It's special guest day here in the Foodiness Fallout Shelter! My new, once-in-a-while co-host, Emily Peterson, has taken time out from her busy life of cheffing, motherhood, chicken raising and occasional taxidermy to join us down here. You may know Emily from her HRN show, Sharp and Hot, but today we're doing a mini-series within my show, called Sharp and Blunt. Guess who's Blunt? Ha.

We have lots of stuff in common and lots of similar food issues, so we're gonna kinda free-form it today, and, like on Bravo, watch what happens! Or I guess in this case, listen to what happens? Should be fun...So c'mon down the rabbit hole, and join us for some Foodiness-fueled banter and chat.

Live at 2:00...you know where, right? www.heritageradionetwork.org!

So I’ve got babies on the brain. Everywhere I go, everyone I know and see is breeding, birthing, being fruitful and multiplying as if babies were going out of style or were about to be banned or rationed by the government. Brooklyn is baby-breeding central. I miss the old NYC where once you had kids you moved out, fearing for their lives.

Not me, of course, I’m too old, that ship has sailed and there’s no turning back into the wind now. Oh sure, so-called well-meaning people say to me, “Oh no, it’s not too late, you can still do it! I know someone who got pregnant at 50, with a donor egg and donor sperm and 17 rounds of IVF and a surrogate” Because that’s what you want, to have a lab-grown, $100,000 infant at 50. Uh…thanks, I say, but nope. I don’t need your reassurance that it’s not too late, because it is too late, and it was a conscious decision, and please go away and take your little Junipers and Masons and Oleanders and their runny noses and sippy cups away from me. Please. Just. Stop.

I went to Bethlehem, PA last weekend for a baby shower for my beautiful cousin Robin, who is a devoted LGR fan, btw. Robin took charge of her food life and completely overhauled her diet a few years ago and dumped all the Foodiness, and her picture hangs on the Foodiness Fallout Shelter wall of fame, and she looks great. We give her a shout-out now and then on the show. Hi Robin!

So Robin and her husband Jay are expecting a baby boy in July, and I am genuinely super happy for her. She is an amazingly loving, generous and kind person and will be an exceptional parent, and if anyone should be a mom, it’s her. And a couple other friends have either recently had babies, or are expecting, and it’s fine, it’s what humans do, right? It’s the norm. I chose not the norm. But I like being an aunt, to my real nieces and all my friend’s kids.

And I like baby showers. I think the pregnant moms need that lavishing of attention before their lives change so radically and they risk losing themselves in parenting. They need to eat little sandwiches and open presents and get all weepy, it’s very good for them. Plus, at almost every baby shower, there’s cake. And I like cake. I hardly ever eat cake, so when I go to an event with cake, usually, I eat some cake. And that’s kind of what today’s show is about. Cake. Not babies. Well, indirectly about babies. So today, on Let’s Get Real, let’s talk about cake. Ok? Oh, and IHOP, and the government, and even autism. Yikes.

On this week's episode of Let's Get Real, Erica celebrates the eve of the joyous holiday of Purim, aka "The Jewish Halloween." Among many other reasons, this holiday is exciting because it heralds the coming of spring! Also this week was National Slurpee Day, when 7-Eleven invited customers to bring in their container of choice for a free fill-up – whether it was a cup, an oil drum, or even an inflatable kiddie pool.

I’m hiding out down here in the fallout shelter this week. I’m safe here, since we’re so deep underground and we filter our air. I can’t go outside anymore, since I seem to have developed terrible seasonal allergies, all of a sudden. Twice this spring I’ve been hit with weeks of a sore throat, major congestion, coughing. It’s not a cold, I feel fine underneath it all, and I’m convinced that it’s related to climate change. I never had any allergies before, so why now? I think there are invasive species, or native species going nuts from all the extra carbon dioxide in the air. It’s happening now, people, the earth is becoming uninhabitable. Better build your spaceships or dig your bunkers, ‘cause terrestrial life on the surface is coming to an end. And even though a few years ago my doctor gave me a full allergy test panel, and declared me allergic to “nothing”, things seem to have changed. Or, she can’t read results.

I know using the word assault is a bit dramatic, and also diminishes the weight of the word, as assault isn’t to be taken lightly, and certainly not just thrown around as a term. There are other, much more serious and horrible ways to be assaulted, than by pollen. And two of my friends have been violently assaulted just in the last month, right here in post-Giuliani Manhattan.

So I’m going to retract my use of the word assault, and instead use the term pollen-whacked, ok? When I go outside, I feel like I’m getting pollen-whacked. Right in the face, and the nose, and throat.

And after being sick from this garbage for a week, I finally returned to the gym, where I took a Burn class, taught by a crazy person called Eagle. (Not her real name)

And Eagle is ALL about juice, and juicing, and wheatgrass, and her own wack-job theories of digestion and health, and I swear if it’s not one assault it’s another, because she really can’t just shut up about her stupid juice and I really just can’t stop coughing and nose-blowing and I just want it all to STOP! Unless she’s really onto something…? Nah. Who am I kidding?

So today, on Let’s Get Real, we talk trees, grass, shrubs, and juice. And stupidity. My favorite topic.

@KarlMeltzer just broke the world record for the being fastest ever finisher of the entire Appalachian Trail, you know the Appalachian train, right? It’s a 2,190 mile hiking trail that runs along the East coast of the US, from Georgia to Maine.

Now, I hike, and I’ve done little bitty bits of it, 4-5 miles here and there, on DAY hikes. I see people on the trail, with their huge packs and gaunt faces, and their lingering clouds of BO trailing behind them…and I give them major respect for undertaking such a long trek. I’d like to do it too, one day. Maybe. Anyway, On average, people take 3 months to complete the AT. You start in the spring in Georgia and head north with the seasons, finishing in Maine on the top of Mt. Katahdin in late summer.

This guy, he went a little faster. He did it in 45 days, 22 hours and 38 minutes. To basically run, almost nonstop, up and down huge mountains from Maine to Georgia. He beat the previous record holder’s time of 46 days, 8 hours and 7 minutes, by about half a day. Ridiculous. And I thought I was pretty fit.

Now, why is this of LGR importance? Well, we here in the Foodiness Fallout shelter like to hike, so this is super impressive. But, what’s really interesting to us really, is what he ate along the way to fuel his win. See, the previous record holder is Scott Jurek, who was made famous by the “Born to Run” book, about indigenous people around the world who are great distance runners, and how he is a champion of barefoot or virtually barefoot running. Scott Jurek, he’s a vegan. He did his record-breaking AT run eating vegan. Very impressive, I must say, because I know for myself, if I don’t eat an egg before a big workout, I feel weak, and he did the whole thing eating plants. Or at least no animal products, there are certainly plenty of energy-providing carby and sugary foods out there that are vegan. God knows there are plenty of overweight vegans and vegetarians. I was at my fattest ever when I was a vegetarian, maybe I should have done the AT.

So Scott Jurek set the record for the AT as a vegan.
But Karl Meltzer, not a vegan. He’s more of a fan of Foodiness. He fueled his record-breaking trail run on a regimen of candy, Red Bull, and beer. Ok, beer’s not Foodiness, I like beer. And it provides a lot of carbs for energy. But every night he’d have a beer or two, then as he ran, he’d down a Red Bull or other energy drink every 10 miles. At rest stops (btw, the trail goes through towns and there are stores adjacent to it in many spots that cater to hikers) he’d buy Spree candy, Three Musketeers bars, and cooked bacon. He’d keep those in his pockets and eat as he ran. According to the NYTimes article detailing his win, he’d sleep less than 7 hrs a night, and when his support crew found him napping, they’d feed him a pint of ice cream to get him going. For the record, bacon, candy and ice cream, not Foodiness. None of those are pretending to be anything else, but Red Bull and other unnamed energy drinks? That’s straight up F-bomb.

But so what? He won, right? I mean, what’s worse, a smug vegan winner, or a Foodiness fueled candy-crazed winner? It’s not like you do this kind of thing every day, right? When he finished, he celebrated with a pizza, and a few more beers. Then fell asleep. As far as I know, he’s still asleep. I’d sleep for a week after that. After I finished the NYC Marathon in just over 5 hours I slept for a week. And then didn’t work out for 12 weeks. All I’m saying here, is that the vegan got beat by the Red Bull guy, and I think that’s pretty funny. I have no major point or point of view on this, extreme sports are just that, extreme. You don’t have time to cook your morning quinoa and egg and make your wild salmon salad with baby kale for lunch when you’re running the entire east coast up and down mountains. So, a major shout-out to Karl Meltzer for his record-breaking finish, and to Scott Jurek, you rock too, but maybe try a little bacon next time?

Live from the #Foodiness Fallout Shelter today at 2:00, on www.heritageradionetwork.org or later on www.letsgetrealshow.com

There’s nothing left to say. I’ve read every editorial, every FaceBook post, every HuffPo screaming front page rant. I’m done. I’m done with the election, and I’m done even discussing it, or him. He who shall not be named. I had been calling him the apricot barbarian, but you know what? I love apricots, they’re delicious and pretty and when they’re ripe, they smell how I imagine Eden might have smelled, if Eden had been a real place and not just a setting for a fairy tale. Apricots are an incredible fruit, and they don’t deserve the association with that walking pile of shit. No, you know what? That’s an insult to shit, too. How about we call him…Fake-n-Bake Hitler? I have no problem insulting fake tanning, it’s an abhorrent practice, and nothin’s worse than Hitler, so that’s a good moniker. That works. Fake-n-Bake Hitler. Perfect. FBH for short.

