Health freak, fresh foods

Junior Catherine Tang

Ever since I can remember, my family has always been health conscious, to say the least.

I didn’t realize my family’s extremely health conscious ways were weird until I began having play dates with my friends in elementary school. They would come over and the only snacks I would have at my house were fruit and other healthy foods. Apples. Yogurt. Granola bars. No one wanted them but me.

As a result, I began keeping a snack drawer full of unhealthy, “yummy” snacks, such as chocolate and chips, for my friends when they came over. I didn’t understood my mom’s obsession with organic foods or why she would not let me eat McDonald’s Happy Meals like the other kids. Age, as usual, has changed my perception.

Fast food, such as McDonald’s and Taco Bell, is ridiculously unhealthy for a number of reasons.

First off, the meat used in fast-food meals is not organic, so it is full of growth hormones, antibiotics and terrible feed. The feed used in these so-called animal “farms” includes drugs, and chemicals, animal waste products, unhealthy amount of grains and even plastic fillers.

Secondly, that meat is not 100 percent meat. It is combined with synthetic ingredients, corn and other products that will go unnamed. And, I will just leave it at that.

While many agree that fast food is unhealthy, it is sometimes hard to act on those beliefs in real life. For example, since I do not pack lunch, fast food sometimes seems like the only option for a 40 minute lunch.

But I’m saved by my health freak friends. My two health conscious friends and I only hit four, occasionally five, places for lunch that I would recommend to anybody looking for a healthy lunch close to campus.

Our top pick is Rio Adobe, where we love to order the Taos Taos house salad with chicken. Safeway is a distant No. 2, but it has fresh boxed salads. No. 3 is Saratoga Bagels, which has spinach, egg and cheese omelettes. Finally, Togo’s half salad and half sandwich combos.

Our healthy ways of lunch repulse our other friends. The “normals” think we are freaks, that all we eat is grass. On the contrary, we think they eat trash.

But there is room for compromise.

One day at lunch, the “normals” wanted to go to McDonald’s. Because we were in separate cars, we were literally on the phone screaming at each other. In the end, we compromised for Chipotle, which is undeniably unhealthy but is better than some fast-food places.

Sometimes, all one needs is a full stomach, and both normals and health freaks can agree on that.