Why you don’t eat healthy?

I came back on at 11PM or so on Thursday, without having had dinner of course. I was invited to an interior designer showroom in Havana (45 minutes from Tallahassee) with my friend Brigette who just graduate from the Interior Designer’s program at FSU. We left home at 6:11PM after eating two raw broccoli to placate my famine. The event was said to have appetizers, so I figure I could still follow my low carb diet. I could have, but I believe there was more wine than anything else. By 9PM I had probably engaged in too many conversations with too many different glasses of wine and champagne. They had a good selection of wine and cheese. 

I do want to share a story with you. Ok. I love talking to people. There is a reason why I am in communication after all. I just love listening to people, to their stories. So with any conversations you might have with me we ended up talking about food. But first, let me step back few minutes….after talking to this lovely woman about her career she asked me what I wanted to do. At that point I had my good share of wine so I obviously said,” I want to change the world!” To which she replied, “Oh so you are a democrat.” Which again prompted me to ask, “Why Republicans never changed anything?” Then I was asked if there was one thing I could change what would that be. I said, “Food. The food system.” That spiked a very interesting conversation about people’s eating habits. One of the lady shared her frustration in having only 15-30 minutes for a lunch break and having to rely on McDonald’s because it is the most convenient way to eat and move on. She also pointed out that she felt guilty going there. When I asked if she ever considered going to the local organic store that offers pre-made meals, she mentioned that she was not comfortable with the idea of a buffet where you have to weight by the pounds to get a price and she also did not know about their prepackaged section. I thought that was very interesting, because it illustrates a barrier to a shopper experience of going grocery or eating healthy. Sometimes it’s not about the quality or cost, sometimes it gets down to basics – the system; the mechanics. How you feel in a certain environment. We continued talking sharing ideas and perceptions. I think we now can certainly say that we live in a society with citizen-consumers who are aware. they can differentiate between “good” and “bad” (to a certain degree of course). The problem, now is that we need to talk to people and find out what’s still blocking them from caring about their health, and you can only do that by going out your bubble and talking to real people, to people outside your cycle of friends and coworkers.