Or Tang-Stained Goon? Or Dehydration-Pee-Color Monster? Fanta-Face?

So here I am this fall season, thinking about color, and there it was, the NY Times Magazine. With their food issue article about how the big industrial food companies, think Kraft, M&M Mars, you know, Foodiness, Inc., are all scrambling to find new ways to color their garbage non-food products with natural colors, because all of a sudden, American consumers are freaking out. Not because a Sunkist-Soda-faced demagogue could be our next president, but because all of the shit food they’ve been cramming into their gaping maws has been artificially colored for years, and now the moms of America are calling on the major food corporations to STOP THE MADNESS?

“GET THE BLUE DYE OUT OF OUR KIDS M&M’s and SQUEEZY YOGURT”. They’re DEMANDING that the big food co’s ditch the color, and replace it with natural colors.

Nobody’s demanding that we label GMO’s, or stop dumping raw sewage on our crops as fertilizer, or stop using what accounts to slave labor to harvest our food, or demanding that we clean up the trillions of tons of plastic in the ocean…no. Just give us our blue food, but please make it less chemically so we can feel better about eating shit.

Wait a second, moms of America, NOW you’re upset? You still haven’t figured out that you’re feeding chemical-sugar crap to your children, but are really upset at the big issue of the COLOR of the foods? Yes, the artificial color is terrible, and made from stuff like coal-tar sludge, but like FBH himself, the artificial color is merely the petrochemical-stained surface of a much, much deeper, larger problem. A tremendous problem, a HUGE problem!

The problem of the fact that we CARE so much about what’s in our SHITTY processed junk food, and don’t give a crap about what’s being done to real food.

And that’s a problem.

Live at 2:00 pm EST on heritageradionetwork.org or later on www.letsgetrealshow.com

I like to write, and I like to talk into a microphone. And I also like to talk in front of a live audience, I’ve discovered. Teaching all those years gave me the confidence to stand up in front of a group and tell a story, even if that story was about kitchen sanitation or pork butchering.

I have a lot of stories, after being in this crazy industry for over 20 years, and I wanted to turn them into something entertaining and live, much like this very show, but in front of a live audience. So, eight weeks ago I signed up for a class called Flying Solo at the PIT, the People’s Improv Theater, where I turned some of those stories into a live, ten-minute show. The plan is to develop it into a longer piece, and perform it at a festival or two, or who knows? Could lead to some other fun and interesting stuff.

Anyway, we performed our class show on Saturday, and it went better than I ever anticipated. We started as a class of nine, but five people dropped out, so we were a tight group of four, and I loved every single other show too. I’m going to post the video of the whole show on the LGR Facebook page, and I hope you’ll watch them all. Mine’s the only one about food, but the others are funny, sad, touching and beautiful.Oh, and the show is called “Cod Worms”

Here’s a little teaser…

Cod. They’re bottom feeders. Yeah, codfish? The state symbol of Massachusetts? They’re bottom feeders. They vacuum up the crap on the ocean floor, and pick up worms, tiny, thin bright-red worms, which eat into the cod’s flesh and live there. The worms are harmless to the cod, and harmless, but gross, to the people who eat the cod. But when you serve the cod, you have to pluck out all the worms with fish tweezers before you cook it. I’ll tell you a little secret though. If you miss a worm, and then you cook the fish, the heat makes them wriggle to the surface, so you can grab ‘em before it hits the table, a perfect slab of snowy-white fish. Life does gives you second chances. For the last 23 years, I’ve plucked cod worms...

Here, in corporate Big Food America, we apparently hold certain Foodiness truths to be self-evident, which is that all industrially produced foods are created Equal, that they are endowed by their corporate Creators with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are potentially destroying Life, crushing the Liberty of the small farmer and the pursuit of profitable Happiness for those running the corporations.- Sorry, I’ve been thinking about American holidays, and the 4th is right around the corner, so I thought I’d rewrite the Declaration of Independence, to make it more appropriate for today’s world.

The whole Memorial day/Independence day/Labor day structure of the summer got me thinking, about how the season is bookended by holidays, and peaks with one. July 4th, Independence day, is really the beginning of the end of the summer. What do you have, like 6 weeks after that? And the back-to-school ads start running by the 4th, and the Xmas crap starts to show up in stores alongside the Halloween candy, it’s like time doesn’t really exist, the whole year is a mashup of pre-and post holiday sales, for every holiday, all at once. There’s a dollar store near my summer house, and one year, in early July, they had leftover Father’s day and graduation party crap, alongside 4th of July star-spangled junk, and an early display of Xmas decorations…All at the same time. It was like the time-space continuum had totally collapsed! I’m already getting nostalgic for and feeling the loss of this summer, and it’s only May 24th!!

But back to the agenda for today’s show, which is primarily about truth…Truth, Justice, and the American Foodiness way. If you’re under 40, that’s a variation on the tagline from the old Superman TV show. Superman fought for truth, justice, and the American way, because…the cold war. Here in the fallout shelter, we’re fighting for truth, and justice, and definitely the American foodiness way, or more correctly, against, the American foodiness way, because…our food systems are so effed.

So come on down the rabbit hole, and into the shelter, where’s it dry and cozy and we have snacks, too! The CBS news team was here last week, and the place is all spiffed up and tidy.

Today, on the season premiere of Let's Get Real!!!

Ok, so a couple of changes are afoot here in the Foodiness Fallout Shelter. Well, no, actually the shelter is the same, I barely touched the place over the summer. It looks really great, and the biomass fuel HVAC system I built last winter is working great, too. Biomass is awesome, you guys know about biomass right? It’s using stuff like agricultural waste products to create energy? Like threshed wheat stalks and orange peels and broccoli stems because people are too stupid to eat them and shit like that?

Well, my biomass is even better than that, because my biomass is the ultimate #FOODINESS FUCK YOU to the food industry. While I was on summer break, between swimming and hiking and growing too many green beans, I was also doing a little sleuthing and investigative research and I discovered that there is a gigantic, massive, huge, underground storage facility in Staten island, under the Fresh Kills landfill (which, if you don’t know, was the largest garbage dump in the country for nearly a century, so large that it created a mountain on Staten Island which is now covered in grass and is soon becoming a park, albeit a park built over a massive, festering toxic dump of NYC’s old diapers, chicken bones, phone books, mafia hits and dirty mattresses from the last 75 years, but it’s Staten Island so…do we care?)

And in that storage facility, there lurks, slowly staling and decomposing, the largest containment of out-of-fashion, off-trend, expired, nutritionally debunked, and forgotten FOODINESS products! Yeah, I know, SO EXCITING. It’s like finding Tutankhamens tomb, but filled with Carnation Instant Breakfast, Pepsi Clear, tons and tons of margarine products including Squeeze Parkay, billions of variations on the granola bar, trillions of liters of expired baby formula (which as you know, I call the original Foodiness gateway drug) and, what may be the best, worst and forever immortalized here product…the….the...the...

What? You think I’ll give it away before the show? You’ll have to listen, peeps, to find out. And guess what? You can, because we’re all new and LIVE today, at 2:00 on www.heritageradionetwork.org! Note the new time, please.

Today, on Let's Get Real...

It's the extended live version of "Cod Worms and Devil Dogs"!

Can't remember what that is? It's the live theater piece I did back in March. This is the extended version, that I performed on Saturday.

I worked so hard on this as a live show, that I'm not ready to put it to bed yet. So all you lucky listeners get to hear it today, instead of a regular episode.

Live at 1:00 p.m. on www.heritageradionetwork.org as always, and later on letsgetrealshow.com, iTunes and Stitcher, too.

Today, an ALL-NEW episode of Let's Get Real!

Yes, it's a new show, after a long break to develop the new weekly Heritage Radio Network News show, of which I'm the co-anchor!

But I'm back, this week with tales of finger-lickin' weirdness. On today's show I revisit my invitation to the BIG Kentucky Fried Chicken event where I was taken way, way down the Foodiness rabbit hole, to the place where the chicken is fried, the slaw is sweet, and @RachelDratch gets hired to demo breading. Yes, Debbie Downer herself showed me, and a bunch of other journalists, how it's done at KFC. Totally surreal. Want to hear about it? Tune in.

Oh and don't forget, if you don't want to eat sh*t...

On this week's episode of Let's Get Real, Erica waxes nostalgic about the classic film Annie Hall, and its derisive depiction of California health food restaurants in the 1970s. Before arugula and Whole Foods were invented, California pioneered the health and organic food craze, which has become ubiquitous in today's society. However, it seems the glimmering, shimmering bubble of The Golden State may have burst, according to some new statistics which indicate that 55% of the adult population in California are diabetic or pre-diabetic. Could hyper-processed foods and new drugs pushed by Big Food and Big Pharma, respectively, be to blame for this self-perpetuating cycle of unhealth?

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in a very dark, grim place in my past...

I waited tables at TGI Friday's.

Yes, really. Hard to believe, I know, but I needed a job, I couldn't get hired anywhere else, and a friend got me the job. It was the early 90's, we were in a recession, I was depressed and dumpy looking, and no higher-end restaurant would give me the time of day, so I went the corporate route. For a few months...

Suffice it to say, TGI and me...we didn't really, uh, "mesh"? My flair wasn't flair-y enough, I kept trying to stick political buttons on my suspenders, I refused to promote the "Saddam Slam" drink special we were offering (it was the first weeks of the first Gulf War)...you know the story. This fish was seriously out of the water.

But I got myself a taste of corporate hospitality training, and all of its enforced cheer and generic conformity. And instead of hanging myself by my red-and-white suspenders, I did the right thing, and got fired instead.

