Recently, people have been talking to me a lot more about food. I love food but food and I haven't always been on the best of terms. To this day I still work on having a healthy relationship with food and all that it entails. While growing up I always thought of food as something that had to happen; I had to eat, my parents told me so. I only truly enjoyed eating breakfast, I was sausage, eggs, and hash browns kind of kid! Everything else, except maybe chicken nuggets and french fries, weren't that appealing. As I got older I watched a lot more cable and got freakishly interested in the foods I saw. Purple ketchup? You bet I had it! Lunchables? I wouldn't be cool without it. Sugary cereal even though I hate cereal and milk? Absolutely.
As I child I was 100% influenced by what I watched on TV. That included a weird obsession with canned spinach because of Popeye. I abhorred iceberg lettuce salads and could only stomach them when I put my salad on top of a slice of bread... I only ate warm cheesy veggies and fruit was a touchy subject (unless it was fruit cocktail of course). What's the point of this rambling on of my childhood diet? Once I joined a highly competitive swim team, I was put on the team diet. It wasn't strictly enforced but it was a major triggering point for my father and I about what we should be eating. I don't remember a time before swim team when we thought white bread, kraft singles, and mayo wasn't an okay sandwich. It one little booklet I found out that I had no idea how to take care of my body.
By the time I got to high school I was working out massively (11x a week in the summer) and but still overweight. We could blame the steroids in my childhood medicines or that I had a slow metabolism but the truth is, is that I had no idea what portion control was. I was eating healthier but in massive portions because I needed energy, right? With easy access to the internet I slowly started to learn about what was considered healthy. I had ideas of health but no idea how to implement them into my life or have them make sense. I was just a teenage girl who loved her daddy's cooking.
In Germany, I actually lost weight despite the fact that I ate potatoes and bread daily. The German culture that encourages exercising as a part of life and not as a "gym" mentality really clicked with me. By the time I came back and got to college I was heavier than ever despite feeling like I had this superior knowledge compared to those around me of what healthy really is. At an all women's college I was exposed to dieting culture like never before. I was introduced to tumblr and was reintroduced to low carb high protein dieting (I remember those cases of slim fasts in my sisters car). I began to feel guilty with my pile of eggs and potatoes as I watched the upperclassmen discuss their outings to the boys college over their coffee, half a grape fruit, and bowl of oatmeal. Obviously I was missing something. My friends were semi-obsessed with losing weight and dieting. Then I was too. It was a massive learning process where I finally learned about important nutrients, complex carbs, protein chains, etc.
My struggle with weight and body image has lead me on this incredible journey to get to know my food. I have learned about the benefits of so many diets and the positivity they've lead people toward. Though I'm still on my journey I believe I've already learned the most important lesson anyone can have about food: Listen to your body. I started to really thrive once I became vegan and the feelings I get, some people have on paleo and it's not up to me to judge. I care about everyone being healthy and listening to their body because it has evolved to such a wondrous state and yet we choose to not listen to it but rather the messages from everyone else. I've been all sorts of vegan but I've realized that I love eating carbs and I love veggies and that's what works for me. It's not up to me to tell anyone what their body thrives on.
What I do care about is how we get our food. Food is the essence of our physical existence, without it we we can't survive. With such a critical impact on our life I'm surprised by how many people ignore the kinds of foods they put in our body. I'm not just talking about choosing oreos over carrots. I'm talking about our general ignorance about how our food is cultivated and the staggering decline in food safety. It has become the shocking norm to say "I had food poisoning" as if it's no big deal. FOOD IS NOT SUPPOSED TO POISON YOU. Food is nourishing and loving, it repairs us and gives us life. I've recently been researching the connections of human illness in direct relation to industrial meat farming for a paper and the studies after studies show that we are destroying our communities.
I recently posted an article on Facebook about a meat industry safety inspector who quite and is now whistleblowing about how dangerous our food is. This article caused quite a stir because the main photo was a picture of cows being butchered. It was automatically assumed that I was speaking of animal rights and hating on all the meat eaters out there but in reality I'm a realist. I am well aware that the US has a long standing culture of eating meat and that culture makes it seem as if we deserve meat and it's our right. Changing culture is a long standing process. I posted that because if you are choosing to eat meat I want you do it safely. I don't want my family and friends coming down with highly preventable diseases because they were sold tainted meat by greedy industries. I don't want my nieces or nephews to get incurably sick because of industrial farming wastes lead to e.coli on their spinach salads. It is our right as humans to have access to food and have access to affordable safe food.
I want everyone to be healthy and realize how wonderful and magnificent their body truly is and if we're not able to provide safe food for everyone then there is a problem. Food matters because it's our physical being and with all the rhetoric going around, food is a large part of our mental being as well. If we want a healthy productive nation we need to go straight to the source food, warmth, shelter. So far we're struggling on all accounts and because I've been empowered with my knowledge I want you all to be empowered as well. Buy from that veggie shack on the corner, their probably local and incredibly cheap. Potatoes come at $3 a 15lb bag; you can feed a lot of people with that. Make cheap local veggies and carbs your staples so if you choose to eat meat you can make sure you're going to eat it safely. I implore everyone to fight with their dollars and stop industrial farming because food matters.
