FOOD: Reward and Punishment

Lately I have been reading more about food than at any other time in my life. Why now? I have absolutely no idea other than I have more time to really think about it, and I have come across too many (mostly woman) people who have more issues with their relationship with food than any other relationship in their lives. These two reasons have been the impetus for my research into food. I mean EVERYTHING about food. I have come to the conclusion we are a nation obsessed with food in all forms. I've decided that food comes down to two things: Reward & Punishment. We celebrate it and curse it in the same breath and to me that is fascinating. O.Kay.. getting to the bare bones of it all let's look at the basic truth of why we need food and go from there. The truth is...We Need to eat food To LIVE and that is a fact - let us not dispute that one. Yes folks, I am afraid that if we do not ingest food we will certainly perish due to eventual organ shut down and that is the truth. Conversely....if we eat too much of it.. or ingest the wrong kind, we are most likely doomed to perish as well again due to eventual organ shut down. Food: A double edged sword....So in between those two facts we need to get smart about food and use it to our advantage and not demise. I will give you the answer to what will help us all get the advantage our food. It is call our BRAIN! Yep our "Brain" or (Brains if you think you're smarter than most). Either way we need to start using it because we certainly are not. This is evidenced by the fact we are a very sick nation, mostly due to food abuse. The brain allows thought and thought allows action, it is as simple as that. Choices are thoughts whereby determining the action to follow. Are you following? It's very simple...yet not so easy... that is why we are a nation of obese people with a lot of health problems making pharmaceutical companies obscenely wealthy. O.K...off that rant.

I could give you a laundry list of so-called "diet" books I have read over the years but I won't because they basically all say the same thing...this food is good this one is bad, eat this and not that at this time and not after 7PM at night. The funny thing is, WE all know (instinctively) which foods are good for us and which are "bad" AND we CHOSE to not follow what we instinctively know. Why is that? One word...BRAIN. Some other words that go along with Brain...Thoughts, Emotions, Feelings....well you get it. This is what we need to work on first BEFORE we fill the information storage compartment of our brain with food & nutrition (mostly useless but many useful) facts.
I have found an author (after reading many books) that I believe "gets it". Her name is Geneen Roth and I have been reading her book Breaking Free From Emotional Eating. More of that book is highlighted and tagged than not. Everything made sense to me and my neck hurt from my head bobbing up and down in agreement with every page I read. I had the biggest wattage (green of course) light bulb illuminate over my head it would have made you go blind.
On another tangent I went after reading Geneen's book to reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan who also wrote Omnivores Dilemma. He opens his book with this statement "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He went on say in an interview on NPR about this statement... "That's it. That is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy,". Wow I love this guy! He is so smart, isn't he? I am not being sarcastic either, this guy is another person who "gets it". It is so simple yet not so easy. The long and short of his latest book is we have gotten away from the natural order of things (read my previous blog). He further mentions that.. "We are eating a lot of edible food-like substances, which is to say highly processed things that might be called yogurt, might be called cereals, whatever, but in fact are very intricate products of food science that are really imitations of foods." We should be eating food that is natural and organic not processed and out of a box or you get at a drive threw window.
So between Geneen & Michael I am satisfied in saying that we should eat FOOD when we are hungry, not too much and mostly plants. WOW...can I have my million dollars now ? This is the answer to the million dollar question (it went up from $64,000 due to inflation) right? So So Simple yet excruciatingly so so difficult....another million dollar question....Why?

Until I C U again...L