"When most of us think about food and health, we think in fairly narrow nutritionist terms - about our personal physical health and how the ingestion of this particular nutrient or rejection of that affects it. But I no longer think it is possible to separate our bodily health from the health of the environment from which we eat or the environment in which we eat or, for that matter, from the health of our general outlook about food (and health). If my explorations of the food chain have aught me anything, it's that it is a food chain, and all the links are in fact linked: the health of the soil to the health of the plants and animals we eat to the health of the eater, in body as well as mind. Food consists not just in piles of chemicals; it also comprises a set of social and ecological relationships, reaching back to the land and outward to other people." -Michael Pollan, In the Defense of Food.
another interesting fact...Americans spend 9.9% of their income on food, compared to Italians: 14.9%, French: 14.9% and Spanish: 17.1%. those countries are often touted for having better health than the average American, even though they may eat rich, buttery food. also a study done in 2003 demonstrated that from 1965 to 1995, American slashed their time spent cooking and cleaning up after eating almost in half (in 1995 we spent only 27 minutes/day preparing food for the average American). we spend little time preparing our foods, and little money goes into acquiring those foods, its no wonder out health is diminishing. our food nourishes us, if we eat healthy...we ARE healthy. it isn't just something we have to do. it is something to savor and really enjoy, something to participate in. this is your life. it also stands to reason that the cheaper the food, the quicker the cooking time (i.e. packaged, fast food)...the less nutrient dense the food. the less nutrient dense the food, the more your body wants you to eat so you can find those missing nutrients. and if you keep eating those same foods, you aren't getting the missing nutrients...you are getting calories, more and more calories. hence the new found human oddity, overweight and undernourished.
i imagine it is hard, if you were like me, and eating in a way that didn't feel good...it is hard to not blame yourself. i am always finding something to feel bad about, and blaming myself for eating in a way that didn't support my whole self...super easy to do. but the more i felt bad, the worse i ate. i suppose that is where the yoga came in, to find a new determination. i almost think it is magical the way these months have ordered themselves to flow so well from on to another. i never thought when we first talked about doing this, that it would be so changing and such a positive experience. i just thought it would be fun. speaking of feeling bad, i just had to laugh at myself yesterday. after yoga, i found myself thinking..."Now there was something i was feeling bad about before yoga...and what was it? i need to keep feeling bad about whatever that thing was, if i could only remember it!" needless to say, i never remembered it, so i had to let go of feeling bad about not remembering what i had forget to keep feeling bad about. haha! the mind can be so silly.
I just added a couple netflix movies to finish off food month, as i am also determined to finish the book as well. (38 more pages, easy!) the movies are "The Botany of Desire", i saw part of this on PBS...it is done after another of Michael Pollan's book by the same name. i kept thinking it was on "The Omnivor's Dilemma" but i was wrong if i mentioned that before. and another one i had never heard of before, "How to Cook Your Life" a zen practitioner and cook teaches cooking classes in Austria and California at Zen centers, showing how food feeds our bodies and spirits. we'll see how that one is, but i thought it went along with the food month.
I'll leave you with some new shots of my growing food.
love it!
melissa
No comments:
Post a Comment