With a newborn in the house, it starts to become quite clear that many of the food we eat is in fact not very healthy. Case in point: breakfast cereals.

In the morning, it takes too long to fill Ingmar with bread. So instead we prepare a bowl of cereal. Not corn flakes, but grains with warm milk. It is almost impossible to buy these products without sugar. It’s sad, really. All the “Bambix” brand products contain either plain sugar, dextrose (sugar) or honey (sugar). When you look real hard you might find one that has merely apples (fructose – sugar). Why do they do this? It tastes better? Sure does — for adults. To be sure, an eight month old will prefer it as well, but that is not the point. I would rather have him get used to unsugared food.

I have never been able to really express why though, it was more a gut feeling. This page does express my concern really well. We have all become to used to flavourful food, that we have ceased to notice the improvement in taste. So to our senses it tastes equal to unflavoured stuff. Yet we keep consuming all the calories that go with those kinds of food.

Ice cream is an extraordinary invention for intensifying taste pleasure—an artificial concoction of pure fat and refined sugar. Once an expensive delicacy, it is now a daily ritual for many people. French fries and potato chips, laden with artificially-concentrated fats, are currently the most commonly consumed “vegetable” in our society. These artificial products, and others like them, form the core of the American diet.

And don’t get me started on organic food. The basic premise is sound and my wife and I do subscribe to this movement. But there is one huge problem and that is taste. At the bonafide organic supermarket there are simply too many products that taste filthy. This can range from gag-inducing ‘sweets’ to horrific tofu and even baby meals in a jar that taste absolutely revolting. They do sell breakfast cereals without sugar though. The problem: it’s also gluten-free. All of it. This means no wheat but instead gross grains that basically smell and taste like cardboard.

In my opinion this is quite a troublesome situation, but seemingly there is not a whole lot I can do about it. Except teaching my son to eat his whole-grain bread more quickly I guess.