Today, on LGR, we have a guest who is all too familiar with the ways and woes of hospitality training, my great buddy, Kate Edwards! Kate's a hospitality management expert and coach, and she's worked at the best places in NYC. No TGI's for her, she's too classy!

We're going to hang out in the newly AC'd Fallout Shelter and talk corporate training, chains vs independents, and whatever else comes up. We may also discuss sea otters...it could happen.

We're all really, really scared these days. Scared for the future, scared for the planet (well, some of us), scared of scary scaring clowns scaring kids, scared of scary clowns pretending to be legit candidates...OMG, so much scariness! And it's not even Halloween yet!

But even worse than all that scary stuff...is GLUTEN! Oh no, GLUTEN! The big scary monster lurking in all our most delicious foods, like bread!

Well, you all know how I feel about this, that unless you are straight-up legit diagnosed with Celiac disease, get over yourself and your gluten issues. Just don't eat that shitty, processed, non-organic industrial bread and other crap that make up the SAD (Standard American Diet) that you're stuffing your face with. Ditch that crap, and you'll start feeling a lot better, a lot faster.

Unless you're today's guest, Peter Michael Marino. He's my teacher and friend, a comedian, actor and solo performer, and founder of SOLOCOM, in which I'll be performing in November. And he IS straight-up legit diagnosed with Celiac, so he has something to fear, for real, in gluten. He's joining us today in the Foodiness Fallout Shelter, to discuss.

He's a funny guy, so it should be a good time for all. Join us, why dontcha? Live today at 2:00 on www.heritageradionetwork.org or later on www.letsgetrealshow.com or iTunes!

How does foodiness trash find its way to the woods? Erica Wides shakes her head at diapers on the hike trail this week on Let’s Get Real. Why do so many food brands package their “food” in layers upon layers of unnecessary plastics? Why do those plastics end up everywhere? Tune in and lament with your faithful host.

rubbish in the forest under tree

“We are drowning, dying and suffocating in plastic packaging. More than half the fish caught now have tiny plastic pellets in their stomachs.” [17:00]

Erica Wides is not happy. Pumpkin spice is everywhere, Burger King is making black buns, foodiness has taken over and everybody is trying to sell you a pink ribbon (or a donut). She wonders if these ribbons and donuts really do anything to make us healthier and proposes something entirely new – Foodiness Awareness Month. You might want to sit down for this one.

“Going back 3,000 years in food history, the pumpkin spice mania has never been as high as it is today. It’s a true sign of the apocalypse. Our days may be numbered.” [02:00]

“With all the corn grown in the USA — artificiaial candy corn flavor??? I have no comment on that..” [13:00]

“If your poop is green and it’s not because you’ve OD’d on Broccoli – you’ve got a problem.” [22:00]

How does Erica Wides come up with the topics featured on _ Let’s Get Real _? Usually during a hike or at the gym great ideas pop up, but, she has one big problem: the loud music!  Is it possible to just turn down sometimes? After the break, Erica pulls this all together with food and foodiness by means of the term: misophonia.  Tune in to hear Erica’s spin on this clamorous claim.

“Misophonia is the intolerance or hatred of the sound of food… or the sound of people eating food.” [17:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Does Foodiness cause wrinkles? Erica Wides is back with a heartfelt episode on apples, aging, Laura Ingalls, Ira Apfel and .. yes, wrinkles.

Live from the Foodiness Fallout Shelter…It’s the 2nd or 3rd annual (I can’t remember) Golden Uncrustables awards show! Starring….your host, Erica! With Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet, and Jack Inslee on the Twitter feed! Before we get started, let’s just re-introduce all of our 87 million global listeners and viewers to the Golden Uncrustable, and give a little historical information about the awards. The Golden Uncrustable is an award for Foodiness atrocities committed, Foodiness audaciousness and just plain old Foodiness bullshit. It is named in honor of the “Uncrustable” a frozen, pre-made, crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich, sold by Smuckers. The Uncrustable represents EVERYTHING to me that’s wrong in food in America today.

“Today’s parents are trained dog servants to their chubby over-indulged offspring.” [12:00]

Today, on a new Let’s Get Real!

Erica Wides: “In Italy, in 1984 I drank my first cappuccino, I’d never really had anything in the espresso family, and this foamy, dark, rich creature was something else. I was hooked on the capp.

But, as I was quickly admonished after ordering one late in the day, you don’t drink cappuccino anytime after breakfast. Milk is a morning item for Italians, once you drink it in the morning, that’s it. Cut off. Unless… you’re American, then they’d just roll their eyes and serve you. Or at least that’s how it was in the 80’s, when tradition still ruled and cultures were worth saving. And… just a mere 40 years, may I quickly remind you, after we saved the Italians from becoming German speakers. Oh, You’re welcome, Italy. I know at the time, you weren’t really cool with it, but do you see now, how well it all worked out right? Allies, Axis, who got the better deal? No need to thank us, but ok. Prego, prego. You’re so welcome.

And now, 30 years after my historic visit to your beautiful country, 30 years after tasting my first cappuccino, my first spaghetti ala vongole, my first grilled octopus, as our second enormous gift to you after saving you from your own worst ally, we present, our very own pride of America, the green mermaid herself, Starbucks. Yes, the legless lady has slithered across the Atlantic and flopped her green tail and topless body onto the rocky shores of the land of Dante and Dr Illy. Oh, no need to thank us, again! We’re just here to spread our cultural imperialism through capitalism. Just like the Venetians of Marco Polo’s day did for you!

And I bet those Italians just can’t get enough of the Venti-soy-3 Splendas-cotton-candy-gingerbread-salted-caramel-red-velvet-frappucino deliciousness! What could be better, more Italian, more “La Dolce Vita” than savoring a forty-ounce, sweetened, flavored and colored coffee beverage by the Trevi fountain, then following tradition by throwing in the plastic sippy top and making a wish? So awesome, just like in that movie, what was it called? Again, don’t thank us, you guys invented the cappuccino! We just made it so much better, by enlarging it and flavoring it! We should thank you! Grazie mille Italia!, grazie mille. Oh, con piacere, America! Con gusto piacere.”

“What could be more Italian, more la dolce vita, than savoring a 40 oz sweetened flavored and colored coffee beverage by the newly refurbished Trevi fountain?” [14:00]

This week’s episode of _ Let’s Get Real _, as explained by host Erica Wides herself:

So just imagine my joy and happiness upon learning that Organic Avenue, the juice and raw-vegan “food” chain has landed on the giant compost heap of nutritional trends. The entire chain has gone under. Way under. Bankruptcy, Out of biz! Whoohoo! They went under, had huge debt, owe hundreds of people thousands of dollars, and the founders made millions off a sale to an investment company. How utterly American of them! Living the dream in the Hamptons while all their employees and suppliers are left holding their empty orange totebags.

They milked that juice for all they could, until the little bottles of unpasteurized fish tank algae water went bad, then they collapsed. Nice. Sounds very…I don’t know, mortgage crisis-y? Just saying. One former partner was quoted as saying “you can’t build a business on what Gwyneth Paltrow says she likes” which was the first intelligent thing I agreed with about the company. After all, would you take advice from a woman who squats over boiling water to steam clean her uterus? Not me. I like my uterus a little grimy anyway. Better for your immune system that way.

There was a NY times article all about OA’s tragic demise earlier this month, and at the end of the article, some genius is quoted as saying that they think juice cleanses may be over now, and that everyone is into drinking charcoal now anyway. CHARCOAL. Really. And it had a link to an article on a beauty blog (suspicious radar going nuts) about how the juice companies are now selling little plastic bottles of cucumber-peel water with powdered activated charcoal. Because toxins.

Always with the toxins. Everyone is obsessed with toxins. Drink liquid charcoal, it’ll flush the toxins, do hot yoga, it’ll flush the toxins, steam your vag, it’ll flush the toxins. Know what else flushes toxins? Your liver. Unless you poison it daily with too much alcohol, which you know those size zero-Lululemon mommies are doing every night, as they see their fleetingly youthful asses drop and their hedgefund husband’s eyes start to wander…

So all of this, while making me insanely happy, also got me thinking about coal. Well, charcoal, but charcoal takes resources and power to create. It uses up trees. Coal, on the other hand, is just sitting there, waiting to be ripped from the ground, blown out of mountaintops, gored from the earth in the most destructive, polluting ways!

So think about it, if these stupid bitches are willing to drink activated charcoal, made from BURNT WOOD, why couldn’t I get them to drink coal, made from petrified dinosaur flesh? I mean, what’s more PALEO than that? It’s PRE paleo, you’d be eating something that existed before MAN, or at least that’s what the evolutionists say. What with the American coal industry rapidly collapsing, as we switch to cleaner energy, and the coal miners all addicted to cheap heroin and Vicodin now, living in rampant poverty in the hollers and hills down in Appalachia, and China lying about how much coal they’re burning in order to hide their emissions stats, which has nothing to do with our coal consumption except that the coal we do still mine can be sold to them, isn’t it time for America to do what’s most American, and EAT our natural resources? We already eat so much corn, and with the utter failure of ethanol, we’ll be eating even more of it, forever. But what about eating coal? We eat wood, in many forms; vanillin, which is artificial vanilla flavor, comes from paper making waste, and the “fiber” in a lot of fiber-added products comes also from wood processing, you can’t really eat gasoline, but lots of fake fats, margarines, creamers etc. are made from petroleum byproducts, what do you think Cool Whip is?

If you can get Americans to eat that sh*t, then eating coal is just a mere marketing strategy away!

