Day 33: "You have to live outside of society to live a healthy lifestyle."

I had an interesting talk with someone this week about being healthy.
Being healthy shouldn't be that hard. If you think about it, really, it is so difficult. Our society is made up of 'convenience' and that convenience is so poor in quality that you really do pay a price for convenience. Some people are shedding decades off their life in the name of convenience. This is a very difficult concept to swallow.
But it's true. How many people do you know who are in very poor health around 50? My guess is, quite a few. How many of those people eat fast food daily, or even more than twice a week? Cook in plastic? Use aspartame sweetened products? What about processed foods that contain partially hydrogenated oils? Fried foods? Microwaved foods?
I don't disagree that a little convenience is great - but did you know that you lose HALF of your nutrients in food in the first 10 seconds of microwaving?
Or did you know that when you cook in plastic - microwave or other - the petroleum chemicals used in the plastic (which are mostly carcinogenic), leech into your food?
How about the fact that partially hydrogenated oils came about being used in foods just years before the obesity epidemic started, did you know that?
Sure, a few fast food burgers there, some microwaved soup there, it's no big deal. But most of our population does at least one of these things A DAY. No wonder we are dying sooner, deteriorating in health earlier and spending WAY WAY WAY more cash on healthcare.
All this is going on daily and people are getting pissed about airport security. Isn't our day to day health just slightly more important? Isn't the fact that I lost my Granny too young more important than that? We deserve to live reasonably long, healthy lives, don't we?
But someone said something to me the other day that sort of resonated with me. After mulling it over for a few days, I find it to be completely true:

You have to live as an outsider of society in order to live a healthy lifestyle.

It's true. How many people think organic food is "posh". Why? Because it doesn't contain harmful chemicals that can lead to normal bodily function breakdowns? Because it's the healthiest option? Because it's $0.20 more per pound?
Or take my choice to have a "natural birth", a good deal of my friends treated it like it was out of line and unreasonable that I should "want to go through all of that". Nevermind all the health implications that go with a medically assisted birth, I felt as though I was being treated like I was cutting my tongue off!
Then there is the whole breastfeeding thing. So many people rolled their eyes or acted like I was just being difficult when I said that my daughter didn't take a bottle. But the thing is; she refused the bottle from 3weeks on! I breastfed her (and still do at certain times of the day) because it is better for her body, better for her brain and believe it or not; better for her socially. It's also had wonderful reprecutions for me - it took almost 6 months before my uterus went back down, I cant imagine what it would have been like had I not breastfed. And I STILL haven't had a period - I can't tell you how awesome THAT is! And good for my family history of cancers. Not to mention my daughter has NEVER had a fever... Maybe once, she was almost to 99degrees. She has had a couple of minor colds and she got 5ths disease (which EVERYONE gets at one point in their life).

I guess I could go on and on. I don't mean to chastise anyone. I feel like the mainstream ideals are just unhealthy and misleading. I do feel apart from most folks because I am conscientious about my way of life and about what I feed myself and my family. Don't get me wrong, I'll do a frozen pizza here and there: but it's rare, not my way of life. I guess I feel that people aren't really given the opportunities to really LOOK at their habits and see how unhealthy they are. They just see (and I know from experience) what is convenient, what is easy and what is cheap and think "It MUST be okay or it wouldn't be available for me to buy" or "Of COURSE these large label companies have my best interest at heart: they want to keep me as a customer!" You might find, if you really research, that they possibly DON'T care and they are more likely counting on your blind trust and ignorance.