You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients. – Julia Child (1912 – 2004)
To help wake up to our connection with what we eat, we must remember to consider the source of the food going into our mouths. The place the food was grown or made, the level of care and attention that went into it and the manner in which it came to be on our plates all affect the end product.
This means that our grandma’s organically raised chickens’ eggs (especially those receiving massages every other Tuesday) will almost certainly be tastier and better for us than, say, lettuce grown in a former toxic waste dump and shipped from 22,000 miles away. Better to have a sandwich from your friend than a factory produced frozen meal where the workers didn’t actually care if a few extra flies went into the sauce. Ok, we exaggerate a bit but you see the point.
This isn’t about being “purists” or only eating “healthy” foods, and it’s certainly not about creating a “do and don’t” list. It’s just about thinking about these issues. Of course, we understand that we don’t always have a choice in such matters or have the ability to figure out just how free the chickens were from their cages or what went on behind the scenes in the places our meals come from. We can’t always afford celebrity-priced food either.
The bottom line is that when we wake up to the fact that we should be enjoying our food, we start to create noticeable physical benefits, including better and easier digestion, less food-associated stress, and generally improved health. We also become the best parents and role models we can be so our next generation learn the source and impact of what they eat and celebrate the richness of the fruits of the Earth.
The Thought is the Secret
Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are” – Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955)
The discovery we have made is that even if we cannot change, let alone know, about the conditions that impact what we’re eating, the very act of focusing on the source of what we eat helps wake us up. And that starts the ball rolling.
Once we start to think about and understand the source of our food, we naturally start to become more active in our choices. We may reach a point where the indecipherable ingredient list suddenly is a real turn-off as is the thought of night soil grown veggies.
Simply put, we can unlock our food patterns and naturally create a new relationship to what we eat. Through simple changes that evolve naturally, all of us can begin to develop our innate potential and natural abilities to take a joyous part in becoming more connected to what we eat. The best part is we will enjoy eating more than ever.