As I child I was 100% influenced by what I watched on TV. That included a weird obsession with canned spinach because of Popeye. I abhorred iceberg lettuce salads and could only stomach them when I put my salad on top of a slice of bread... I only ate warm cheesy veggies and fruit was a touchy subject (unless it was fruit cocktail of course). What's the point of this rambling on of my childhood diet? Once I joined a highly competitive swim team, I was put on the team diet. It wasn't strictly enforced but it was a major triggering point for my father and I about what we should be eating. I don't remember a time before swim team when we thought white bread, kraft singles, and mayo wasn't an okay sandwich. It one little booklet I found out that I had no idea how to take care of my body.
By the time I got to high school I was working out massively (11x a week in the summer) and but still overweight. We could blame the steroids in my childhood medicines or that I had a slow metabolism but the truth is, is that I had no idea what portion control was. I was eating healthier but in massive portions because I needed energy, right? With easy access to the internet I slowly started to learn about what was considered healthy. I had ideas of health but no idea how to implement them into my life or have them make sense. I was just a teenage girl who loved her daddy's cooking.
In Germany, I actually lost weight despite the fact that I ate potatoes and bread daily. The German culture that encourages exercising as a part of life and not as a "gym" mentality really clicked with me. By the time I came back and got to college I was heavier than ever despite feeling like I had this superior knowledge compared to those around me of what healthy really is. At an all women's college I was exposed to dieting culture like never before. I was introduced to tumblr and was reintroduced to low carb high protein dieting (I remember those cases of slim fasts in my sisters car). I began to feel guilty with my pile of eggs and potatoes as I watched the upperclassmen discuss their outings to the boys college over their coffee, half a grape fruit, and bowl of oatmeal. Obviously I was missing something. My friends were semi-obsessed with losing weight and dieting. Then I was too. It was a massive learning process where I finally learned about important nutrients, complex carbs, protein chains, etc.
My struggle with weight and body image has lead me on this incredible journey to get to know my food. I have learned about the benefits of so many diets and the positivity they've lead people toward. Though I'm still on my journey I believe I've already learned the most important lesson anyone can have about food: Listen to your body. I started to really thrive once I became vegan and the feelings I get, some people have on paleo and it's not up to me to judge. I care about everyone being healthy and listening to their body because it has evolved to such a wondrous state and yet we choose to not listen to it but rather the messages from everyone else. I've been all sorts of vegan but I've realized that I love eating carbs and I love veggies and that's what works for me. It's not up to me to tell anyone what their body thrives on.
What I do care about is how we get our food. Food is the essence of our physical existence, without it we we can't survive. With such a critical impact on our life I'm surprised by how many people ignore the kinds of foods they put in our body. I'm not just talking about choosing oreos over carrots. I'm talking about our general ignorance about how our food is cultivated and the staggering decline in food safety. It has become the shocking norm to say "I had food poisoning" as if it's no big deal. FOOD IS NOT SUPPOSED TO POISON YOU. Food is nourishing and loving, it repairs us and gives us life. I've recently been researching the connections of human illness in direct relation to industrial meat farming for a paper and the studies after studies show that we are destroying our communities.
I recently posted an article on Facebook about a meat industry safety inspector who quite and is now whistleblowing about how dangerous our food is. This article caused quite a stir because the main photo was a picture of cows being butchered. It was automatically assumed that I was speaking of animal rights and hating on all the meat eaters out there but in reality I'm a realist. I am well aware that the US has a long standing culture of eating meat and that culture makes it seem as if we deserve meat and it's our right. Changing culture is a long standing process. I posted that because if you are choosing to eat meat I want you do it safely. I don't want my family and friends coming down with highly preventable diseases because they were sold tainted meat by greedy industries. I don't want my nieces or nephews to get incurably sick because of industrial farming wastes lead to e.coli on their spinach salads. It is our right as humans to have access to food and have access to affordable safe food.
I want everyone to be healthy and realize how wonderful and magnificent their body truly is and if we're not able to provide safe food for everyone then there is a problem. Food matters because it's our physical being and with all the rhetoric going around, food is a large part of our mental being as well. If we want a healthy productive nation we need to go straight to the source food, warmth, shelter. So far we're struggling on all accounts and because I've been empowered with my knowledge I want you all to be empowered as well. Buy from that veggie shack on the corner, their probably local and incredibly cheap. Potatoes come at $3 a 15lb bag; you can feed a lot of people with that. Make cheap local veggies and carbs your staples so if you choose to eat meat you can make sure you're going to eat it safely. I implore everyone to fight with their dollars and stop industrial farming because food matters.