What if when we shopped for food or went to a restaurant, we ordered exactly the items that we ate. I mean exactly. You would be asking for things like red dye 5, or thiamin mononitrate. Can you imagine saying those words out loud and not only saying them, asking for someone to bring it to you to eat? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a clue what is really in those products.
Why is it that as a society, we care about what we read or watch and are careful to regulate what our kids ingest visually and auditorily, we are careful about the rating of movies and shows they watch, or the words that our friends say around them, guarding their ears and eyes. But seemingly we don’t put as much thought and care about what goes in and literally becomes part of their bodies or our bodies, what we absorb as part of our cells, the literal make-up of who we are?
You ARE what you eat, but if you don’t know what you’re eating, how do you know what you are? How it’s functioning (or not functioning)? You should be the expert with your own body, but you’re letting other people control who you become, on a cellular, fully integrated level. In the book, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, when addressing the additives in various cooking projects, the author says, “If it doesn’t exist in nature, how does my body know what to do with it?” And that’s a valid question. If we started feeding our pets a bunch of synthetic, man-made products and they started acting lethargic or irritable, or off, we would do everything we could to figure out what was wrong with them. People would find out what they were being fed and would be horrified that they were being put through that. But for ourselves, for our human bodies, we say it’s okay. We compromise on our own beings, for convenience or to keep our tastebuds happy or to keep up with what society keeps pushing into us.
We need to help people to stop believing the lie that cooking is hard, that you’re incompetent and that cooking isn’t a worthwhile way to spend your time. What is more worth your time than your health? The small amount of time spent cooking and preparing nourishing food now, could very likely reduce the time taking medications, sitting in doctors’ offices, and laying in a hospital bed later. And once again, The Princess Bride is right about one more thing, “If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.”
-Emily