Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko
But since you must kill to eat and rob the young of its mother’s milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship,
– The Prophet, Khalil Gibran
To exist, man has to eat food. That’s the simplest perspective on things. But our relationship with food is a complicated subject. Talking about food involves culture, personal experience, and more. For a lot of us, food is not merely sustenance–it is not only a way for us to continue living–but it is a possible source of pleasure and connection.
Through food, we are freed of stress and guilt. Through food, we are able to connect with others and create shared experiences. That is why it is important that our relationship with food be healthy and not indicative of an unbalanced state.
Yet the state of our society has made it very difficult to look at our relationship with food with an objective and thoughtful perspective. This is because we no longer have a proper connection with food. In the past, almost every meal was from sourcing the food to cooking it and finally placing it on the table in a proper sequence. Now, though, almost everyone buys their food at the grocery store. They no longer start from the beginning, hunting, raising, or growing their own food.
As the line above–taken from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet–says, because we are people who need to eat, we have to engage with food more respectfully and more thoughtfully.
Reexamining Your Relationship with Food
Before you are able to properly reorient yourself with food, it is important to first investigate your particular background with it. Knowing what influences us to choose certain types of dishes and ingredients helps us to interrogate unexamined biases and to trace specific influences on our palate. People like to think they are born with these and those preferences, but, more often than not, they are actually reflections of hidden factors and unconscious conditioning.
The largest influence on our palate is definitely the culture and society we are born in. Where you are born can greatly determine what you eat, how you eat, and why you eat. The general and specific perspectives you have on food are also affected by this. Asian cultures are more tolerant of eating by hand, while Western cultures may raise an eyebrow. What matters is that you are not bogged down by these kinds of arbitrary expectations.
On the lower rung, there are personal experiences. How you engaged with certain foods in the past or how you were introduced to them will affect your future perception of them. This also changes whether or not you view food as mere sustenance or as an emotional crutch. If you ate broccoli as a child and found it horrible, you’re more likely to continue with this line of thought in your adulthood. Do not be bothered by your past experiences with food. The meat stew you ate as a child will definitely not be the same as the meat stew you’ll eat as an adult, nor will it even be the same if prepared in another place!
Here are some other considerations.
The Vital Link: A Positive Body Image
Often, our relationship with food is tied to our perception of ourselves. If we think ourselves too thin, we see food as a way to grow bigger. If we think we are too fat, we see food as a hindrance. Either of these two conceptions can lead to really terrible choices.
Reconsider whether or not your perspective of yourself is something worth changing, especially if it’s not even a health-related thing.
The Vital Link: Eating Mindfully
Because time has become so highly sought-after, especially with work, a lot of people imagine food as a bothersome but necessary aspect of life. This means that while we are aware of the need to eat, we would like for it to finish as quickly as possible. This creates a very transactional relationship with food that will only be damaging in the long run.
Pay attention to what you eat and when. Recreate positively reinforcing situations with food. Associate eating with socializing with others, if possible.
The Vital Link: A Balanced Diet
As has been mentioned before, many see food as a tiresome but pivotal aspect of life. What happens then is that when we eat, we don’t offer much forethought and planning. This can result in imbalanced diets and disorderly nutrition.
Be more mindful and thoughtful. Think of what you want to eat and find ways to make them healthy.
If you’re done with the reexamination of your relationship with food, Generations of Good Food is a compilation of recipes by Eleanor Gaccetta. Click the link to learn more!
Recent Comments