@Joannie - having grown your own vegetables and being country folk, of course, you will be suspicious of anything our super markets offer.
Apart from being selective what you eat and how you prepare it, we have little idea how 'safe' almost all of our food is.
Commonsense should be your guide - I cannot suggest anything there, except I refuse to get paranoid about food - try and cook meals I like, try and get free-range, when it is offered - tend to buy and eat a lot of root vegetables, lettuce I only like the crispy interior parts - tomatoes are generally woeful, wish I could grow them, but now I buy tomatoes which come in those cardboard bases and the darker ones. I try and avoid anything wrapped in plastic
I have gone back to eating in the way I grew up - make simple meals, but with carefully prepared, washed vegetables. Have a few exotic recipes, like yesterday I cooked my 'Como Shambalda' soup with lots of veggies (including some peas in the shell, delicious!) - and I like to buy the 'dirty' potatoes, which I wash of course, but imagine, they still have the taste of 'earth' about them - one of my grandmothers had some fields, on one she grew potatoes, the other was for the edible poppy . . . and now and then I bake my special bread, too (half rye, a handful of oats, ground nuts, molasses, honey, but finished with wheat flour), but like it so much, I will get fat again, after having lost a few pounds . . . and I try and have one fasting day per week (it usually turns into a 'small portions' day haha!).
Human beings are tougher than we give ourselves credit for - just read up on some threads here, according to one lot of posters on HotCopper, we shall all be 'rooned' by the vaccinations jabbed into our bodies willy-nilly - yet look at the life expectancy of people in the Western World - and all that despite the rubbish which is stuffed into us from childhood (endless sweets - I used to get them as treats only!) - a dessert is almost a must after every meal etc. - and then the alcohol and the drugs . . . or endless medications for this that and the other . . .
The secret about food IMO is to actually treasure the whole process, the shopping, the storing and eventual careful cooking (with love!~) of the ingredients - if you can grow it yourself, like some do on this thread, so much the better!!
My friend I met up with yesterday, bemoaned the fact that she cannot grow good tomatoes - and she is a great gardener - I cannot remember when I bought really good and sweet tomatoes in the super-market - they are picked too early, I think - have eaten them at a former boyfriend's who grew them himself, but he was a country boy originally.
Take care
Taurisk
❤️