This week brings the exciting inaugural episode of Erica Wides’s new show Let’s Get Real so turn on your AC because the kitchen is about to get real hot.
Back in the day you knew the difference between junk food (candy) and food (vegetables); between food that we knew what it was (apples) and food that we didn’t want to know (Twinkies). This is where Erica comes in each week to walks you down the aisles of the surreal world of food, serving up a heaping dose of reality by separating the food from the foodiness so you can forage, hunt, gather, trap and fish for real food anywhere, even in a foodiness-filled mega market. This special first episode is brought to you by The Hearst Ranch.

This week Let’s Get Real takes on the convenience of food, such as the redesign of the new ketchup packets for drive-thrus, and how that has resulted in the rise of ‘foodiness’. No longer having to forage, hunt, process, cook, smoke, etc. our own food has lead to our increased reliance on unhealthy “convenience food” argues Erica, but there are simple and easy ways to make the move to healthier options and there’s no need to do it cold turkey. So tune in to Let’s Get Real to find out how you can start making real, informed decision about what you eat. This episode is sponsored Wholefoods Market.

This week Let’s Get Real goes ripe for seasonality as Chef Erica Wides expounds on the disillusionment that foodiness has created: that seasonal items like strawberries are good and available all year round. Fighting this notion of faux-seasonality Erica will guide you to making smarter choices that that you don’t need to be an elite Brooklyn foodie to follow that allows you to fight foodiness at the same price for fast food. As the seasons change maybe it’s a good time to think about doing the same with your eating habits, so Let’s Get Real. This episode is sponsored by Whole Foods Market.

This week on Let’s Get Real, Chef Erica Wides helps listeners virtually meet their meat. Hear about how she worked on a grass-fed lamb farm and learned the in and outs of natural animal processing and how much different the pasture raised animals are treated than the typical grain and corn fed industrial stuff. Find out why corn fed meat products don’t have the right balance of Omega3 and Omega6 and how things like paste soy and ammoniated beef product find their way into the commodity product. Today’s episode was brought to you by Heritage Foods USA’s No Goat Left Behind Project.

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides focuses on one of the most elemental food items of all time: eggs. Tune in and find out how to tell the difference between real and fake eggs. They may be advertised as cage free, but does that make them any better? Learn how to make the right decision when it comes to eggs and find out why NO chickens are allowed to be given hormones. This episode was sponsored by Heritage Foods USA.

Milk… it does a body good! Or does it? Tune in to an especially informative episode of Let’s Get Real with Chef Erica Wides. Why is Mongolian milk healthier than American milk? How do hormones get into our milk? Find out why hormone laced milk is so problematic and how you can avoid “foodiness” when it comes to milk. This episode was sponsored by Fairway Market.

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica sinks her teeth into some meaty discussion. Tune in and find out why humans are SUPPOSED to eat meat, not avoid it! Learn why vegetarians are guilty of the ultimate foodiness and why all healthy people should have at least some protein consumption in their diets! From the dark side of boca burgers and tofu to coming to terms with the fact that human’s are truly omnivores this episode will have you thinking about your eating habits, vegetarian and carnivore alike. This episode was sponsored by Fairway Market

How can Erica Wides afford two places to live? She doesn’t drink bottled water, or any other bottled beverages for that matter. Let’s Get Real is here to pull you out of that rabbit hole of foodiness, or in this case, drinkiness, that has been perpetuated by beverages that claim to make you smarter, faster, or are ‘enhanced’ with electrolytes and exotic flavors like ‘dragonfruit’. All of this, says Wides, is BS. Tune in for a debunking of drinks such as Gatorade, Neuro, Arizona Green Tea and bottled water like Dasani (it’s actually just tap water from Atlanta!), all of which waste your body’s resources as well as the environment’s. So before reach for that next Vitamin Water at the gas station fridge, listen up and get real about hydration. This episode is sponsored by Fairway Market.

Have we become spoiled by the idea that food that isn’t supposed to go bad and that leftovers are to be immediately thrown out? This week Erica Wides tells us it’s time to get real about expiration dates. And here’s the thing, if it’s something that doesn’t go bad, it’s probably bad for you. Tune in and find our why. This episode is sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

This week on Let’s Get Real get ready to take the pre- out of pre-prepared and pre-packaged because it’s time to get real. This week Erica Wides goes behind the scenes on the can-ification of America, from soup to nuts. From recent studies finding BPA in can liners to the real ingredients in condensed soup, find out why it’s worth it to go DIY with your soup. This episode is sponsored by Jones Family Farms.

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica is joined by legendary real food fighter, educator, writer and activist Marion Nestle. Listen in and hear Marion’s thoughts on foodiness, corporate marketing and the dopplegangers we see on shelves imitating REAL food. Hear why she thinks Americans need to learn how to cook and what the future of the real food movement holds. This episode was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“All you can do if you want to help America eat better is get the word out and help people figure it out for themselves” – Marion Nestle on Let’s Get Real

“Pets eat as much calories as 32 million people in this country” – Marion Nestle on Let’s Get Real

We are programmed to enjoy sweets from birth, but how far do we have to go before crossing the line of sugar sanity? In today’s world of foodiness, white lines of refined sugar and artificial sweeteners surround us and the only way to escape is by getting clean. Eat grapes not grape fruit snacks! Drink seltzer and juice, not soda! Kick the habit and reclaim your health – most people lose weight after cutting sugar from their diets! This program was brought to you by Jones Family Farms.

“Per-capita consumption of caloric sweeteners increased 43 pounds (39%) between 1959 and 2000”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Why do so many people insist on mixing their alcohol with sugar? Erica Wides addresses the growing epidemic of dessert flavored booze and asks why grown ups are drinking like toddlers. Is this a marketing ploy to get young people addicted to alcohol, or are we just that addicted to sweets? Find out on a boozy edition of Let’s Get Real. This episode was sponsored by S. Wallace Edwards & Sons.

“We’re turning into overgrown overweight drunken toddlers.”

“Nobody needs to drink chocolate vodka. Chocolate and vodka should never meet. There is nowhere they can intersect successfully.”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

If there’s one thing Erica Wides wants you to know this week it’s that bacon doesn’t come from birds. It can’t. This week Let’s Get Real breaks down the food simulacra of ‘turkey bacon’. Not only is the “Franken-Foodiness” of turkey bacon and other products (see: Egg Whackers) not making you healthier, it’s probably going to make you more sick or kill you in the end. Tune in and find out why eating real is just better, if not tastier!
This episode is sponsored by Hearst Ranch.

“People forget that bacon isn’t a product. It’s part of a pig . . . and bacon was traditionally a survival cut for poor people.”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real host Erica Wides dissects the mythology behind vegetarian/veganism and the people, like Oprah, who say that it is a “greener” and healthier living style. It’s time to break down the barriers behind the vegan-foodiness paradox: we like meat but we don’t want to eat it so we eat food that is so heavily processed to taste like meat it ends up being just as bad. So tune in and wake up as to how you can still be healthy and avoid this foodiness rabbithole that our decadent, choice-indulged society has created–it just may take a little extra work. This episode is sponsored by The Hearst Ranch.

“It’s a processed experience . . vegan foodiness is like methadone. . it approximates the heroin or meat eating experience but it does not fulfill . . .so you keep going back.”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real it’s time to take the replacement out of meal replacements. From purees to shakes to powders we are assaulted every day by the promise of easy and convenient ‘food’ from Special K bars to Pediasure for kids. Tune in to find out what you’re really ingesting with those body building mixes (answer: it’s a lot of lead) and single serving Trader Joe’s meals and learn the simple things you can do to pull yourself out of this rabbit-whole of whole-meal replacement. This episode is sponsored by S. Wallace Edwards & Sons.

“The idea that people use meal replacement powders and shakes for nutrition . . . it’s ridiculous! Food is nutrition.”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real it’s time to break out our children that have been born in the matrix of foodiness and that’s just what Erica Wides is here to do. From chicken nuggets and Pediasure, kids foodiness is now present from birth and it put us into a perpetual cycle of bad eating which leads to bad health– from food dye causing ADHD to ‘organic’ foodiness making bad food seem real. Learn how you can break out of this food blockade and free your mind and body. This episode is sponsored by Whole Foods Market

“Human children have existed and lived and thrived for at least a million years . . and haven’t needed foodiness until 100 years ago.”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get a Real

Let’s Get Real is back after a short 2-week hiatus and Erica Wides is here to tell you why real food is already “smart” and only foodiness advertises itself as smart. Find out about the origins of engineered foods and why we always assume that food can be improved upon. From science fiction dreams to realistic let downs, learn about the differences between what’s real, what’s fake and what’s just plain stupid. This program was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Corn was completely engineered by humans to become what it was – an ancient power empire building food staple – to its current incarnation as a vehicle of our human demise.”

“The more ‘smart’ food you eat, the dumber you get!”

“Smart food is to real food as a Real Housewife is to Meryl Streep”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica “Occupies” Big Food with special guest, food journalist and nutritionist Kristin Wartman. Tune in as they discuss everything from the problems with corporations that control our food supply to Rush Limbaugh’s recent attack on food justice fighter and author Tracie McMillan. Learn more about the problems we face as a nation when it comes to what we’re eating and find out what Erica and Kristin think we can do to reverse the tide. This program was sponsored by S. Wallace Edwards & Sons.

“A healthy food system is at the root of a healthy democracy. When we have a handful of corporations controlling what we eat, it’s a real threat to our democracy. 1/4th of all groceries bought in this country are bought at Walmart.”

