FOOD ‘CHOICES’ – ARE THEY CHOICES AT ALL???

FOOD (or Food Substances) ‘CHOICES’ – ARE THEY CHOICES AT ALL???

So easy to use our rational brain cells & think…  “we can make new food choices if we just know what to eat”.  From my experience it is not that simple at all.  Food choices are the result of a lifetime of taste preferences, habit, habit, habit, and availability and more…

Food selections during transition to a healthy diet requires at least ALL of the following:

WILL

DESIRE                                                                    

EDUCATION

BELIEF

ATTENTION

TASTE RE-EDUCATION

IMPRINTING

RE-IMPRINTING*

AVAILABILITY (of real food)

NON-AVAILABILITY (of ‘food like substances’)

ADAPTABILITY

INCOME PRIORITY FOR FOOD

MAKING DO WITH WHAT IS HERE

*(as much as 6 weeks of re-imprinting)

And – most of all – ENJOYING  the foods you eat!!!

Tackling the reduction of food addictions – which many of us modern eaters are dealing with – is a book in itself.  Each topic on this Transition List is a potential chapter in this “psychology of eating” book!!  I do not pretend to understand how to make this process work out.  It depends on the depth of commitment & deep-seated comfort that food & eating offers.  In my own pervasive “foodie” history – when offered a new way of eating in early adulthood, I changed my habits & choices instantly.  I had the desire, I used will power, I was getting an education in new foods & nutrition as a health foundation, I made availability a prime focus, I wanted to partly because of being surrounded by new friends whom I wanted to please & eat with!  It was 1970, and I became a Macrobiotic overnight.  I think it was a stroke of luck and changed the course of my entire life.

This option does not usually occur.   Especially nowadays – when highly processed, highly addictive foods are on every street corner in affordable and colorful bags… How can we resist if we are deeply unsatisfied & hungry after a day of ill-conceived nutrition?  These corporate ‘food like substances’ are always permeated with “Cravenol” – that indefinable something that keeps you munching until the bag is empty or your tongue swells up – which ever comes first…or – maybe you even keep eating although your tongue hurts!  Does the roof of your mouth ever feel like it is peeling off?  Oh, my – what has become of our food “choices”?

I admit to having gone over the limit so many times, and to think – I even have a degree in Health & Nutrition, I had a ‘real food’ childhood, I had an early start in good adult food habits – eating real food, enjoying simple tastes in the company of friends.  I of all people should be able to overcome temptation of corporate food like substances.  Why – I even have diabetes in my immediate family!  Note that “knowing” does not equate with “doing”.  Well, in fact – I do eat rather well almost all the time, with the exception of a desire for mid-afternoon sugar rush snacks …more true confessions later…

So – what can we do?  Certainly early education & availability of real food is the best starting point – school gardens & lunch programs could change the entire food landscape in a generation. 33% to 50% of these kids are at risk of diabetes, and that will change our Nation & Health care system in a way we cannot begin to imagine.  Watch the movie for inspiration:  FOOD, INC

Read Michael Pollan – any one of his books will do, the easiest is the newest – “Food Rules“.

So, let’s put our attention immediately somewhere – start by having good food at home.  Using crock pots & simple salads, a kitchen garden in every household, even the busiest of us can begin to transition.  Availability will go a ways toward helping the change.  The rest of that “Food Transition” List is going to be a lifetime work for each of us.  What a fix we have gotten ourselves into!  Nothing else to do but to go and have a nice meal & give thanks that we have waked from the nightmare & can see the road ahead.  See some HEALTHY Food movies with your family -  suggestions include -

“ALL JACKED UP” – Teens discover they are uncontrollably addicted to corporate foods

King Corn
Super Size Me
Fast Food Nation
The Future of Food
Our Daily Bread [meat industry - DO Not watch unless ready to become veggie]
Two Angry Moms [school lunches]

and – the exceptional – Jamie’s School Dinners – about lunches & gardens…

AVATAR – A MYTH FOR OUR FUTURE

AVATAR!

Hollywood has brought us yet another opportunity to tune into a possible future…

I loved it deeply, have seen it twice so far (3D was great!) and will see it again, I know.

Reading so many descriptions, reviews, got to give my own…

For me it was at least an offering to the vision of a beautiful future for our own planet – a vision of  community, shared food, simple life in nature.  Ok – that is merely the surface – I am trying to speak of DEEP ECOLOGY, the right relationships that can come with reverence for other Beings – be they trees or animals.  All of this was implied in the world of the Tribal Forest People.

I want to speak right now of our relationship to the meat we eat.  As a cook & nutritionist I have been through many phases of vegetarianism since 1970 when I discovered brown rice & macrobiotics.  I now eat a small amount of local or organic poultry & wild fish, as well as using broth from bones.  Although I do not kill my own meat, I have done so.  years ago I was a communal caretaker of goats, chickens, rabbits, ducks.  We fished and certainly i gutted, descaled & cleaned lots of fish as a child with my grandfather. I believe that we each should be able & willing to do that – to clean the organs, cleave meat from bone, access the animal’s raw biology & flesh.  If we cannot bear to think about that – how can we justify being carnivores – eating such an offering from the life blood & sacrifice of this Being?   And, so – I ask us all to question our inner truth, what do we eat, how do we offer it into our very metabolism, as it becomes part of our own flesh, do we give thanks, do we revere the life that has been lost to save our own?  It is the true spirituality of food, and an opportunity to again – say Grace, give thanks and make the food into love & a blessing to our bodies.  (And I am talking about plants here too, by the way)

So, let’s think about the hunting scenes…using bow & arrow, knife, a more equal challenge between the prey & the hunter…

In the words of Lauren Raine – www.threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com

…They even had enough anthropological understanding to include the hunter who prays over the body of the fallen prey, offering thanks for the gift of its meat – this is, indeed, what native peoples universally did in both myth and in practice, recognizing and honoring that the animal has sacrificed its life to sustain the life of the tribe. Most Americans do not equate the hamburger they buy with an animal that has lost its life, let alone do they comprehend a spiritual system that respects the exchange of life force and energy that has taken place. What a wonderful concept to introduce to the young people who watched the movie…

To finish – I invite each of you readers to see this movie as a deeper symbol of more than the politics between conqueror & conquered (European Invaders vs Indians, etc) and other wonderful analogies that can be made about resource extraction, but rather – as a mythology for the spirituality of nature & our place in it, the very Gaian Philosophy of Lovelock & Deep Ecologists such as Joanna Macy!  I will even take it one step further – in the scenes at the Tree of Life - we witnessed a ritual of healing involving the synthesis of an entire community acting & tuning as one – the possibilities of which break open our own limited beliefs in “Self & Other”.  Tune to each other, become true community, unite in compassion & shared life, healing.  Enjoy, live in joy, fly!  I think I got it.