I have been thinking about food recently. I am living in a camp where all my food is cooked for me and I have no access to my own kitchen. This is hard for me. I am used to cooking my own food. I have been thinking about all the judgments I have about food. All the ideas and preconceptions I have about food and whether they are true or not.
In the spirit of questioning everything I have to ask is our mental and physical health really dependant on the food we eat or is it just that we think it is and so our intention produces bad health when we eat bad food. Now, I have always been of the school of the food I eat= who I am and I have fallen into control many times around food. I remember being in a supermarket and looking around thinking ‘I can’t eat any of this food’. I think I was off dairy, wheat and sugar at the time.
I grew up in a house of allergies and the basic root cause of any behavior disorder was the food. The food was always the culprit. Stop eating this or that and you will be fine. So by the time I left my family house and moved into my own little flat I had a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of allergy/food intolerance/celiac/lactose intolerant/ calories/ carbohydrates v protein and all about controlling the food I ate to produce a given result.
Now, the interesting thing about not eating one of society’s food staples is that you are out of the loop. You realize, as I did in that supermarket just how much of our diet is dairy/cow milk, refined sugar and white flour. How much we as a society blindly eat what is given us not questioning anything and out of touch with our own bodies. I worked in a health store for a while and I remember in particular one man who wanted something to make him sleep at night yet didn’t want to stop drinking his twenty cups of tea a day.
So I had the thought that maybe my control around food is me not accepting what society is feeding me. I don’t want to be a part of it. My own anger at my part in victim stance turns against the system and I want out. So maybe it is these unrecognized emotions that produce indigestion, bad health and a wish for other food in me and not the food itself, and to be in balance I need to balance myself with everyone around me and the world that I choose to be born into. That all my control around food and not eating this or needing to eat that is me seeking to control myself because without control we are lost in a sea of unpredictability…. and that’s just too scary.
Of course, I am not about to start eating Mc Donald’s everyday. I still have a choice and I choose good food that nourishes me in body and mind and spirit. But to heal myself I need to heal myself from inside out and find those judgments that don’t let me be happy as who I am right now and reassess them. I choose good health for myself and if, as at the moment, I don’t have access to the food I think I need to keep me healthy I will not let my intention produce bad health but accept that that is where I have found myself right now in my life and within the limited choices I have I can still eat well and be happy.
October 25th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Your post is really helping me effectively interrogate the whole way that I look at my food in my life. In a way, as much as “we are what we eat” is truism, it is not something that the majority of people heed as they eat yet another Big Mac and then take their daily indigestion medication. To have reached the point where you realize that countless aspects of mental and physical health are affected by your food choices is actually a powerful and important thing. That said, as someone who must avoid gluten and who is supposed to eliminate sugar and dairy and alcohol, I am hyper aware of how that belief that nutrition is destiny can be really damaging.
Countless times I too have found myself in the position to say “I can eat none of this” and it is amazing how much I despise and treasure this ability to stand outside the fray as they eat pizza and pastries with mindless gastronomical glee. The way you articulate this as a resistance to society rather than a fault of the food itself is really provocative for me. I think it is something that I have really been struggling with but have not allowed myself to name because, as much as I may complain about it, it is a lot easier to deny myself chocolate than it is to take on my desire for outsider status on a grander scale.
There is just so much blame to get through - for having an inadequate body, for having a soul that cannot tolerate the world like “normal” people. And there is also the pride, for being wise enough to want to stay clear of the collective madness…
Thank you taking me down this unexpected path, Marisa
November 5th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Hi Clio,
I am visiting your blog as promised and I am highly surprised by this post. I’ve seen you enjoy your food so much on our Teo trip, that I have issues combining the food-image that I have from you with the image I compose of this post. Having a milk-allergy myself, I can clearly see the mirror and deep down I do realize that this is yet another way of my mind controlling me (there is no such thing as a disease, right?). Anyway, contrary to in the beginning, I am not allowing this allergy to take over my life, I just make sure that I don’t eat loads of dairy products in a day. Eventually my mind will give up…
Hugs,
Katleen
November 6th, 2008 at 10:48 am
hiya kathleen, nice to see you visit
I adore food… good food, and I give myself good food. The thing about this post was the fact that when I can’t get the food I think I need to be healthy I have to choice to be the victim and say oh poor me I can’t live on this food or I can accept where I am at that moment and make the choices I can make for myself and still be happy.
good to hear from you! xx
November 9th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
maybe I should also point out that in this camp we have beans, rice and meat three times a day, the salad is ice-berg lettuce, onions and tomatoes with apples and papaya for fruit. I develop cravings for fresh vegetables and things like well made pizzas or cesar salads or watercress and spinach. I have a bottle of chlorophyll which provides the green stuff…
so when I do get out to restaurants and good food, man, do I enjoy it…