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Food, Health & Enjoyment, Part III (#61)
Part I discusses the various...
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Food, Health & Enjoyment, Part III (#61)
Part I discusses the various influences on the way we eat. Part II contains my personal advices for maintaining a healthy diet. In Part III, I wish to share with you some of the ideas put forward by a famed author, Michael Pollan, in his two best-selling books: The Omnivores Dilemma, and In Defense of Food.
Something to Think About
The author has made a point that in order to find meaning in what and how we eat, we should always look at the big picture, rather than the isolated small details that are only parts of the grand scheme of things. Regarding food, nutritional ingredients such as proteins, vitamins, omega-3, and so on are only parts of foodstuff. Over-focus on those things seems to benefit the businessman more than our own health. Why?
One obvious fact is that the human body is greater than the sum of its parts. Else, we would all be reduced to mechanical robots. Similarly, food is more than the sum of its nutritional ingredients. To take it further, our health depends on the health of the food chains of which we are a part. Thus healthy food depends on ecology, good soil, healthy plants, healthy animals that eat the plants, and natural processing by humans for our own use.
May I also add that in the real world, a system is always greater than the sum of its parts. In your dream world, a system is equal to one or two of the parts you happen to know.
What to Eat
The author proposes a commonsensical way of what we should eat in just seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
It seems too obvious that we must eat food. But do we really eat food? When we enter the supermarket, most things we find are food-like packages of processed edibles with plenty of nutritional information printed on them. Food is supposed to be healthy and natural without the need for detailed trumpeting of its nutritional value. But that is the situation in our society today. It seems that we are not enjoying food but feeding on information.
When food becomes cheap like fast food, its value declines because healthy food should not be cheap for it also saves health care costs, especially in dealing with obesity and high cholesterol that cheap food brings.
How to Eat
Besides what to eat, how to eat is of equal importance. Healthy food also depends on how it is grown, processed, prepared, and our eating habits. Too often we tend to just fill up rather than eat. We eat and run, rather than dine and savor. With the excuse of saving time, we surrender the pleasures of eating and the value of healthy diet.
Some advices are offered: Sit down and eat with food on the table, not working desk. Eat slowly, preferably with family or friends, not with the TV. Spend some time preparing and eating your own food, an enjoyment largely ignored by people. Dont snack too much on convenience food. Follow your guts when you eat rather than your brains.
www.herbsandtea.com
January 2010
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