Our Food, Our Health

"When the remedy aisles (in a grocery store) take up more space than the truly edible food section, there's something amiss."  This is a quote from my textbook "Unwinding the Belly".  The author is talking about the fact that when she goes into a mainstream grocery store, she becomes very sad.  The point here is that we have become so out of touch with our bodies, we don't know how to eat anymore.  The more food on the shelves that is processed, cooked, refined, etc, the more pills seem to fill the shelves.  I have never quite looked at it from this point of view before, although I've always known that we depend too much on medicine to fix our symptoms, rather than fixing the actual problem.  Those symptoms are there for a reason!  They're telling you that you are doing something wrong to your body.


I wonder if part of the problem is that there are too many "diets" out there?  I mean, I understand that our society is truly apathetic when it comes to doing healthy things.  But is there too much information being thrown at us?  Maybe with too many options, some people just throw their hands up and do the easy thing.  There's the vegetarian/vegan diet.  The Atkins Diet.  The Macro Diet.  The Blood Type Diet.  Weight Watchers.  Calorie Counting.  The Grapefruit Diet.  Body For Life,  etc, etc, etc.  Are people confused? 

My question then becomes, "Do we need a 'diet' at all?"  Diet is such a limiting term.  It makes you feel like you can't have things.  You're not allowed to eat this or that.  You can ONLY eat this.  And heaven forbid that you "fall off the wagon"... eat something that you shouldn't.  Aren't we taught that once you mess up, you are a failure?  Who wants to be a failure?  If you never start trying to diet, you can't fail.  Diet, I think, truly is a four letter word. 

Eat healthier.  Add in good things that you will enjoy eating.  If you don't know of any good, healthy things, take the time to learn about it.  Find a local farmer's market.   If there's weird stuff being sold there, look it up online and find a way to cook it.  With a little instruction on how to make wonderful wholesome meals, it won't be a diet.  And there will be no rules to break.  If one day you decide you want that pizza from dominoes or that coke, at least you've been nourishing your body with other things.  My guess is that eventually you will want those pizzas and cokes less and less. 

I am, by far, not someone that I would call a healthy eater.  But I still eat healthier than most.  Honestly, that's a little scary.  I do make our own meals at home, which is more than can be said for the majority of the American population.  I've stopped using all the cream in my meals that I used to use...  from time to time I still make those dishes. I've stopped using as much red meat.  But it's not like I've just "stopped" doing things.  I've added other things instead.  We now eat salads, from our garden, as a meal.  I've started branching out, making things I've never tried before.  I don't have the excuse of "well I don't know what that is or how to cook it".  With the information super-highway right at our fingertips, you can look up any food and find several recipes for it. 

For my part, I know I can do better.  The biggest excuse I hear echoing through my brain is, "it's so expensive to eat healthy."  I'm sure that's not the case though.  Yes, places like Earth Fare can get quite expensive.  But there have to be good things out there that don't cost an arm and a leg...  I just have to find them.