–Kristin Wartman on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides reminds listeners that 7-11 does NOT sell food. What do they sell? Foodiness of course! Learn more about how bad our food options are on the road or at convenience stores like 7-11 and gas stations. How can you avoid the packaged trash at these stores and find real food wherever you are? Tune in and find out! This program was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“We lose basically one third of our taste buds at [30,000 feet] in the air.”

“Eating in the air on the road isn’t your typical trip down the rabbit hole, it’s like getting your legs caught in a rabbit trap and then falling down the hole. Eating while traveling has never been easy.”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides gets pumped up about “sports nutrition” foodiness. Hear a horrifying story about protein powder shakes turned kidney stones and learn more about why Superman wasn’t all cut up. Real food will make you “real” strong! What is industrial surplus milk whey? How does it factor into fitness food? Find out more about the muscle craved foodiness industry rabbithole on a scary episode of Let’s Get Real. This program was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

In this episode of Let’s Get Real, our hostess Erica Wides discusses how ‘foodiness’ is infantilizing our society. Tune in to hear about how processed food is removing decision-making from adults and creating a cycle of dependency. Erica touches on a range of subjects such as factory farming, technology and social media, and contemporary politics. This program was sponsored by Hearst Ranch.

“There’s so much that infantilizes us, from devices that tell us where we are, to social media that tells us who our friends are, to screens everywhere blaring corporate progaganda at us non-stop. And it’s also comfortable and convenient and we’re buying it- hook, line, and sinker.” —Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

You think you know bread, but think again. Tune in to this week’s episode of Let’s Eat In and hear how foodiness has hi-jacked the symbol and fabric of life. How did Wonder Bread ruin everything? What was bread like in the days of Moses? How did Julia Child’s matzah recipe help shape our fearless hostess’s life? Listen in and find out! This program was sponsored by Fairway Market.

“How has the ultimate symbol of life been hijacked by foodiness?”

“Wonder Bread is the least wonderful bread imaginable”

“The industrialization of wheat flour along with the loss of thousands of diverse species of wheat in our quest for a super species of wheat brought terrible change and loss to our bread lives.”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides takes on artificial sweetener addiction. Erica goes back in time and talks about the diet sodas of her youth- Tab and Diet Sprite, and how they made her feel outright unhealthy. She also talks about aspartame’s ugly history amongst the likes of Monsanto and Donald Rumsfeld, and why you should NOT believe it’s safe. Do you want to see what it’s like in artificial sweetener-infused foodiness hell? Erica urges you to quit your sweetness habit! This program is brought to you by Hearst Ranch.

“We assume because [artificial sweeteners] are allowed in our food, and that the FDA says they’re safe, that they ARE safe.” —Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides talks about “the most important meal of the day” – breakfast. Specifically, Erica gets real about breakfast cereals, and the expanding waist line of the average American. Erica discusses the origins of “foodiness” and the anti-carnal propaganda of Kellogg’s cereals. Ever wonder how your grandparents stayed so fit eating eggs, bacon, and “fatty” foods for breakfast? Or why you crash after eating sugary cereals? All this and more in this week’s Let’s Get Real. This episode has been brought to you by Edwards.

“We expend so few calories a day because everything is done for us!”

“During the industrial revolution, people stopped physically working and started physically expanding.” —Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Everyone knows that fish are a healthy alternative to meat, right? This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides talks about some of the common misconceptions about our favorite oily fish, salmon and tuna. Do you know the differences between omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 fatty acids? And did you know that ALL tuna contains mercury? Tune in to hear some of the healthier fish to eat instead of farmed salmon and tuna, the dangers of escaped farmed fish, and why smaller fish are inevitably better for you. Tune in to Erica and escape from “foodiness.” This program has been brought to you by Hearst Ranch.

“The Eastern or the Atlantic Salmon hasn’t been eaten in any great amounts in 100 years.”

“Tuna aren’t like potato chips, you can’t make more of them. Once they’re gone, they’re gone!” — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides is talking about multivitamins. Remember those Flintstone vitamins you used to take as a child, or that you give to your child? Erica is here to tell you that there is no proof that these vitamins improve your health in any way! Vitamin supplements are ultimate foodiness; taking the nutrients from food and marketing them as something you need separately from food! Tune in to hear about vitamin overdoses, the origin of vitamin supplements after World War II, and how vitamins are branded like candy to today’s youth. This program has been brought to you by Edwards.

“There is no actual proof that taking vitamins does any good at all, and there’s a growing body of evidence that they may actually do some harm since you’re taking synthetic versions of the actual nutrients out of their natural context.”

“We don’t have thousands of years of culture to base our food lives on.”

— Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Is knowledge actually power like they used to say in Schoolhouse Rock? This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides is taking on the the burden that comes with food knowledge and education. How can you order food at a restaurant when you know that every item on the menu has been tainted by foodiness? Erica explains that this condition, called orthorexia nervosa, is actually one of the best eating disorders to have! And ultimately, wouldn’t you rather know what you’re putting into your body? You know what they say, “Ignorance is bliss…until you get diabetes.” This episode has been brought to you by Whole Foods.

“Is knowledge about the food you’re being fed necessarily, actually empowering? I actually think too much knowledge is paralyzing. Knowing too much is making my head hurt and spin and makes me freeze up in a vortex of indecision!” — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Eat your veggies! Not veggie powder or veggie juice – but actual earth grown vegetables! Our fearless host Erica Wides encourages listeners to address their food fears and put down the fake organic snacks in favor of real produce. Learn about how you can find pre washed vegetables to make life easier for you and why even the packaged produce is better than foodiness junk. Let Erica guide you through Foodiness Conversion Therapy on Let’s Get Real. This program was sponsored by Fairway Market.

“The fewer words involved, the better the chances are that what you’re buying is real food.”

“I would rather see us eating packaged kale from Costco than loaded potato skins from TGI Fridays.”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

In tonight’s episode – Super Foods Are Super F*ed Up – I get real about what foodiness has done to “super foods”; how icons of power foods like olive oil, which is laced with chlorophyll, blueberries, which are toxic with pesticides, soy which give you man-boobs, and sardines which give you mercury poisoning have been knocked off their pedestals by corruption like John Edwards, Lance Armstrong and John Travolta; how finding out that all the foods that separate the soy and sardine-eating “us” from the 7-11 cupcake eating “them” can actually be really bad for you is enough to make you reach for those Omega-3 enhanced Oreos and hope for the best; and how to realistically deal with the knowledge that sometimes there are no right choices when it comes to eating real food – which is to make others feel inferior for not knowing. This program was sponsored by Whole Foods Market.

“The more you know [about food] the more paralyzed you feel.”

“The foods I even I held up as perfect are maybe more like John Edwards and less like Barack Obama.”

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

The end is near on this episode of Let’s Get Real. Erica Wides is talking about the apocalypse, and how our entire food system is reliant on the grid. When a blight destroys all of our crops because of a lack of genetic diversity, how are we going to eat fruit snacks or yogurt in a tube? Solar flares, crop failure, and irradiated food are all very possible, if not probable, causes for the end of society as we know it. What to do next? Erica gives some helpful tips on how to survive an apocalypse (hint: eat your next door neighbor). This program has been brought to you by Whole Foods.

“The point is that even my culinary students who sign up and pay a lot of money to got to school to have me teach them how to be chefs are utterly clueless as to where their food comes from. It’s like going to medical school and being shocked that medicine actually has something to do with human bodies.” — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

It’s time to ‘get real’ about butter. Butter has been demonized in America because of its saturated fats. Erica Wides is here to tell you that the trans fats in margarine and vegetable shortening are the real enemies: butter’s ‘evil twin’. Butter is real food, made from agitating milk and cream, while margarine is the result of many factory processes including bleaching and steam cleaning. Tune in to hear about the decline of butter after World War II, and why margarine became the dominant substitute in the United States and Europe. Did you know that margarine doesn’t contain the healthy omega-3s and CLAs that are present in butter? Margarine is a product of the heavily subsidized corn and soybean industry in the U.S. It’s time to ditch foodiness substitutes, look at our food history, and eat what’s real. This episode has been brought to you by White Oak Pastures.

“Butter was ‘super’ because it is rich in short and medium chain fatty acids which we really want, and high in vitamins A and E. But- and here’s a complexity alert- only if that butter comes from grass-fed cattle.” —Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

So now that you most certainly have orthorexia nervosa, Erica Wides finally tells you about something that’s safe to eat- ketchup! On this episode of Let’s Get Real, Erica explains why America’s favorite condiments – ketchup and mustard- are actually good for you. Tune in to hear about the rich history of ketchup, as well as the many alterations that have been made to the condiment over the years. Erica also talks about some new players in the condiment game- salsa and Siracha. Guess what? They’re safe to eat, too! But ketchup was not completely able to escape the clutches of foodiness. Instant gratification has placed it in plastic bottles and Dip & Squeeze pouches. So even though your ketchup might be in ridiculous containers, it’s OK to eat a little. The question is, what’s left to put it on? This episode has been brought to you by [White Oak Pastures](http://www.whiteoakpastures.com

Ever wonder whats really inside those chicken nuggets that you love so much? On this week’s Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides is here to tell you that it’s…well, not chicken! Maybe it comes from a chicken, but, hey- what is chicken these days? Is it a bird? A flavor? Or a finger? Tune into this episode to learn more about what goes into so many “chicken-esque” products these days. Erica also explains why buying a whole chicken from your favorite market (super or not) is essential in connecting food and agriculture in people’s minds. And don’t believe the hype about white meat! Learn how foodiness and fat-phobic propaganda has led America to only eat certain parts of a chicken instead of the whole bird. This program has been brought to you by The International Culinary Center.

