The Helpful Gardener
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Confusion About Food

I deny the empty image of nature as seen by the human intellect, and clearly distinguish it from nature itself as experienced by non-discriminating understanding.
Seems we must make some allowances for our "rational" thinking, to see the world through unbiased eyes. But this steps far away from our scientific models, educational systems, and everyday lives for the most part. Sensei puts a high esteem in this paradigm shift.
If we eradicate the false conception of nature, I believe the root of the world's disorder will dissappear.
What do you all think?

HG

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rainbowgardener
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I think I need to read this chapter about 6 more times and think about it. There's a ton in these few pages all of which could lead to lots of discussion and which I could probably argue either way. I struggle with all of it, right down to the last paragraph...

"When you no longer want to eat something tasty, you can taste the real flavor of what you are eating."

I think I know what he means... when you aren't wanting something all full of artificial pumped up flavors, lots of salt, sugar, etc.

But I like to eat ! and I don't see why I shouldn't want something tasty in the sense we mean when we say our homegrown tomatoes taste so much better than the store ones.

We had a couple friends over for dinner last night. One of them is a meat & potatoes lady who almost never eats any fruits or veggies (and is not very healthy!). I served a green salad, a fruit salad, and veggies lightly sauteed with lots of fresh basil, over pasta. Almost everything except the pasta was locally grown, some from my garden. My non-veggie friend ate everything and was really surprised how "flavorful" (her word) it was. Is that a bad thing?

This book is so dense... I could go sentence by sentence through it and discuss every one. When we finish, we could go back to the beginning and start over.

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applestar
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I've been trying to decide which chapter these thoughts applied best. they could just as easily fit in response to Living By Bread Alone or Summing Up Diet.

I wanted to talk about how our eating habits are trained in such a way that we're no longer in touch with our bodies' needs. How many of us were told "to finish everything on your plate" ( when you weren't the one that loaded up your plate) or "no snacks before dinner" or "no dessert unless you eat your vegetables"?

When I had my kids, I realized it happened even before that. A lot of babies are raised on formula rather than the biological mother's breast milk, which I really think is the ultimate natural food for babies. Then, babies are often weaned and given solid food very early on. A lot of mothers feed by volume -- X ounces of formula or one 4 oz. jar of baby food, etc. ... I went with breast feeding on demand and self initiated weaning with my kids, BTW.

(Another issue here is the breast feeding mother's diet which directly affects the milk, and that adds a whole another wrinkle to the situation. I remember my older DD used to nurse voraciously whenever I ate lobster. DH noticed it too and he used to laugh that she already had an expensive taste.)

Then, given the availability of produce regardless of seasons, imported from around the globe, we are hard put to instinctively recognize the right food to eat.

I've encouraged my DD's to eat according to their bodies' needs and to "forage" for food according to what they require. ... They will sometimes only eat vegetables and fruits, refusing to eat meat/protein for several days running; then surprise us by eating a lot of meat. Sometimes they'll only eat chicken and other times, they'll devour lamb or one will insist on fish and the other will load up on edamame, etc.

Oh, I admit it doesn't always work. bottom line, it requires that an assortment of food is kept available for them to choose from, which I can't always do. Even though I accept a fairly wide range of unusualnesss, I can see when they've fallen into the trap of cravings/addiction cycle to certain types of food and start eating too much of something or other. Generally, they lose their sense of balance from too much prepared foods, snack foods or simple carbs like sugars and refined flour. I sometimes find myself in the trap too. ... I usually feel a craving for (I.e. Needing to eat) brown rice when that happens... Weird, huh?

I think it might be working when my kids say things like -- "I can't finish this pie because it's too sweet" or "I don't feel like eating candy, I think I'd rather have cheese" or "I don't know why but I can't stop eating these pumpkin seeds" then a day or two later "I think my wanting those pumpkin seeds are over because I haven't touched them since when I put them down" ....

Do you remember in Mary Poppins, The babies John and Barbara lost their ability to talk to the birds and understand what the wind is whispering to the trees when they learned to speak human? Are we now trying to recover that lost ability?

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rainbowgardener
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Yes, agreed. I grew up with "clean your plate or sit there til you do." It is the worst thing you can teach a child, because it trains them not to pay attention to what their bodies need and when they are full. I breast fed my son exclusively the first 8 mos or so and then decreasingly for another 6 mos while he was starting to eat babyfood. The babyfood was all home prepared.... I had a little hand grinder and just ground up the vegetables I was eating, but before they were seasoned. So he grew up eating fresh veggies without any added salt or sugar. I never let him have any sugar until he went to school where a little bit was unavoidable (but his school lunch program was hand cooked and very good). And I always told him eat what you want, don't eat what you don't want.

To this day, now that he is 30, he does not eat any sweets, doesn't even like cookies, cakes, pies, etc. Even as a kid he had ice cream for his birthdays. Once he was school age I would have given him birthday cake if he wanted, but he didn't like it. AND he is still very slender, unlike his mom who still works to unlearn clean your plate and has a sweet tooth.



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