TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON
EDIBLE, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad,
a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
~Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
WORK HARD, PLAY HARD, REST, REPEAT
Les bon temps roll into a season of fasting. Balance yesterday’s Mardi Gras celebration with today’s Lenten cleanse or penance fast. Eat drink and be merry because we can’t continue indulging this way forever. At least redirect focus to reflection of what’s being consumed and the underlying cause of the consuming. Certainly doesn’t mean we have to stop enjoying life!
THE SUSHI CLEANSE
I have a good friend who eats sushi during Lent. I think of sushi as a luxury – never taking the freshest of the fresh seafood for granted – just because the taste makes me swoon with delight. And, while I get it at an unbeatable price in Chinatown, everywhere else it is expensive, especially dining in. I asked my friend about how she equates such a meal with fasting and/or deprivation, and I liked her answer.
“Sushi is cleansing to the body,” she said, seeing Lent as a time of cleansing.
I had to agree. Nothing is fresher tasting than seafood fresh out of the water. I feel cleansed every time I indulge. A more closed-minded individual might wonder why we don’t all just eat a lot of it, curing our disease-ravaged population in one luscious-tasting wink. But people are not so easily crammed into one curative box, and there are zigillions of different strokes for all of the many folks. Balance is important in most things.
So let’s consider what we eat, before the fact, and all of the thoughts and ideas we have on the subject, and embark upon a dialog with ourselves about goals, priorities and what is ultimately satisfying. Doing this will teach our children well.
THE SUGAR CLEANSE
Ellen DeGeneres is on a conspicuous sugar cleanse, encouraging her audience to follow. Good idea, who could disagree? I took her to task via email, however, begging clarification of her intentions. Having said not much more than “I’m going to give up sugar,” on her tv show about ten days ago, she did restate her position on the air the next day. She was giving up sweets, not fruits and vegetables, and substituting agave nectar and honey for sugar in her own home.
Checking the comments on her website, I was not surprised to see that, after her initial announcement, people had misunderstood, and were treating the project as just another temporary fad to give up some part of the food spectrum before eventually returning to their previous poor eating habits.
EVERYTHING IN MODERATION
Sugar – not as bad as some things, worse than others – often gets a bad rap. Context is everything: you can never go wrong eating unlimited fresh fruit and vegetables, most of which contain sugar Refined sugar has no food value, and it is smart to trend towards sucanat, honey, agave nectar, molasses and maple syrup to satisfy sweetening in your kitchen. And it is good to avoid food and beverages with added sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and dextrose whenever possible, which is just about every beverage in the Big Food arsenal. And it’s more possible than Big Food marketing would have you believe. But rather than succumb to the fad-of-the-month, take a more measured approach: begin eliminating bad foods and replacing then with better foods over time, without looking backward. You can’t go wrong with that way of thinking.
There is much talk in the food discussion today about confusion about what to eat. That can easily be determined by eating whole foods, those that your great-grandmother would recognize. Aim for the food, eliminate the ‘food products’. Eat real food founds at farmers’ markets and avoid packaged food. In short, one word sums it up:
Cook
That is the reason for this website, to help people discover the ease and simplicity of feeding themselves by exploring real ingredients and whole foods. That is, quite possibly, the best and most economical health insurance policy you can find. Look at the word Edible, at the top of this post. Intended as a tongue-in-cheek definition, I was taken by the words “wholesome to digest”. I like that. Everything we eat should be such. Everything else is junk.