“Dark meat poultry is infinitely better for you. It has much higher mineral content, it’s a better form of protein, it just tastes better for you. The fat content is minimally higher than the white meat, and eat the skin! Chicken fats are really good for you.” — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This past weekend, Let’s Get Real host Erica Wides stumbled upon some wild blueberries while hiking, and was stunned by the flavor! Do the fruits that we eat actually contain the flavors that they’re supposed to harbor, or has foodiness diluted them to the point that they’ve lost their…fruitiness? Erica also talks about artificial flavoring, and how the average American palate has come to expect fruit to taste like candy. Erica also talks about the essence of fruit that does not exist in vegetables, meat, dairy, etc. Hear about how the pursuit of fresh fruit has driven Erica to do some pretty sneaky deeds! Finally, Erica uses her ‘Six Degrees of Foodiness’ scale to show you how an apple can turn into corn syrup-filled pastry mess. This episode has been brought to you by Whole Foods.

“Talk about being so far down the foodiness rabbit hole- we can’t even identify the flavor of a real fruit when we stumble upon it the wild! They’ve taken the real flavor out of fruit and put it into bars and drinks and gum and Go-gurt and vodka where it doesn’t synchronize with its surroundings and its totally out of context.” — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Has foodiness co-opted peanut butter, too? Unfortunately, yes. Tune into this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real to hear Erica Wides dish the cold, hard truth about peanut butter. See the ingredient list on that jar of Skippy? That’s right, it’s filled with hydrogenated oils and corn syrup! But don’t fear- you can still reap all of the healthy benefits of peanut butter if you just make it at home. Learn how to make peanut butter with a little know-how and your everyday kitchen appliances. Tune into this episode to hear more from Erica about the “Brooklyn food movement”, Plumpy’nut, powdered peanut butter, and the increasingly common peanut allergy. This program has been brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Peanut butter has one ingredient- peanuts! Maybe salt if you want it salty.” — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

On this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides is talking about yogurt, and how “foodiness” has pumped a delicious, ancient, probiotic treat with artificial sweeteners and flavors. The masses have been brainwashed into thinking that eating sugar and corn syrup is healthy, as long as it is disguised as a tub of Yoplait or Danon. The public has not only fallen for this not-so-subtle charade, but it has also become acceptable to slurp the stuff out of a plastic tube! Tune in to hear Erica discuss the newest food trend, Greek yogurt, and why it has the potential to be extremely healthy. Learn about yogurt’s ancient beginnings, and how you can make it at home! This program has been brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Foods have become vehicles for interchangeable, synthetic components. It’s not key lime pie- it’s key lime pie, artificially-sweetened yogurt. No, let’s not even call it yogurt. Let’s call it faux-gurt; it’s neither pie nor yogurt!” — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

The final holiday of the summer is quickly approaching. Erica Wides is hosting another episode of Let’s Get Real and asking the question, “What can an orthorexic eat on Labor Day?” Tune in to hear how food and health fads have changed over the decades through the lens of Erica’s cousin’s wedding. Low-fat, carbs, organic? Just eat real food! Later, Erica talks about this past Fourth of July, and how her Prospect Park picnic was filled with local, seasonal, artisanal food- very Brooklyn! Hear about how you can eat good food on Labor Day without alienating all of your friends! This episode has been brought to you by Whole Foods.

“If everyone was as cognizant as the Park-Slope Food Co-op circle, it would be a better world. But real food people are like fetish fans- you have to be into it to do it, and if you’re not into it, that’s not what you wanna do.” —Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Freedom Fries Ain’t Free! This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica gets real about how war created foodiness; how foodiness created a nation of obese SUV driving potato people, who then needed oil for their SUVs (and now for their mobility scooters), and who now can’t pass the army physical fitness test because they’re too fat to fight. Tonight she is joined by special guest and First Gulf War veteran Corporal Chad Pagano to take us down the foodiness foxhole full of M.R.E.’s and, now, Marys. Hear him retell stories of food, hunger and everything in between in the military. This program was sponsored by Fairway Market

“They have portable field kitchens they would set up behind the lines. Generally depending on the tactical situation you could end up going there three times a day. As an infantry man you’d be lucky if you got in there once a day. The food was pretty bad for the most part.”

–Corporal Chad Pagano on Let’s Get Real

Congratulations to Erica Wides; it’s the one year anniversary of Let’s Get Real! More importantly, it’s the “I Told You Show”, and Erica’s here with the Foodiness Time Machine to take you back in time to show you that all of her food predictions have come true. Learn that the dietary saturated fat in butter does not actually contribute to coronary disease, but that foodiness is the real culprit! Erica also revisits the fitness foodiness fad, and finds further evidence that protein shakes don’t help you “perform” better. Erica also talks about genetically modified apples that take 3 weeks to brown, as well as the benefits of real fermented foods. Would you believe that foodiness has been linked to diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and even stupidity? Tune in and get educated on this very special episode of Let’s Get Real! This program has been brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Foodiness has retrained us to mistrust our senses!”

“Fermentation is food that’s slowly going bad. Isn’t that what I said? You’re supposed to eat food that goes bad.”

— Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

What do Hasidic weddings and foodiness have in common? Answer: they’re both filled with awful food and gender segregation. Tune in to hear Erica Wides discuss why foodiness has decided to target genders separately in their takeover of the food system. Why should their be separate yogurts for men and women? Yogurt is yogurt! Listen in to hear Erica talk about some of the many “food” products that target traditional ideas of man and woman, and why they are so bad for you. Don’t be a supersucker! Check out this episode of Let’s Get Real! This program has been brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Foodiness marketers and makers are savvy, savvy people. They know what you think you want because they told you to want it!” [19:45]

“Food is for everyone! Food is for people, and foodiness is for suckers.” [23:30]

— Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides “celebrates” Columbus Day by talking about the modern day Columbian Exchange: foodiness. Instead of smallpox, we have diabetes. Leave it to the Europeans to take corn from Native Americans and turn it into high fructose corn syrup and pour it down the throats of the masses! Tune into this episode to hear Erica Wides talk about her experiences taking food science classes, and how she felt she was being primed to be a secret agent for Foodiness, Inc. Hear about some of the wacky food inventions that Erica encountered such as pre-flavored grilling skewers or spinach powder. Look out! You almost fell down the foodiness rabbit hole! Check out this episode of Let’s Get Real! This episode has been brought to you by S. Wallace Edwards & Sons.

“The foodiness megacorporations are all on the prowl and they’re all looking for real chefs these days because they want chefs to help them make foodiness that looks more like real food.” [22:09] — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

On this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides is joined in the studio by nutritionist and food writer Kristin Wartman to discuss foodiness fad diets. What famous diets are real food, and which ones are foodiness? Why do all of these fad diets use terrible ingredients and preservatives in their food? Tune in to learn about the importance of cutting out refined carbs and sugars and incorporating real fats and cholesterol. Hear why Subway might not be as “fresh” as you think. Don’t touch that dial- find out what Slimfast and infant formula have in common. Erica and Kristin call for a cultural shift that needs to occur for the physical and mental health of our society. This episode has been brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“The answers that foodiness creates for its own problem: diets and diet products.” [4:20] — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

“Pesticides and fungicides that are sprayed on commercial crops are, in fact, obesogens.” [7:05]

“It’s important that children and teens get fat and cholesterol. These are things that we need for our brain and all of the cells in our body.” [19:40]

— Kristin Wartman on Let’s Get Real

On this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides is talking about how foodiness is invading New York City neighborhoods and stripping them of all culture and personality. Hear how Chelsea has evolved since the mid-80s, and how greenwashing has infiltrated the minds of the liberal elite in so many New York City neighborhoods. Do you think that nine dollars is reasonable for sixteen ounces of juice? And how can lasagna be “raw” and “vegan”? Erica is crusading for real food! Hear how “raw” and “vegan” establishments like Organic Avenue compare to places like Forager’s Market. Hear how neighborhoods have been sterilized by foodiness vendors, and why the people who work at these places have become androgynous. Don’t eat sh*t, and don’t support it, either! Listen to Let’s Get Real! This episode has been sponsored by Whole Foods Market.

How does “foodiness” relate to wine? Friend of the show and sponsor of the network, Christopher Howell of Cain Vineyard & Winery in Napa Valley joins Erica Wides for this week’s episode of “Let’s Get Real”. Learn what goes into making “real” wine – from fermentation to “organic” or “biodynamic” grapes and everything in between. Chris and Erica discuss scale of production, ingredient labeling, regulation, and authenticity as they relate to wine – and dispel many common myths. Get real about what’s in your glass on this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real! This program has been sponsored by HeritageRadioNetwork.org.

“The real funny thing about wine is that even if you are the size of coca cola everybody wants to trade on the idea of Mom & Pops in the vineyards crushing grapes.” [12:00]

“Some of the smallest scale wines are the highest controlled. It’s all about needing to be known.” [20:00]

“The idea that there should be no control and no thought would imply that there’s no cooking in the kitchen!.” [24:00]

“Natural wine is wine’s contribution to the raw food world.” [25:00]

“In order for wine to be real – the key is going to be providence.” [27:00]

“If you think the wine is trying to be cool – perhaps it’s the least likely to be something that hasn’t been manipulated.” [30:00]

— Christopher Howell on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica is talking about her favorite non-secular, genocide-filled holiday: Thanksgiving! But Thanksgiving has really changed since the days of The Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. Foodiness has co-opted another American tradition, and Erica is here to tell you what “food” to steer clear of on your family’s Thanksgiving table. How will Erica survive this year’s Thanksgiving on Long Island- the bastion of foodiness? Fight the power, and have real food this Thanksgiving! This program has been brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery

“If you can’t bash your Republican relatives in the media, then what’s the point of being a part of the liberal elite?” [28:20] — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Are you the “right” kind of person? Lucky for you, Erica Wides is here to sign you up for a session at Foodiness Reeducation Camp! Are you getting hungry after Erica’s boot camp regiment? Well, Foodiness Reeducation Camp only serves real food in its cafeteria, so you better be hungry for rabbit legs and greens! Breakfast will consist of real, organic oatmeal… with no artificial sweeteners! After breakfast, you will be helping build a stone wall to keep out the GE Monsanto militia! Re-train your palate to forget the fake fruit-corn syrup flavors you’ve known since birth! This episode has been brought to you by Tabard Inn.

