On food

When I was 14, I discovered my mum's 'Women's Health' magazine. I remember leafing through it, somewhat dumbstruck by the gorgeous women, striking colours, and exciting promises of health and happiness contained in its pages. This magazine was my first introduction to the complex world of diet.

Through my teen years, I cycled through so many different ideals: vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, dairy free, egg free, sugar free, you name it, I've probably tried it. The turmeric-ginger-pepper shots on Winter mornings, aloe vera shots on Summer ones. Apple cider vinegar after meals to help digestion. Fermented foods before meals to help digestion. This green powder to help with xyz. There is so, so much out there. Such variety. During the past 12 months, I have begun to learn that what is touted on mainstream media as healthy is really only one perspective. And the same goes for the all the health trends and super foods circulating around out there. And, in realising that it really is only one perspective, I am beginning to appreciate how far removed it is from actual health. That perhaps there are other ways of obtaining wellbeing, through diet, ways that we have known for generations, ways that we are told are unhealthy. Maybe health isn't only found in a protein shake, or a supplement, or a buddha bowl. Maybe it actually lies in the fats we are told to avoid. Maybe, just maybe, the way our ancestors ate is far more superior than our modern eating habits. I mean, in our current age, 50% of adults have some type of chronic disease. Fifty percent! Imagine if the government suddenly said that 50% of homes have crucial issues that make them dangerous to live in. I bet we would all be so outraged that we would be catapulted into action, desperate to repair what we could. This statistic should serve as an equally ominous warning for our bodies, one that catalyses change, change that begins with how and what we eat. We simply cannot deny it any longer - diet places a sincerely significant role in the status of our health.

In the 1930's, a dentist by the name of Weston A. Price visited many traditional cultures, removed from industrialised life, and observed their diets, lifestyles, and levels of health. These tribes were far more superior to us in being a human being - as in, it wasn't normal for illness, deformities and the like to be rampant among their group. They knew true health. They knew how to inhabit this body. In analysing their diets, he discovered that indigenous foods contained an abundance of minerals, fats, vitamins, and all the good stuff that we are taught to simply supplement. They got all this through their diet. From the animals, and the plants that they shared an environment with.

They intimately interacted with their food. Meat was not found at supermarkets, neatly packaged in Styrofoam, after having travelled 500km from where it was raised. Animals grew up where they too grew up. They would hunt and kill the animal, and then use every single part of the sacred being. This was a process steeped in reverence. Similar, too, with the plants they foraged and grew. They took respectfully from mother nature, and gave plenty back too. In consuming real, wholefoods, they provided their bodies with an absolute powerhouse of a fuel. We tend to call these people 'primitive' - and yet, they knew more about maintaining physical excellence than our studies on isolated compounds in food has precipitated.

It often seems unfathomable to me that in our Westernised world we are so far removed from this. Out of sight out of mind has never been more prominent. We know that in order to make McDonalds chicken nuggets, entire chicks are literally ground up, beak and all, and made into a paste. We know this, and we still eat it. We know this, and we still become queasy at the thought of butchering our own chicken. How can the two coexist? How, too, that in a world so bent upon sustainability and conserving the resources we have, can we waste so much meat? Our blatant refusal to eat anything other than steak sees valuable, nutrient dense parts ignored - beautiful parts like the tongue, liver, and heart.

If we truly seek to return to living in harmonious reciprocity with the Earth, and not depleting her, I believe it has to start with our food. We must revere the meat that we eat, by utilising all parts of the animal. We must find and and buy produce from local farmers. Perhaps, the more daring among us will even give up greens from the supermarket - packaged in plastic and coated in glyphosate - and take up foraging, a fulfilling activity that shows us how abundant nature truly is.

I hope to expand upon this minor article in the future, and go a bit deeper into our diets. There is so much to learn from our ancestors. So much that science too is proving. My grandmother didn't have enough breast milk for my mother - so she gave her raw goats milk. Doctors at the time condemned her for being a neglectful mother. Now, it has been proven that goats milk is the closest thing to human breast milk. Let us turn to our elders, to their knowledgeable ways. Let us learn how to interact with our foods once more, so that we may restore our health and vitality, and our relationship with nature.