Are we killing ourselves with food?
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Are we killing ourselves with food?
How does a supposedly evolved race – at the top of the food chain – find itself in a situation where we are quite literally killing ourselves with food?
Food bridges nations, communities, families and individuals. It is essential to our survival and consumes (pun intended) an enormous amount of our time and attention. So what is it about our relationship with food that has become so complicated?
We live in an era of massive contradictions; of mega-convenience with a vast array at our fingertips and on our forks – starkly contrasted by massive food and water shortages in much of the world. Many of us are tantalised with choices, stuffed with information and satiated with indulgences to the point where we cannot squeeze in even one more morsel and we need to STOP … because it simply isn’t working!
We have covered the gamut of every possible way to complicate our approach to food.
It is pretty clear we have lost our way on listing some of the issues we face:
- Staggering and ever increasing rates of obesity, illness and disease.
- A growing list of eating disorders affecting more and more people of all ages and genders.
- A corrupt food industry riding high on the hog of our willingness to gobble down convenience products with scant regard to their value or how they affect our well-being.
- Endless and often contradictory diets and eating regimes.
- A global explosion of the convenience and fast food industry.
- Wild extremes – from the struggle to provide the next meal or any meal through to degustation dining indulgences, enough to rival a Roman Empire style gluttony of the very privileged throughout the ages – and of course along with everything in between.
- Astronomical amounts of unnecessary food wastage.
- Obsessions with cooking programmes on TV and morbid fascination in their ‘reality’ weight loss counterparts.
What is it we are actually achieving by bludgeoning our bodies with food in the ways that we do?
In nature excess, obesity and eating disorders simply do not exist and starvation happens only when extreme conditions occur. Nature is constantly providing us a reminder of the possibility of adhering to the universal principles and purpose of feeding ourselves.
Given all of this, is there an aspect of the set up of our food industry that is playing on our irresponsibility, and even delaying our evolution? Have we given way too much power to an all-consuming global food industry founded on greed, indulgence and control rather than on nourishment? It is possible that we should perhaps take far more responsibility for ourselves and our choices.
Have we lost sight – not only of our feet under our ever-expanding waistlines, but also of the purpose of food itself …. ?
It is essential we get back to the simple truths about food, about what it is for – without dogmatic ideals and rigid beliefs. From that point we can look at what needs to be addressed about our own ways with food.
It is entirely possible to develop a healthy relationship with food and re-awaken our innate ability to nourish our body with food by responding to its needs.
Filed under
Food industry, Over eating, Obesity, Healthy diet, Eating disorder