“If you’re hungry, you better eat what you’re given. That’s part of reeducation… and part of maturity.” [17:20]

“Foodiness is everywhere- even in your bath products!” [30:00]

— Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Are you ready for week two of Foodiness Reeducation Camp? Do you have what it takes? Well then get in line and tune into this week’s episode of “Let’s Get Real”. This week at “camp”, listeners live in a world where food is not a product. Breakfast is tiny and meat must be hunted. The raspberries aren’t flavored, they taste like…. raspberries! There are no garden burgers or vegan lasagna. The veggies are not made into chips and there are no protein bars. By the time you’re “de-programmed”, you’ll never mistake foodiness for food again! This program was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Nowhere in history of dystopian science fiction have the words ‘apocalypse’ and ‘vegan’ been put together.” 10:15

“Foodiness doesn’t go bad, because it was never good in the first place.” 13:00

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

The apocalypse is imminent! What- or should I say ‘who’- are you going to eat? Erica Wides is back with another episode of Let’s Get Real to teach you how to survive the end of times. Hear how the apocalypse will eliminate the irony from Brooklyn rooftop farming, and why it’s better to eat a pigeon than a rat. Looking to make a reservation at the Foodiness Fall-Out Shelter? Hear what skills are necessary to learn in an post-apocalyptic New York City. New York has been hit with storms and blackouts, but are the city’s residents really ready for Rapture? Find out this episode of Let’s Get Real! This program has been sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Foodiness takes care of what you eat for you so you don’t know how it came to be!” [15:20] — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Today’s Let’s Get Real is all about fake food nutrition- stuff like enhanced peanut butter & low-fat dairy. Well, Erica Wides is here to tell you that these products are not food! Joining Erica in the studio is a nutrition educator Kristin Wartman, and she’s on the show to debunk the mythology of foodiness nutrition. Learn about the differences between Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids, and why skim milk cannot be considered a whole food. Hear about some food products that are some of the biggest culprits of false foodiness nutrition! This episode has been sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Foodiness has robbed us of nutrition and replaced it with nutrition… because this is radio you have to imagine the air quotes I’m putting over the word.” [2:05] — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

“Big food corporations and advertising have done a great job convincing people that these foodiness foods are what we should be eating.” [11:25]

“Yogurt is a live food. You can’t put it in a cereal.” [22:05] — Kristin Wartman on Let’s Get Real

Propaganda creates reality. Foodiness exists because we continue to consider it real food. Erica is here to continue in her quest to destroy all things foodiness, and convince listeners that real food is real food – and nothing else. Tune in for an exploration into the stranglehold Hollywood and television has on our decision making when it comes to food, and find out how her appearance on Dr. Oz helped move things just so slightly in the direction of what’s right. This program was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“You can’t have art without enduring suffering.” [7:30]

“The turnip growers of America aren’t sponsoring shows like the “Biggest Loser” or “The Voice” – foodiness companies are.” [11:30]

“Yogurt is a living thing. If you powder it – it’s not yogurt anymore.” [19:30]

— Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Dieticians are in bed with Foodiness, Incorporated! Erica Wides is once again joined in the studio by nutrition expert Kristin Wartman to talk about her recent article in Civil Eats about big food’s influence on The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Hear how companies like Coca-Cola and General Mills fund nutrition studies on sugar and processed food. Doesn’t that just seem like a conflict of interest? Kristin spoke with a dietician employed by Sodexo off the record; hear how a food professional deals with the contradictions of health and foodiness? Later, Erica challenges Kristin to a game of foodiness truth-or-dare! This program has been sponsored by Whole Foods.

“People whose jobs it is to look out for people’s health are…for sale?” [7:00] — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

“There’s nothing whole about whole grain cereal. It’s highly processed!” [11:20] — Kristin Wartman on Let’s Get Real

Will anyone stop the 7-Eleven invasion of the East Village? This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides is talking with two activists from the No 7-Eleven group, Bob Holman and Rob Hollander. Tune into this episode to find out how gentrification and foodiness are intertwined in the case of the 7-Eleven infestation in Downtown Manhattan. How is corporate control of neighborhoods related to the corporate influence in food? 7-Eleven’s infiltration of the East Village and the Lower East Side undermines decades of rich cultural history. Don’t become a victim of foodiness; tune into Let’s Get Real. This episode has been sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“To Pringle-ize is to force conformity and stick humans in a tube for easier shipping.” [9:15] — Bob Holman on Let’s Get Real

Why are Americans so afraid to eat horse? This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides is talking about the trendiness of meat, and falsehoods in the industrial food system. Would horse meat be a problem if it weren’t hidden in microwavable lasagna? Erica thinks not! Later, tune in to hear Erica talk about the invasion of tattooed and moustachioed butchers in Brooklyn and beyond. Why has working with real food become an identity marker? Shouldn’t eating food be the norm? Erica wraps up the show by explaining how foodiness has infiltrated vegetarian and vegan food and made it wholly unhealthy! This episode has been brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“While nobody is up in arms about the pesticides, estrogen, antibiotics, or cancer-causing artificial colors and flavors intentionally put in our food, everyone is up in arms, or hooves, that food has been found in our food.” [6:00] — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

It’s official. We’ve reached rock bottom. Erica Wides is all doom & gloom this week on Let’s Get Real, and she’s officially found the bottom of the foodiness rabbit-hole. If you think orange flavored drinks with no orange is bad, how about an edible Fanta paper advertisement that tastes like orange beverage with no orange. Yikes. Get a reality check on a very disturbing episode of the most “real” food show on the airwaves. This program was sponsored by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“What’s the seventh degree of foodiness? Fanta flavored advertisement paper.” 08:00

“Edible advertising is the toilet baby of food. It’s as low as you can go.” 16:00

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

What “food” product do Americans spend 2.7 billion dollars on per year? Gum! This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides is crusading against gum. It doesn’t provide nourishment, and it’s filled with toxic chemicals; why are we so drawn to gum? Find out how gum has evolved in our society from being a treat to a performance enhancer. Hear about the social history of gum, and how the stigma of chewing gum has dissolved. Performance-enhancing gum cannot hydrate an athlete, and caffeine-infused gum cannot replace sleep! Learn more about the twitsted marketing of gum on this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real! Thanks to our sponsor, Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Gum makes you hungrier because it stimulates your salivary glands and tells your brain that food is coming!” [8:05]

— Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Find out what’s “trending now” on this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real! Erica Wides opens up the show by talking about the immersive advertising at New York City’s Columbus Circle subway station. The ads are literally consuming New Yorkers in the streets! Listen in to hear about Colombian supermodels who claim that chicken with added hormones is turning little boys and girls into homosexuals! Find out how this statement is making Tea Partiers across the country feel about their monetary contributions to Chick-Fil-A. Later, Erica goes off on “artisanal cocktails” with eighteen dollar price tags in Cleveland, Ohio. You don’t want to miss this one; tune in to hear Erica diss some recent foodiness trends on Let’s Get Real! This program has been brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery. Thanks to SNOWMINE for today’s music.

“If you want to taste the rainbow, and the forest, and the dirt- that’s okay! But don’t charge me the same amount as an entree for a cocktail!” [29:40] — Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Cereal has been a part of Americans’ breakfast since the 1950s, but Erica Wides is here to tell you that- once again- the public has been hoodwinked by Foodiness. This week on Let’s Get Real, Erica is diving into a big bowl of sugary cereal to tell listeners that cereal isn’t real food. Tune into this episode to hear how industrial agriculture has taken over the Midwest to turn grains into corn syrup clusters. How have the fake food corporations brainwashed people to believe that breakfast cereals are a necessary part of every morning? Listen in to learn how some cereal brands have expanded to make other foodiness products in addition to their unhealthy, bastardized oats! Thanks to Cain Vineyard & Winery for sponsoring today’s program, and thanks to Knifeshow for today’s break music.

“Cereal is the quintessential foodiness product because we were raised to believe in it.” [6:45]

“If cereal was the original foodiness product, it has gone even further down the rabbit hole because now there are foodiness versions of foodiness those products.” [18:00]

— Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Hear how Let’s Get Real has evolved from a podcast into a TEDx talk on this week’s episode. Erica Wides talks about how she went from the world of guerilla PR to the main stage for TEDx Berkeley. Later, Erica performs her TEDx speech for her Let’s Get Real listeners. What distinguishes real food from foodiness? Learn how ‘the real food movement’ falls short and doesn’t serve the people who really need it. Erica doesn’t preach compromise, but talks about realistic goals for consumers. This program has been brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery. Music has been provided by Idgy Dean.

