How your subconscious Food Rules dictate your plate for better or worse;
Part Two: Gathering information about your personal beliefs around food while learning about why it's important to take matters into your own hands through education, not fear.
Do you create rules around food for yourself?
In the health-o-sphere nowadays there are so many rules around food, coming from so many different sources, diets, protocols, doctors, scientists and government, even your friends and family! Most of these rules are highly conflicting and very confusing. Why? Because these rules are focused on making us into good, obedient, little boys and girls. They’re focused on ‘eating clean’ [I’m sorry, but what the FUCK does that mean?] or they rely on ‘purified nutrients’ in the form of supplements, powders, energy bars, and tinctures that extract pieces from a whole and then sell them as more potent, more “pure,” more complete nutrition. [absolute HOGWASH; enhanced by purity culture messaging which implies if this is pure the other must be impure or unclean.]
This paradigm is leaving many of us confused about what we’re supposed to eat. This issue is only further compounded by our chronic disconnection from our bodies. Many of us are terrified to trust ourselves, to give in to our desires, hopes, dreams, cravings, pleasures, and inner wisdom. This may seem common, but it’s certainly not normal nor is it healthy. This is a maladaptive fear-based response
to a world that demands we blindly obey the so-called experts and authorities; a world that trains us to distrust ourselves and “follow the science.”
We are trained from our youth to do what we’re told, to access our learning only within official, highly-regulated, mainstream teachings that stick religiously
to one distinct narrative. A narrative fraught with fear and isolation from self.
Information about the world we live in, about our own bodies, our health, and our planet is tightly controlled, set up behind an intimidating pay-wall, within a paradigm made for only a few to ’succeed’ within.
You must learn in the order you are told to! Question things only when prompted to! And only ask those questions pre-approved by the mainstream “authorities”! You are told to align your mind with the loudest narrative, and always, above all to trust the “experts.”
But What If We Are Meant To Be Our Own Experts?
I’m not an authority on anything except my own flesh sack and cholesterol laden brain; my own emotional expression, and my own experiences, too.
This series is not about telling you what to do or providing more rules for how you “should” live. This series is about reprogramming you to access your own inner wisdom, to work out your critical thinking muscles, to break barriers around what narratives you’re allowed to question. This series is about teaching you how to alchemize your fearful reactions into curious explorations
; reminding you that your curiousity is a guide to your highest self, to your greatest healing. This series is an invitation to a more freedom filled way of life that you may or may not be aware you have access to.
What are some rules you follow around food?
Mindset and beliefs determine your actions more than you may realize. This is why it’s crucial to examine your mindsets before you attempt to change them. If you aren’t able to openly acknowledge the rules you’re following around food, then it will be very difficult for you to move past your legalistic perspectives on diet. Diets have become one of the mainstays of new age religion. Veganism is a great example of this— it’s more of a cult than a diet.
Here are a few common food rules that people follow:
Limit dietary cholesterol.
Reduce salt intake.
Reduce or eliminate red meat.
Raw animal foods are bad for you or will make you sick.
Fat makes you fat.
Drink 8 glasses of water a day.
Sugar is bad.
Carbs make you fat.
To Get The Most Out Of This Work:
Please list at least 5 of your personal food rules, as well as 5 beliefs you hold around food or dietary choices. This can be advice you’ve been given by doctors, friends, or family.
Don’t worry about whether it is “right or wrong,” we are in a state of observation; merely gathering information.
BONUS QUESTIONS:
Do you follow those rules consistently?
Do you ever “cheat” on these rules? If so, which ones?
Where Did You Pick These Rules Up?
Who Told You That “Carbs Make You Fat”?
Who Told You Cholesterol Causes Heart Disease?
Have You Ever Looked Into These Ideas For Yourself?
There shouldn’t need to be rules around food. Boundaries, sure; but when we start policing our own and each other’s plates for ‘health reasons’ we’re way off base.
Let’s get one thing straight—most foods that are in their natural unprocessed states, that are then lightly processed at home [cooked gently, soaked, sprouted, fermented, aged] are reasonably nutritious for most people in most cases.
Balance and proper preparation are key.
Out of all foods, animal foods are powerhouses of nutrients; meaning they offer our bodies nearly everything that we need to function with vitality. Whereas plant foods offer us just enough nutritional value to survive, but not to thrive. Plant foods also have varying nutritional value to humans based on how they are processed and what other foods they are paired with.
But above all, the idea that any whole food is ‘bad or good’ in and of itself must be done away with before the real work can begin.
For clarity, what I am NOT saying is that “all food is food.” I’m not really sure what that statement is meant to convey, but I see it in the social media sphere often. My best guess is that it’s meant to be a positive message about how we shouldn’t demonize foods because they don’t fall under the made up concept of “superfood” or because they don’t fit into the mainstream ideas of “health food.”
