When I first saw this story from the New York Times about 2 mothers from California who are suing General Mills because ” the giant food company has deceptively marketed its Nature Valley products as natural when they contain highly processed ingredients,” I had what I would consider to be a normal response (well, normal for me anyway). I thought “Well duh, you fucking idiot. When’s the last time you saw a high fructose corn syrup tree?”

But then I calmed the hell down, clambered down off my soapbox and remembered a time where I didn’t know as much about food as I know now.

I’m the cook in our house, but it wasn’t always that way. When my fiance and I first started dating, he was the one in charge in the kitchen, mostly because my culinary skills involved pretty extensive use of the microwave. I grew up in a house with a single mom who worked any job she could find in order to keep us clothed, housed and fed. There wasn’t a lot of food exploration in our house, because there wasn’t time for it. Food was something that kept you alive, and that was it. I carried that philosophy with me to college and for years after that.

I remember one night when J was coming over to my apartment for dinner. We had only been dating for a few months, and I was still looking for ways to wow him. A nice, home cooked meal always does that for guys, right? That was my thinking anyway, so off I skipped to my local Trader Joe’s. The only food I’d really been familiar with up to that point in my life was Italian. That was my wheelhouse, and I was sticking to it. I loaded up my cart with pasta, chicken, bread, garlic and a jar of Trader Joe’s Piccata Simmer Sauce. I got home, fried the chicken in what I can now recall was a truly ungodly amount of oil, boiled the pasta and threw the whole affair together in a bowl with about half a jar of the piccata simmer sauce. I had Giada on the ropes.

Little did I know that, 5 years later, J would be regaling groups of friends with the story of that dinner. It’s his go to “look-how-much-we’ve-grown-up” tale.

“So I walk into her kitchen, and she’s got these two big bowls of pasta in them and I’m thinking ‘Oh, ok. This is actually gonna be pretty good.’ I should’ve waited until I tasted it before I made that call!” (exit to uproarious laughter because Kay used to be a terrible cook. Curtain)

This is not meant to defame Trader Joe’s. They have some excellent products. This is meant to defame me. I didn’t know how to shop, how to cook or how to find pride and joy in the things that came out of my kitchen. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t being begged to take 5 Michelin stars for my inspired combo of jarred piccata sauce and pan-fried chicken over heavily boiled pasta.

Eventually, however, I did learn about food. I learned how to cook. I learned about food. I learned where food came from. What I did not do, however was to sue the companies who made my food because they had deceived me into thinking that what I was eating was good or healthy. Yeah, they fooled me. But they fooled me because I let them. At that point in my life, I didn’t care enough about what I was putting into my body to put any research into it. I counted on the government and food safety agencies to protect me from food that wasn’t good for me. It was only once I started to educate myself that I realized that the onus was on me to know about what I was cooking and eating. This is growing up, boys and girls.

It’s definitely a rude awakening to realize that food companies don’t have your best interests at heart when they’re creating & marketing their products. They’re merchants, and their job is to sell food. Your job is to educate yourself about where your food comes from & make your own choices based on what matters most to you, not to run off to the courthouse with papers in hand. Don’t blame someone else for the fact that you were too lazy to do your own research. Blame yourself.