Last n
ight at work I watched the latest news about Nutritional guidelines and the reactions of the people, the news of course sensationalized and simplified the topic creating further conflict and confusion for a nation already struggling to comprehend something that should in fact come quite naturally to us.
I appreciate their must be broad guidelines laid by the government to encourage people to take responsibility for their own nutrition and health. But this seems to be the very problem, we are not, as a nation, taking responsibility for our own health status.
We have forgotten how to listen to our bodies, to simply understand what it is we are in need of and how to satisfy those needs. I am not talking about cravings for chocolate cake, this is not a need this is a addiction to a damaging poison we cave to all to frequently. Many people don’t even know how to breath correctly, let alone whether they need food containing Magnesium.
Sweeping statements that pepper social media “Eat these five foods to loose weight and become a super model”, “avoid these ten foods and never worry about your figure again”, “do these three things and be happy forever”. Each human being is slightly different and thrive on a slightly different diet and lifestyle, we are not clones and cannot continue to consider ourselves the same as the next person.
We are a species with a huge brain and yet most cannot decipher what our bodies need, we lull ourselves into thinking that we will be “healthy” eating proceeded foods bought from companies whose foremost concern is the monetary annual turn over packaged and sold as “low fat, sugar free, great new taste” that would certainly never be available to us in a truly natural form. If your grandmother cannot make it in her kitchen with no more than a few domestic appliances and a sharp knife for raw produce able to be harvested and acquired from a neighbours cabbage patch and a small farm then it has no place on your table let alone in your mouth.
An example is bread. A home made loaf will contain very few ingredients; water, wheat flour, yeast, salt, honey and oil. A sliced ready to toast loaf found in the local supermarket for 85p has a longer ingredients list than a complex spiced Indian curry, if you didn’t know the spice mixes are extensive, not only this but the ingredients often do not exist in nature. And yet we wonder why we have seen a rise in gluten intolerance and gluten related Hashimotos disease, an autoimmune disease of the thyroid gland.
I look on in horror in the supermarkets at peoples shopping trolleys, barely a whole food in sight. Low fat yogurts, pre-prepared meals, diet drinks, cheap sliced bread, margarine, low fat oil sprays, pasta sauces with a shelf life of over a year, flavoured waters and the list goes on. These are not foods, they will not fuel our bodies in the way we need. It’s a bit like putting antifreeze into the tank of a diesel car, the car may work for a short while but will soon develop all sorts of problems and eventually will stop working altogether.
I am constantly asked, is this good for me? is this bad for me? How have we as a nation and as a species lost touch to such an extent that we can no longer comprehend the idea that we are natural animals who need natural foods to fuel us and allow us to grow. Our use of smart phones and laptops, transportation in petroleum powered machines does not mean that we are now made of synthetic compounds and therefore synthetic compounds can be used to build our bodies.