I had always known that any kind of online research that is driven by fear, particularly when related to health would never yield productive results. Yet when I recently came across a fear mongering article that had the words ‘food,’ ‘chemicals,’ and ‘health’ all in the same sentence, I couldn’t escape the natural curiosity (a reaction that was generously colored by paranoia) to understand why a yoga mat chemical had to be present in bread and in 500 different foods in the market, and more importantly what that meant. Bread is a regular fare at my house and it is all that my kid would eat; so armed with a good enough reason, I immediately started scouring the internet to get to the bottom of it.
But what started as a rational and intellectual analysis about one isolated issue soon raged into a sleuthhound frenzy of a search lasting for a good few hours, digressing maniacally over a range of topics on health, food, lifestyle, and environment fueled by fear and confusion. It questioned the authenticity of not that one article alone, but also a few other maxims that I originally thought were conclusive enough to apply in life, like…
‘Organic food is any day better in terms of reduced health risks than conventionally-grown food.’
‘Ingredients like sodium lauryl sulfate used in cosmetics and everyday products are carcinogenic.’
‘Green pans and stainless steel cookware are safer alternatives than nonstick ones.’
‘Sunscreen should be your second skin whenever you step out of your house.’
…to name a few.
And at the end of that exhausting endeavor, which by then felt less like an intellectual quest and more like deliberately sucking on a decayed tooth just to realize how bad it has gotten, I came out battered and baffled with even more questions than I started with.
1. So is the chemical azodicarbonamide that is used in yoga mats and tennis shoes also being maliciously used as a raising and leavening agent in bread, or is an innocent food additive used in many baked goods only in miniscule amount and also readily eliminated by our bodies being included in foamy household materials?
2. Does team organic’s claim that their food is free of harmful pesticide doesn’t hold water because some organic farmers use certain amount of synthetic pesticides as natural ones are not potent enough to kill pests, and even worse is that some natural pesticides (like plant-derived Rotenone) allowed in organic farming are found to have a much serious toxicological effect? (Side note: Organic produce has higher levels of fecal and E.coli bacterial contamination from composted animal manures that is used in some cases to substitute synthetic fertilizers.)
3. Can I let my guard down and allow Method hand wash back on my bathroom counter where it reigned in a supreme dazzle for a good while since American Cancer Society declared that sodium lauryl sulfate is noncarcinogenic, or should I side with the anti-SLS camp and toss the solution out because they still consider the chemical as dicey as an urban myth?
4. Stainless steel is today heralded as the preferred choice in cookware against polytetrafluoroethylene-coated nonstick products like Teflon and cast iron pans that are pre-seasoned with soy-based vegetable oil made possibly from genetically-modified soy. But is it just a matter of time before someone debunks stainless steel and sends out another fear mongering article about nickel in the metal leaching into food? Green pans coated with thermolon may now be environment friendly and PFOA and PTFE-free but again, can only time be the true test of that claim?
What is a confused consumer to do when “green” options are turning out to be “gray” with every subsequent research article?
So after a careful consideration of this truckload of nonsense, I now realize that:
- I would rather peel the skin off those organic apples and forgo essential phytonutrients just so I don’t savor animal poop in between the rich, tart taste.
- The carefully chosen organic food I eat may not be 100% free of any synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, and GMO contamination and is likely to alter the genetic makeup of my kids and their offspring in the long haul.
- I could simply cook my food on the bathroom countertop with a 1000-watt ionic blow dryer for all I care because the salt and acidity in the food is likely to react with whichever material I choose to cook my food in thus leading to some freak illness.
- And that in the grand scheme of things none of this really matters because if not these adulterants, then plain old stress from the fact that I could or could not be harboring carcinogenic substances in my body from food and products that might or might not be infused with dangerous stuff, which may or may not become potent enough to kill me someday, is good enough to kill me today.
This was my moment.
This was the fizzle before the big lightning strike.
No guarantees, no assurances and certainly, no clear answers in life, so no amount of cautiousness is going to keep me from getting run over by my everyday choices.
But even bigger realization, the actual lightning bolt of the moment, was that what I thought was cautiousness all along was actually a deceptive kind of deep-rooted fear that was making me walk on eggshells all the time.
Most people have some sort of a personal undoing that they should identify and guard themselves against. Mine is my slightly exaggerated and often unreasonable fears for my children. From being a calm and confident person, I morphed into a worrywart when the mommy hormones first kicked in and I have been obsessing excessively ever since about my kids’ safety in this crazy society. Reality is that I have avoided watching mainstream news channels like the plague, amber alerts set my cortisol on high-release, and I seem to have unwittingly made it into a habit to process every health scare, every mishap, and every bad news that comes my way – school shootings, pedophiles, and freak accidents and all – in relation to my children.
Granted that stressors and uncertainties are inevitable in life but is life meant to be lived in constant fear of something that may or may not happen? If the probability of something bad happening is only 50%, why is the mind always quick to latch on only to the negative even though there is a perfectly equal chance of the bad not happening? I consider myself an optimist and I know deep down that everything will be all right, yet why am I unable to stay deep and anchor on that faith but instead fleet on the surface and give in to fear every time I am reminded of the precariousness of life? Why is the spirit so pitiably weak and why does God allow bad things happen to children? Is there even a God? What is the point of existence and what is the final take home lesson for all of us from this?
Too many questions, one messed up soul.
Thus a journey begins.
