Food, Health & Enjoyment, Part I (#59)

Health & Enjoyment
To make sense out of food, we must think about health and enjoyment. Our body is not a machine that just injects something to survive. Health and enjoyment should go hand in hand to foster a happy life. With some moderation and balance, there is no reason that we cannot achieve both through what we eat.

There is no need to force-feed your body with something that somebody says is good. On the other hand, you should be prepared to modify your eating habit if it can enhance your life.

Cultural Influence
The kind of food we eat is largely influenced by culture. People from different places like to eat what they used to eat as a cultural habit. There is nothing right or wrong, good or bad with that. One cannot apply ones personal bias or limited knowledge to assess the food of a particular culture, even your own.

However, due to the big differences in eating habits, we find that some cultures are prone to produce more obesity, higher cholesterol, or higher sugar content in blood, which are the objective yardsticks commonly employed to measure health.

The diversity of Chinese food has prompted some humorous comments. It is said that the Chinese eat anything that has four legs except a table, and also anything that flies except an airplane. While this is partly true, I wish to remind the critics that they dont know what they are missing.

Geographic Influence
Geography plays an important role in the food we eat. For instance, in the US where there is plenty of space especially grassland, it facilitates the raising of cows. Consequently the American diet has more dairy and beef contents. In addition, efficient transportation of food makes the country more uniform in its diet.

In China, although space is abundant, there are three times more people than in America. Overcrowding exists along the costal and some inland regions. Raising cows are much more costly than pigs or chickens. The differences in regional geography coupled with less efficient transportation has resulted in much diversified regional cuisines.

In Japan whose four islands add up to only the area of California with a population half the size of the US, meat consequently becomes very expensive. Most of the meat and fruits are imported from overseas. Naturally, the Japanese turn to the ocean as their farmland where they harvest fish and seaweed. Thus seafood becomes a major staple in the Japanese diet.

Infomercial Influence
In modern days, you will be surprised how much you eat is influenced by what you see on TV and what is hip at the time. This explains the success of McDonalds, KFC, Coke, bottled water, energy bars, vitamin pills, and even pet foods. These businesses have one thing in common. They offer convenience and hyped results.

It is increasingly clear that the growing fast food industry is contributing to obesity, cholesterol and high blood sugar in the population, especially the young. A movement is taking place in American schools where children learn to plant and harvest their lunch vegetables in the school garden. This instills the natural concept of food to erase the misconception that food is delivered on trucks and packaged in attractive paper boxes.

If we look back ten years ago, there was hardly any bottled water around. Then this industry suddenly blossomed. We were told all the good things about bottled water without knowing the environmental impacts of millions of discarded plastic bottles. We also got the impression that tap water was unsafe. We did not get sick from drinking tap water all our lives, did we?

As for pet food, are you surprised that many people think that pets can only eat pet food? Try to give some meat to your dog and some fish to your cat. They wont eat pet food anymore after they have tried the good natural stuff. Have you ever thought about what kind of food dogs and cats eat before the businessman invented the pet food?

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October 2009 (less info)