Food

Humans seem to have lost their way when it comes to food and eating.  We should be intuitively eating what is good for us, but the intuition seems to be eroding.  When you go food shopping now it is totally different from how my mother shopped when I was a child.   We can now go into one shop, where we can buy food including out of season fruit and vegetables and a plethora of other non food items.  An overweight person thirty years ago was a rare sight nowadays you will probably see one every time you go out.

We are bombarded with information about what we should be eating, foods that are labelled super foods, foods that can prevent cancer, foods that are low in cholesterol or fat etc.   The government have had various campaigns to get us all eating a healthy diet most recently 5 a day and Change4Life.  It is hardly surprising these campaigns are necessary as food seems to play such a minor role in the lives of most people.

We can, if we want to, buy food that has already been cooked into a meal.  Such food has many labels convenience food, ready meals, etc., it has been created with the busy person in mind, or has it?  Has it created a society where we can be busy because we know that we can pop to the shop and buy a meal that can be put into the oven or microwave, heated up and eaten within minutes.   I wonder how many of the people that live on such meals have read the ingredients.  I wonder how many of them know what half the ingredients are.  I wonder how many of them know what those same ingredients are doing to their body.

If, day in day out, you were to eat food that has been processed, that has a list of ingredients that includes preservatives, colourings, flavourings or sweeteners to name but a few, how nutritious is that food.  If the food you eat has no nutritional value you will break it down quickly.  Your digestive system will get lazy because it is not having to work very hard.  Your body will not receive the nutrients it needs to function, so your body indicates to you that you need more food, you feel hungry and eat more.  Many of the preservatives, colourings, flavourings and sweeteners in processed foods are chemical based.  They contain ingredients that not only do our bodies not need to function normally but that the body is not actually able to process successfully, they very often have side effects which are common complaints such as asthma, headaches, eczema, or hay fever to name but a few 

We could, if we so desired, survive many days without food however we would not be able to function normally after a few days.  Food nourishes our bodies, it keeps our body working properly, our immune system strong and in the case of children, growth.  Why if it so important, do so many pay so little attention to what they put into their mouths.