This sentiment would be inclusive and beautiful if we as humans had done a better job of adhering to the natural world that we are very much a part of. If that were the case, this might be a more accurate statement. Unfortunately the reality is upwards of 80% of the foods in our grocery stores come from a factory and are anything but natural or whole by the time they make it to our tables.
In this sense all food is very much NOT food. In fact, most packaged foods have so few recognizable food ingredients they can hardly be considered food at all. This unfortunate reality is a huge contributor to dis-ease in our modern world. We’ve only had our industrialized food systems for (generously) 200 years. In that time each generation is sicker than the last, disease stats both mental and physical are skyrocketing every year.
The sad fact is that nowadays all “food” is very much not food. Far from it, I would venture to say that most of what people are eating these days, at least in the US, are not foods at all. Food-like-substances, sure.
Edible only in the sense that a human can eat a certain amount of paint, or lead, or bubblegum that can be swallowed and pushed through our digestive tract and out the other end. Under that logic all mushrooms are edible, at least once…
If you’ve ever been to a grocery store then you’ve had a chance to peek at the ingredients on various offerings. If you haven’t, consider this your next challenge:
The next time you go food shopping, read the labels of at least 3 items.
I’ll bet that most of the ingredients on these food-like-substances are not food, but rather they’re: Chemicals, Preservatives, Dyes, Stabilizers, Emulsifiers, Conditioners, Industrial Seed Oils [Surreptitiously Labelled “Vegetable Oils”], “Fortifications”, Isolates, Even Extracts Of Molds, And Traces Of Heavy Metals. This Is Not Food. Not Even Close.
This is a carefully designed, time-released delusion of food mimicry. It is substance, not sustenance.
Many of these ingredients are closer to plastic or poison than they are to food.
Animal foods are nutrient dense, life-sustaining, and ancestral across all cultures. Plants are survival foods. Packaged and processed …are food-like-substances.
What happens when we lack proper nutrition?
I’d like to answer this question with a quick look at an uncommon disorder with “an unknown cause.”
There’s an eating disorder called “Pica”
where people eat things that are not generally considered edible. It’s been around since at least the 6th century AD, and it mainly affects pregnant women, people with developmental disorders and children. Each group represented requires an extra depth of nutritional value to maintain their health, grow their bodies and mitigate symptoms. Most individuals with pica present with “iron deficiency” [which is most often related more to copper deficiency/dysregulation, or a vitamin A or K deficiency] or heavy metal toxicity, from lead or mercury.
This disorder makes sense to me in a lot of ways, especially when looking at the ingredients that comprise most of the American diet.
Here’s the connection I see:
I believe humans are designed to eat intuitively. This means eating that is led by desire, eating what you want, when you want. There is actually scientific backing for this because your cravings are one way that your body communicates your needs.
Trouble is, your body can only ask for something that it’s had before. So in lieu of a varied and balanced diet your body will be forced to rely on instinct. Those instincts will only be as good as your health and your connection to yourself allows. Most people who are diagnosed with Pica are nutritionally deficient in various things, but they are always deficient in minerals, according to Dr. Joel D. Wallach. Unsurprisingly, nutrient deficiencies are one of the main issues in any dis-ease, or state of disregulation.
When your body senses a deficiency it signals a craving, or more hunger. This is how it signals it’s lack of satiety. Satiety is the state of being ‘full-filled’ by what you have eaten to the point where you are satisfied, content and feel no need for more. Put another way, satiety is the experience of being nutritionally balanced
.
A lack of minerals are one of the most common and most detrimental deficiencies we can have, as they are responsible in part for the majority of our systems proper functioning, and all of our electrical conductivity within our being [brain, nervous system, energy, etc.].
For example, when children are deficient in minerals, as is often the case on a vegan or vegetarian diet, they can often be found eating dirt, sand, boogers, fingernails, licking their limbs or other people’s, eating bugs and when available eating large chunks of butter. While this might sound maladjusted these are actually very primally protective mechanisms in a child. Every substance on that list offers a different range of minerals. This is instinctive behaviour signaling a need for better nourishment.
In a similar vein people with Pica often eat very “strange” things, but when we look at the list of the most common items, “paper, soap, cloth, hair, string, wool, soil, chalk, talcum powder, paint, gum, metal, pebbles, charcoal, ash, clay, starch, or ice” all of these things are also sources of either minerals, or chelating agents.
Not one item on this list is surprising to me from a nutritional perspective. Especially if we consider how those items were made traditionally. Our bodies and their ancestral wisdom haven’t had time to catch up to the changes in production in the last 150 years, so our instincts may still connect us to these items based on our body’s remembrance of survival instincts.
