The demand for food is in our hands.
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The demand for food is in our hands.
For many decades we have focussed on more information about food – about the calories, about its nutritional value, about clearer labelling, about specific foods that are better for us – and if we read all that is available, whether information at the local supermarket, in magazines and on social media and research studies, we would be awash with information.
And for all that information, for all the research, for the clearer packaging, for the dietary advice on billboards etc, are we any healthier? Has the obesity time bomb now started to decline?
If you look at the statistics on obesity or diabetes, the answer is no.
In September 2021 an article about obesity states:
“Almost one quarter of adults aged between 25 and 34 are overweight”. “The prevalence has doubled in 25 years. It suggests no less than 4 million young Britons are overweight”.[1]
And diabetes …
“Diabetes now costs the NHS £15 billion a year – greater than £1 million each hour”.[1]
Why is it then that our relationship with food is on the one hand better informed and yet on the other hand we are nowhere near to turning around the obesity or diabetes time bombs? Surely all that information, the access to research studies, the access to different foods, the degree of science in our food would have supported some change.
What if there are a few factors to consider here?
We have food labels that are now full of information, but do we take note? And if we do, isn’t ‘a little of what you like, in moderation’ good for you? Obviously not … if we look at the statistics. How much do we really care anyway even if we do read the labels? How much responsibility do we actually want to take about our relationship with food?
Do the labels have the kind of information we actually need? Or do we like that the labels don’t really afford an honesty or responsibility if they just tell us the calories, fats, and a list of ingredients including some chemical acronyms? As if we truly wanted to look at our relationship with food we might want to respond to a different kind of labelling? For example, what if the labels in food were labelled with the degree to which the food affects us, e.g. to feel dull, feel racy, feel sleepy, feel sluggish or feel vital?
Would this change if the label talked more about the quality of the food and the impact on the body rather than only a calorific measure that may guide a calorie intake but doesn’t help us to understand how to eat food in a way that nourishes us? After all, isn’t the calorific guide just a way to discipline ourselves for 6 days a week and on day 7 we binge on everything we craved through the week?
Keeping us in a repetitive cycle of a self-depicted feast and famine? If nothing else, it gives us something to talk about – as food and diets and calories must be one of the most popular topics of conversation at work and in life.
Who is it that is asking for the food we have in the shops and asking for the way the food is labelled – isn’t it us? As otherwise, wouldn’t we demand different foods and different ways of labelling – after all we are the ‘consumers’, and it is a ‘consumer led market’ isn’t it? Isn’t it us who impact the demand at our supermarkets and shops?
Maybe through our lack of honesty about our relationship with food and what we eat and why we eat it we have an unwillingness to look at the whole system of food consumption? Or perhaps we betray a sluggishness in looking at food because food is making us sluggish?
And taking all of this into consideration, we currently have a momentum that our habits and patterns in relation to food are based on foods that bloat, make us tired, sleepy, make us dull or racy, change our moods almost like uppers and downers and disfigure our insides (with illness and disease like diabetes) and disfigure our body outside with obesity? Doesn’t that say that our body isn’t handling what we are calling for?
Are we not then completely out of kilter, in that we have some food on this planet that we demand, yet we know we have a body that can’t handle that type of food, and we don’t choose to take ourselves out of this cycle by demanding our food outlets offer different food that our body can truly handle, e.g. some vegetables, some protein etc.
If we honestly unravelled this and we ceased all the foods that made us feel sleepy, dull, racy, bloated etc., would we not then find that the body is designed for a completely different way of eating? A way where we eat to nourish and support our body to be vital, aware and ready to take responsibility at work and in life? And for all the times where we say ‘I really shouldn’t eat this’ ‘or ‘I’m on a diet’ or ‘I’m being good this week’.
Rather than perpetuating the current system of demand and supply related to food that keeps us in a cycle of struggle with food, isn’t it down to us to demand a wholesale shift in our relationship with food? So that from demand, to supply, to consumption we break the current ill ways and awaken to a way where we demand what our body has been calling for all along:
"All in all, the best recipe and food regime is
Serge BenhayonEsoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 119
the one you have come to yourself
in energetic awareness to your whole body.
Food should nourish us, not numb us."
References
Filed under
Bloating, Calories, Diabetes, Diets, Obesity
