Who Taught You To Eat?
Reflecting on our food habits
Let me know. Has this ever happened to you?
You’ve had a crazy long day at work. You are back home and all you want to do is sit down, relax, and maybe watch some Netflix. You’re hungry, but too tired to go out. Besides eating out these days costs a fortune. The longer you sit, the less like cooking your feel.
That’s it! You’re just going to have your favorite, fast comfort food. Perfect!
What is it?
For me it’s nachos. . . .some basic corn chips, chopped onions, cheese and if I’m really hungry maybe some burger and dried cherry tomatoes and peppers. Fast. Yummy. I just crack a jar of salsa and dinner’s on. When I’m tired, this is my go-to.
No matter what your “I’m-too-tired” dinner choice is, chances are higher than not it includes convenience food, because that’s the point right? It’s convenient.
But do you stop to think about why you eat the food you eat?
Nurture vs Nature?
Are your food habits something your learned as a kid - the product of your upbring and socialization? Are they a product of your surroundings, and where you live and what you access to? Do you just “do you” and eat whatever it is that you like best, end of story? What shapes your food choices today?
Like it or not, food is probably the most critical aspect of your daily life and yet most of us have tuned it out entirely. Well, unless you’re on a “diet” in which case you are probably busy following complex rules about what you should and should not eat.
Here’s the thing:
Too long without food and you will become ill.
Too much food and will become ill.
Too much or too little of essential nutrients, minerals and vitamins and you will become ill.
Like it or not there are some basic food rules we all need to adhere to. It seems that with all of our science these days, we should be able to answer fundamental questions about food and nutrition, and yet this is an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole if ever there was one.
Everyone has an opinion on food and what you should or should not eat.
And everyone wants your money.
Here in lies the crux of our modern food problems. Humans survived on this planet for thousands of years eating the food that was seasonally available around them where they lived. Now we live in cities and communities where we can buy food from anywhere in the world, but our collective health and wellbeing has never been worse in human history.
Pretty much everything that is boxed, packaged or jarred in the grocery store is now laden with salt, spice, sugar and preservatives all designed to make you crave more. DESIGNED. Even baby food is designed to get kids hooked on sugar. And don’t even get me started on the insanity of handing a 2-year old a Coke to drink (marketing magic and a public health crisis all in one).
So this begs the question of where our food habits come from.
Who taught you to eat?
Take some time this week to think about where your food habits began. Choose whatever time frame makes sense to you:
childhood vs adult,
when you started preparing (finding?) your own food vs when you depended on someone else,
sick vs healthy you, or
what you eat now compared to what you think you “should” eat (according to ???).
The point is to consider the origin of your eating habits and perhaps bring to light where some of your food choices are coming from in a Then vs Now perspective.
Of course I am also suggesting you do this review in the context of your current mind and body as well. Are your eating habits serving your mind and body?
Consider for a moment if you are happy, clear thinking, rested and focused. Do you perform your daily tasks and rituals with joy and ease? What about your body? Are you as healthy, energetic, and flexible as you want to be? Are you at a body weight that you are comfortable with?
Food = Mind = Body
We all like to think that making the easy food choice is “winning”. Because in the moment when we are tired and we click on that easy, go-to comfort food solution it sure feels like a win.
But we so often fail to connect the dots between that easy choice and our brain fog, lack of sleep and anxiety. Or the fact that our indigestion, joint pain and headache might likewise be a reaction to the foods we are choosing.
The goal of exploring our Mind-Body-Food Connection is not to preach a diet plan. The goal is to get you started connecting the dots for yourself. It’s to find out where different emotions live in your body. And how feelings in your body can generate your thoughts in your mind. And how all of that is affected by the food you choose to eat when you think or feel the way that you are thinking and feeling.
Why? Because the food we eat generates our physical and mental state. And our physical and mental state then prompts us to choose particular foods (usually out of habit and addiction).
We first learn to eat as babies from our families. We grow up in our cultures, many of which have strong ties to specific foods and feasts. All along the way we are manipulated by food advertisers and food additives to make choices that benefit the food industry’s profits at the expense of your own health and wellbeing,
It should be no surprise that Western societies have the highest rates of physical and mental health issues. We’ve outsourced our food - one of the biggest determining factors of our health and wellbeing – to for-profit companies.
This week think about:
Who taught you to eat?
Are your food habits now different from before?
Are you where you want to be in life in terms of your mental and physical wellbeing?
Let this take whatever form works best for you. I like to write, so for me I journal to explore ideas. But you could also meditate, consider these ideas on a walk in nature, create an image collage, or generate your own side-by-side comparison table. You do you.
Share your thoughts in the comments.