Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting.
Michael Pollan
Dripping bubbling greasy mouthwatering twinkies. Charbroiled scent wafting through streets guiding to a treasure trove of cheeseburgers and obese milkshakes. Food drives us. It drives us to feed the body and soul. Food is meant to nourish and fuel us, but our food relationship has morphed. No longer do we think of food as a necessity for life. Food has become a tasteful delight.
A trip down the pleasurable velvet lined hallways and gullets of humanity. Food is now a rave with taste buds throwing a party for the mouth every few hours. Rich decadent mush forms in our mouths causing whole body vibrations. We bipedal animals have fallen from grease. We grace ourselves with cookies, cakes, cupcakes, and other C worded junk food.
Food is not for gorging on when life is boring. We are separated from what food really is. Our grandparents and great-grandparents would not recognize what we eat as food. Why eat it?
What To Eat?
There is so many conflicting points in the media and amongst fellow bipedal animals about food. One day eggs are great, the next hour they are as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes. This holds true for almost every food. Vegetables are great, but only eat organic unless you want to poison yourself. Fruits are amazing, but they are watery sugar sacs; do not indulge by the pound. Fat will kill you, but it will save you from a fall by cushioning your organs. Thank goodness for fat mounds and paunches.
What to eat then? How about returning to what food really is. Eat what your grandparents or great grandparents would eat.
Food Is Nourishing.
Food provides us with building blocks for the body. Every tissue in the body replaces itself constantly. This turnover requires a steady stream of food. Without proper nourishment from real food, then the body begins to breakdown. Proteins in the body do not function right. Inflammation occurs at a higher rate than it should.
That candy bar was so worth it! Was it?
How does this affect you? You may feel groggy as you reach for your coffee, tea, or a breakfast pastry. You have bowel disturbances. Acne rears its ugly head on your head and face. Joint pain or muscle aches occur. The delicious icing on the cake is you crash in the middle of the day. The only option left is to wash those depressions away and drown those sorrows in alcohol or Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. No wonder we call it the Standard American Diet (SAD). If this isn’t you, congratulation. Hopefully, this reality will never become yours. However, bipedal animals cannot escape nor outrun everything. Reality will catch up sooner or later.
Food should nourish us strongly. The best choices are not strong-tasting foods, but strong natured food. Not shallow food but food with deep nutrition. Food found in nature. That is the proper title for real food, nature. We were birthed, forged, and rose from nature. We bipedal organisms are still animals first and foremost. If it ain’t from nature beware of danger.
If it ain’t from nature beware of danger.
Sergio Tlacelel
Nowhere in the world have we found a brownie bush or a cookie tree.
Food Is Fuel.
This is a no brainer for most. Food is fuel for the body like gas in a car. How about we put jet fuel in our airplane rather than diesel? Without food we would have no energy. That is justification for eating bread, pastries or pasta, right? Bread is called pain in French, but that’s a story for another day. Yes, food provides fuel, but there are better sources of fuel than stale white bread. Want to use cheap gasoline? The risk is it could damage or gunk up the engine. Cheap gas is bad. Cheap food is bad too.
Cars can run on diesel or natural gas. Some even have electric motors. Likewise, there are better fuel options. There are better bread options with better bread benefits. Better yet, make a breadless selection. Give starchy roots attention. Root vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes and beets are a safe choice for fuel.
Fat is a fuel source. The body can run on fat if you let it. Many of us store fat up for a rainy week or two. Protein can be used as fuel in a pinch. Let your teeth sink into that one for a minute. Some food choices are like the electric car, others like diesel. Experiment and find which burns cleanest for you. We bipedal animals are all alike to a degree, but not all of us are identical. Just because your spouse prefers burning protein, doesn’t mean that it works just as well for you.
Food Is Alive.
You are alive. Eat things that are alive. That doesn’t mean you have to eat a mooing steak, but if you really want to by all means proceed. Aliveness is a term meant to describe food freshness. Fresher is better. Fresh baked bread is better than stale old bread. Although a dry aged steak is good, a fresh steak trumps a three-week-old cooked steak in the fridge. A freshly picked plant or fruit is more enjoyable than a canned one. Fresher means better tasting. Although exceptions do exist, the closer to harvest a food is the more nourishing it is.
We want deep nutrition. Fresher contains better nutrient profiles than something older. A riper fruit or vegetable is better than one picked green. Most food in a grocery market is old and picked while green. Fresh plants are crispy and firm. Old plants are limp and saggy. Do not eat decrepit food. Some food may have been kept in cold storage for a year or more. That is not as alive as day old food from a farmer.
Food Is From Nature.
Food comes from nature, the ancestral home of the bipedal animals. We are a part of nature and thus consume nature to live. That means if the “food” you are plating in front of you cannot be found as is in nature, then it’s a food product made in a factory. Not food. Eat nature, not couture mixture tailor made for human consumption.
Food is always found as is in nature. No twinkie bush nor pizza tree exists. If you find one, you win. Food products, on the other hand, are always packaged. Food products are usually strong tasting to get you to love them. Don’t waste your money on these ho-hos. These food products ain’t loyal. An apple is food. A steak is food. Apple ring candy is not food. Beef cup of noodles is also not food.
The allure of strong-tasting food products is strong. So powerful is this allure that it dwarfs your taste of vegetables or fruit. Imagine the flavor of decrepit saggy pale lettuce vs potato chips. A weak flavor made weaker versus a strong flavor. No wonder people hate vegetables as all these issues combined add up to a bland food. The older it is the less alive it tastes.
Old food that’s bland should be canned and banned from being panned!
Real fresh vegetables have taste, deep nutrition and fit the category of food. Real food is alive and does not have a dead, bland, taste. Sure, a candy bar is sweet, but an apple with peanut butter is just as good. Fruit is nature’s candy after all.
Don’t Disassociate From Your Food.
Food comes from nature, but from where does your food come? A farm or a factory? What animal is your choice of protein? What’s in your stomach? Plants are alive and we chop them into small pieces. Animals are alive and we chop them into pieces. Fruit are plant babies and we chop them up into pieces. seeds and nuts are also plant babies. Know that what you are eating was alive and came from somewhere in nature. Processed food is a zombie long dead. Candy, pastries and other junk are from a factory defecated out of a tube neatly packaged and perfumed.
In summary,
Stop eating condensed starch whether flat, round or sweet.
Stop eating sweet grease bars and balls.
Stop drinking sweet liquids and psychedelic colored liquids.
Start eating nature.
Rise up and take charge.