I am a great lover of food, but I've always been an extremely picky eater. I don't eat a balanced diet at all, so this isn't about eating all your vegetables (I pretty much only eat cheese), this is about my war with bad tasting food that's filled with cancer.

Growing up my family ate the same five meals over and over with absolutely no seasoning at all, most of everything straight from a can or box if it was possible. Everything I ate as a child tasted the same. The tacos tasted like the hamburgers who tasted like the steak who tasted like the pork chops. It was utterly disgusting, so when I was around 9 I became a "vegetarian". The problem with this being, I don't like vegetables. So, I began my exclusive diet of cheese and candy.

I lived on cheese and candy (and cake! the 3 C's of nutrition) until i graduated from highschool. I hated food. I hated eating. I had worked meat back in my diet, but not red meat. I still do not eat mammals of any variety. Only chicken and turkey.

College definitely changed that. I moved to Atlanta and found all these great restaurants, and I began wanting food like that at home (you try eating out on a regular basis while being a poor art student). I also began researching what goes into food while it's being processed. It's some really scary shit. Stuff like nitrites that cause cancer pretty much on impact with your stomach lining, and bovine growth hormone (which the canadian government has banned) and dioxins in milk. After researching it, I've become scared to eat almost all premade food.

I cook. a lot. Most of it completely from scratch. I buy cage free eggs and organic milk, so I know that my chickens weren't tortured, and my milk isn't going to give me cancer. Anything I do buy prepakaged, I thoroughly read the ingredients and look for shit like nitrites and BHT. I try to buy things with no preservatives and coloring added, because who knows what any of that shit is?

Eating this way is a little more expensive than buying just whatever, but it's really effected my life. I don't feel as lethargic anymore, and I'm no longer severely underweight (which I was, surprisingly, during the cheese/candy/cake time). I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, but I've found that I love cooking, so it's not a bother.

My diet still consists mainly of dairy and sweet things, so I fail at the food pyramid, but at least I'm not going to get cancer (from my food at least. it seems like you get cancer from everything).