Getting back to basics
I’ve abused it.
I’ve tried to control it.
I’ve avoided it.
I’ve obsessed about it.
Food.
It’s been a love-hate relationship. One could even call it toxic.
Partly to blame was my gullibility. The government didn’t help with its idiotic food pyramid, which had us all believing that eating mostly grains would be healthy. Don’t get me started on diet books, except one could say that they were wiser than the FDA, as most of them espoused eating mostly fruits and vegetables.
Over the years, I bought into food industry fads: sugar-free, fat-free, margarine, gluten-free, etc. By buying their products, I thought I was doing something good for myself. In reality, I was buying food-like substances created in labs, while enriching the food industry.
I got chubbier, sicker, increasingly fatigued, malnourished and addicted to sugar, fat, and salt. My gut got leaky and serotonin levels diminished. My immune system went haywire.
It is curious that I would have fallen prey to marketers given that I grew up in Europe and was raised on a Mediterranean diet. When we moved to the USA, I became victim to the marketing and constant messaging that I wasn’t good enough, skinny enough, or cool enough.
Thankfully, today’s health professionals are now speaking out against the food industry and bringing us back to basics. Functional medicine looks at a patient’s full history to figure out the root causes of illness instead of prescribing pills. Physicians such as Dr. Mark Hyman are striking a chord with people and getting their patients to understand that food is medicine.
Not everything that is new and modern is good, and our relationship to food is one example.