LET’S LOOK AT WHY SOMEONE MIGHT EAT THESE SUBSTANCES
Paper is essentially cellulose, wood pulp, an insoluble fiber, which may signal gut irritation (variations of wood pulp is an ingredient in more packaged foods than you would ever expect). Hair is one of the places, like fingernails and dead skin, where your body stores a lot of minerals, so you can theoretically get a minuscule amount of nutrition from eating hair, or fingernails, and this behaviour has been observed in desperate survival situations. Soap used to be made predominantly with animal fat. Gums have been used as gut soothers for centuries, though the gums used were nothing like the synthetic rubber we chew on today. Paint is probably the strangest one, but I can see how it may trigger a connection to dairy products, like cream, yogurt or milk due to consistency, and there may also be the factor of lead’s ability to “stand in” for other essential minerals in the body, so lead based paint may begin to look appetizing to a malnourished mind.
Your body does need trace amounts of various metals, but too much metal is toxic. Talcum powder could fall into the metal or chelator categories, depending on how it was made. Chelators like charcoal, ash, clay, chalk, and even soil, in a way [fulvic + humic acids from compost] would’ve been used to ‘bind’ to those heavy metals, thereby assisting detox of them. Pica sufferers are very likely to suffer from heavy metal toxicity, and parasites—they go hand in hand. Heavy metals are one of the preferred foods for the parasites that live in most of us, and there is growing evidence that parasites may be able to influence us to eat for their benefit as evidenced by heavy sugar, starch, and grain cravings when infested. Ice is a mineral craving, as water was at one point the source of 10-50% of various trace minerals, before industrialization came and stripped it of everything beneficial along with adding chemicals to it for “our safety”. Wool is coated in a fatty acid called lanolin, and the wool itself wold have a mineral content.
Of course none of these things are nourishing, not even in their original forms. However, I can see how a body in disarray, desperately existing in an unrecognized survival state may resort to extreme measures to fulfill primal needs. This is not far off from the way that the children with pica mentioned above, likely raised vegan, vegetarian, or on the Standard American Diet are often found eating socially unacceptable substances. It’s maladaptive to be sure, but to me the cause is clear. Mineral deficiency and heavy metal toxicity.
Of course, industrialized medicine has Pica labelled as an idiopathic condition—i.e. it has an “unknown cause.”
What is the lesson here?
Our bodies are so wise. They know how to take care of us through so much, but they can only do so with the tools that we offer them. When you don’t offer your body real food, and you don’t eat with an emphasis on nutrient density, your body will be forced to rely on instinct. A body cannot crave a food it has never had before.
In today’s world, that is further complicated by psychological and social pressures to stick to various diets or eating regimens in order to be accepted in your social circles (like we see often from vegan and vegetarian people, and the other end of the spectrum, carnivore). Now add to that the fact that the vast majority of food-like-substances on the market are little more than clever and insidious marketing ploys for an already deprived people, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for dis-ease!
Food shouldn’t have rules. Food shouldn’t need to be defined and distinguished from the chemical slurries being sold to us everywhere we look. Food should be something you can understand and utilize the second it touches your tongue. But big box manufacturers have invested a lot of money into making that connection to instinct nearly impossible. They’ve studied nutrition science just enough to uncover the magic combinations of macronutrients that create desire and cravings in our bodies, as well as the chemical additives to make them addictive and unnaturally shelf stable; and that’s their recipe for most of their products!
Beyond that, they diligently pervert these highly processed ingredients to be as synthetic and cheap as possible [simply for profit], leading your body deeper into a state of major deficiency despite ever growing portions (the American way). They’ve even tricked your taste buds into believing it’s the real thing! If that’s not diabolical, I don’t know what is. Your taste buds may be fooled, but your body knows when it’s not the real thing, and it will continue asking for more until it meets it’s quota of nutrients. This quota will never be reached on diets of food-like-substances.
I don’t make this distinction to be mean, or to shame people who can’t afford the highest quality foods. I say it because it’s the truth. Plain, simple, and upsetting, it’s the truth of our current world.
While you may not have power over the system at large, it is always within your power to take personal responsibility for your choices through:
Observation
Acceptance
Education
Opting out
Large scale change happens through individual choices and changes. You are not here to force others into a healthier relationship to food, nor to waste your life fighting against gargantuan corrupt agencies and their policies. But you have so many choices that you can make for yourself to better yourself and begin healing from the inside out. The stronger your body and mind become through fueling yourself with the appropriate foods and nutrients for a human being the more strength you will have to find your purpose. And if that purpose happens to be to fight Big Pharma, Big Food, or even Big Grill— more power to you!
But I can guarantee you that your purpose is not to live a life sick, in pain and without energy because it’s easier to eat Cheetos than cheese. And a company’s bottom line is always going to be their bottom line, no matter how much they claim to be concerned with your health.