereafter, so I finished the conversation with his wife). While the facts of his statement are absolutely true, there are so many reasons why that was absolutely the most dumbass response someone could give. First, he failed to listen to my actual concern. He did not tell me anything I didn't know. However, his answer was only relevant if I intended to live the rest of my life alone, never get involved in anything that might take time away from my meal times, never travel or go out to dinner and never let friends or family cook for me. My point was this, I know damn well the problems related to sodium and how to avoid them. The majority of the rest of the population, however, doesn't. They know sugar and fat are bad because there is a huge market for those products. The lack of low sodium education and food choices, however, are causing millions of people to victims of silent killers diseases such as high blood pressure.

Furthermore, the people who know I need to avoid sodium aren't going to spend the time researching options as I have. They make guesses based on mis-information and typically try to serve me something I shouldn't eat. It would be much easier if they had a section of the store they could go to and pick out a few things.

And finally, I would like to see a selection of low sodium convenience products for just that reason... convenience! Just because I like to cook doesn't mean I enjoy spending time daily or weekly to plan and prepare meals in advance. It takes time away from my family and other activities. I'm not just too stupid to figure things out on my own, as this man suggested. In fact, I probably know more about the topic than him. But, as the expert, he took it upon himself to make assumptions about me and my lifestyle and wasted a ton of breath on words that left me fairly unimpressed.

While we're on the topic of nutrition, let me warn you all - do not believe anything you are told by someone selling you a product unless they have real scientific evidence to support what they're telling you. This same couple went on to talk about weight loss and supplementation and made several statements that were clearly learned from a script and outright contradicted themselves when asked specific knowledgeable questions. That scares me... I highly encourage anyone considering nutritional supplementation to first try getting their nutritional needs from natural food sources. My doctor firmly believes this and when he explained why, it made perfect sense. Supplements offer you the needed nutrition that we know about, nutritious food provides the same nutrition plus any vitamins or minerals that haven't been discovered yet. You'd hate to find out ten years from now that your health problems are a result of a deficit of something that we don't even know about today.