“Processed foods are super convenient. All you need is a hand, a mouth, and a dollar.” [13:10]

— Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Let’s Get Real is officially 100 episodes old! Can you believe it? Erica celebrates with a “fancy” tale about squeezy fruit packages, “motherhood”, fiber gummies and foodiness. Tune in and celebrate! Today’s show was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

Did you know LGR has a bigger brother…WWC? Does this make any sense to you? Tune in and find out what all the fuss is about on a brand new episode of Let’s Get Real as Erica Wides looks at the past, present and future of her fight against foodiness. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“When 1 in 3 americans is now diabetic and 70% of people over the age of 75 are diabetic or pre-diabetic — doesn’t that mean its time for a huge wake up call, America?” [17:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

It’s berry season! On a fruity episode of Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides discusses all the berries – black, blue, mul, cran….you get the point. Find out why she eats them off the vine, why blackberries are the holy grain and why supermarket berries are so bland. What does IHOP and Brooklyn high-rises have to do with berries? How has foodiness held berries hostage? Find out on Let’s Get Real. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“I’d rather eat street berries than industrially grown berries from A&P, that’s for sure.” [18:00]

“For me – the holy grail is the blackberry – the perfect blackberry. The blackberry is the ultimate berry reward.” [20:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Today’s episode of Let’s Get Real is all about identity crises. How do you know what you’re supposed to taste like if you’re a boo berry? How has foodiness committed crimes against nature? Why shouldn’t you send your kids to art school? Erica Wides makes sense of it all on another poignant and reflective episode of Let’s Get Real. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Mama’s don’t let you babies grow up to attend art school – that’s how the song should go.” [03:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

What do you call milk that’s not milk? Erica Wides explores the overlooked language of food on a new episode of Let’s Get Real. Why do we use certain words to describe certain things? And why would something be called milk if it didn’t come from a nipple? Tune in as Erica talks about coconut and almond not-milk and why foodiness hijacks even these – in theory – simple food items. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“If it doesn’t come from a nipple, it’s not milk.” [09:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

The cookie butter revolution has arrived, and Erica Wides is disgusted. Tune into Let’s Get Real as Erica dives deep into the world of Trader Joe’s #1 selling product — the viral and vile “cookie butter”. She’s spent hours researching it and has a lot to share with listeners. The foodiness apocalypse may be upon is but Erica Wides is here to make it, well, at least funny! This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“There’s something really meta and surreal about cookie butter sandwich cookies – it’s like the snake eating its tail.” [15:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

English muffins aren’t English and most muffins aren’t food. Low fat cream cheese is a problem and Erica Wides is here to steer you clear of foodiness on another hilarious episode of Let’s Get Real. Are you on trial for foodiness crimes against you and your family? Tune in and find out! This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“English muffins aren’t English. They don’t exist in England, they aren’t eaten in England and they aren’t from England.” [13:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Fresh off a trip to Boynton Beach, Florida, Erica Wides is back for a new episode of Let’s Get Real. What’s the local food scene like in Boynton Beach, Florida? You might imagine locally caught seafood and fresh fruity, but no — unfortunately foodiness has taken over. When does fish stop being fish and become something else? Take a sad trip through aisles of sad claims, rusty tuna and farmed tilapia as Erica Wides longs for something a bit more… sustainable. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“I know the food scene in the US has exploded in the past ten years. There are tens of thousands of new young cooks out there opening fresh and innovative restaurants all over the country and celebrating the bounty of their home regions … but not in Boynton Beach, Florida.” [15:00]

_–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real_4>

Eggplant lovers rejoice! Erica Wides explores the meaty vegetable on a brand new episode of Let’s Get Real. From its inappropriate nicknames to its foodiness-free status – the eggplant is ripe for exploring on radio. Tune in and get a whole new perspective on a divisive piece of produce! This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Eggplant is a bulk vegetable that really does fill in for meat in many ways.” [12:00]

“Eggplant may very well be the only uncorrupted non-foodinessized food we have left!” [26:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

On this episode of Let’s Get Real, Erica Wides discusses pumpkin spice. With Halloween right around the corner, pumpkin ‘spice’ season is nigh. Even though Erica had done a show on the topic last year, this year, there has been an overload of pumpkin spice flavor appearing on the market. She shares her thoughts on the difference between real pumpkins and pumpkin spices and how we’ve started taking the base food out of a lot of products. Why do we continue to sweeten, flavor and falsify our food products? Listen to Erica’s thoughts on this matter.
This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Pumpkin IS NOT pumkin spice” [21:00]

“Why do we need to sweeten, flavor and falsify everything?” [26:00]
–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

This week on Let’s Get Real, host Erica Wides kicks off the show with a throw-back discussion on the designer jean trend that dates back to the disco era, complete with the pricey Jordache jeans and the Toughskins discount brand that featured the ‘husky’ size. [Erica laments which brand her parents endorsed.] Where’s Erica going with this? She explains how she’s stunned by the rising costs of food and quality ingredients. After the break, Erica goes on to relate a few family memories to the inflating costs of fruit, and in particular, how many fruits have fallen victim to being overly processed, such as the apple. The one fruit that has evaded becoming a Fruit By the Foot or Jellybean happens to be one of her favorites: the pear. Tune in to hear Erica’s thoughts on real food versus its evil, processed twin. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Why do we need to process the shit out of our food?” [19:20]

“Pears are like wine, they need time.” [27:25]

—Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Smell this! Trust your nose if you want to avoid foodiness! On this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real, chef Erica Wides is here to remind you that your nose knows best. Tune in as she uses a health balance of humor and fact to alert listeners to the many ways processed foods try to hide their true colors…or smells. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

Your eyes can trick you ,your ears can be deceptive but your nose always knows.” [16:00]

“Baby formula is the foodiness gateway drug.” [17:00]

“The foodiness scam is tricking you into buying processed and packaged food and tricking you into thinking its real and whole.” [23:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Where are the lines blurred between food and foodiness? Find out on this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real! Erica Wides channels her inner Robin Thicke and shouts “hey hey hey” at the cereal industry. Take a trip as Erica recoils in horror at the aforementioned pop singers song lyrics and the state of our breakfast foods. Sounds confusing? Trust us — it all makes sense. Tune in! This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Breakfast cereal sales in the US are down. I’d usually think that’s great. If cereal sales are down americans must be eating real food for breakfast right?” [18:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Would you eat bugs? Find out why you should on a brand new episode of Let’s Get Real. Erica Wides has insects on the mind – and makes her case for eating more of them. Yes – we are all disgusted by roaches and bugs at large – but if we kill and dispose them aren’t they wasted protein? Tune in and bug out! This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“If it crawls across the ocean floor we call it a delicacy. If it crawls across your kitchen floor, we smash it with a shoe. We discriminate based on evolution!” [05:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

There’s never a shortage of french fries or hash browns at Denny’s, but why would they possibly run out of baked potatoes? Well, it’s got something to do with foodiness, that’s for sure. Tune in to this week’s episode of Let’s Get Real as Erica Wides breaks down the ubiquitous potato. From instant flakes to blight – she’s covering all angles of the tasty tuber. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“I’ve got nothing against the potato per-se, but I do have a problem with potato foodiness.” [11:00]

“Please don’t use instant mash potatoes. If you really don’t want to cook potatoes by yourself – buy them pre-made! It’s pathetic, but it’s fine.” [25:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Who’s the bigger liar — the banking industry or the peanut butter industry? The jury is out. Tune in to a brand new episode of Let’s Get Real as Erica Wides tries to make sense out of whipped peanut butter and yogurt, amongst other things. Find out why air isn’t free anymore and why Erica can’t stand rich spoiled kids. It’s a good one. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Maybe the biggest liars in the industry aren’t bankers after all – maybe it’s the peanut butter makers.” 15:00

“Why do we pay for air? There’s nothing left that’s free!” 16:00

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

So Thanksgiving is over and many of you have thrown out the carcass and moved on from the whole ordeal. Erica Wides has a bone to pick with you this week on Let’s Get Real. Erica breaks animals down to the bone and explains what makes skeletal pieces the foundation of Western cooking. Is bone broth the new kale juice? Is there a more flavorful part of an animal than the bones? Find out and tune in! This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“Generally speaking the bones and shells of animal have way more flavor than the animals themselves.” [03:00]

“Bone broth is the new kale juice.” [19:00]

“Bones are the bones of Western cooking — the foundation.” [20:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

It’s time to recap the year in foodiness as Erica Wides closes out 2014 on the season finale of Let’s Get Real. From bleached cereal grains to kale salads at The Cheesecake Factory, Erica takes a look at what’s saved us and plagued us in 2014. Is the future bright? Have we made progress? Will a giant avalanche of sugar destroy us all? Find out on Let’s Get Real!.

“2015 – I thought we’d never live to meet you next week” [04:00]

“You can get a kale salad at the cheesecake factory. if that’s not progress i don’t know what is.” [27:00]

“There’s more sugar in a single can of soda than the average American would have consumed in an entire year 150 years ago.” [29:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

What better way to introduce the new year than a long winded story about Coscto and The Peanuts? Tune into the season debut of Let’s Get Real as Erica Wides teaches listeners about the virtues of frozen food and whole animals. Hear what she thinks you should all be doing in 2015 and why family dinners can be challenging. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“This year everybody’s resolution including mine should be taking a fresh look at your food – restocking… literally.” [23:00]

–Erica Wides on Let’s Get Real

Cotton Candy Latte? Oh come on!! Yes, it’s a real thing and yes — Erica Wides is talking about it on today’s episode of Let’s Get Real. Tubs of margarine and suburban dinners are Erica’s nightmare and she gives listeners a window into the hellish world of guns and snowboards in New Jersey. This program was brought to you

“To me, the flavor of cotton candy just tastes pink.” [05:00]

–Erica WIdes on Let’s Get Real