A squirrel naturally knows to eat nuts and cows chew grass like it was made for them. Animals on this planet have wires in their heads that lead them to foods needed to survive. At birth they got a food map.
So why is it that humans struggle to figure out what to eat?
We even pay experts to guide us. 20 billion dollars a year goes into the diet industry.
Remember when you were young and someone told you that you were breathing? Suddenly you become aware of the nostrils on your face pulling air into you. You try to time it and control the breathing yourself, but it’s hard and then you have to make yourself forget in order to not hyperventilate. It becomes intuitive again. You trust your body to do it.
Our bodies naturally know what to do.
Humans and Food
A hypothesis of our evolution into cognitive thinking is even thought to be intertwined with the creation of fire and eating cooked foods. Our bodies gained the ability to digest food more easily, thus freeing up more time and mental abilities for us.
As homo sapiens expanded into the world we ate foods we had not yet adapted to.
Our bodies adapted like mother loving human beings, and we were able to migrate out of Africa and into Asia, Indonesia, America and even into places like Iceland. From all of our traveling we gained the food knowledge of grains, different meats, different fats and vegetables.
These adaptations became part of being human, and now we are able to travel out of our homeland and survive on food from all over the world.
How cool is that?
So at what point did food stop being intuitive?
When did we see diets appear from vegan to Atkins to The Starbucks Diet?
The question can be two parts. When did we start eating food our bodies didn’t understand, and did that cause us to lose our natural abilities to know what to eat?
This idea comes with believing that we are naturally attuned to food. Our bodies understand rice, turmeric, beans, spinach, lamb and shark, regardless of if we have ever eaten them. Our genes don’t fully matter, and humans are simply able to eat anything. Or our heritage still matters to a large extent on what we are able to eat.
In America we’re all mutts and yet we all survive on food from all over the world. Our ancestry can give us percentages on if we are tolerant to dairy and if we should eat more meat or more carbs. So is it more about developing adaptations or does it go into the food itself?
10,000 years ago, when we went from foraging to farming, we started the stripping of our food like a stripper club of corn stalks. Oooh pop open those kernels for me. Then, in 1948 we sped it up with McDonald’s when the brothers got sick of cleaning silverware and decided to make it plastic. We kept that speedwagon going through the 50s with Taco Bell, Burger King and Wendy’s. We started getting fast food companies that fooled our bodies into overdrive as they were given high amounts of fat and sugar, fast and addictive. Brain licking good.
The occurrence that occurred was our bodies simply no longer understood the food going into them. Simply because we didn’t eat food dye and MSG back then our bodies don’t know it and how to use it.
Someday, many days away, it will taste like honey. I can’t wait for the day we can survive on honey and lavender. I find it annoying we can’t. Just…why not life, why not?
This isn’t really evil. Anger doesn’t do much for us. Blaming fast food or Wal-Mart is simply blaming an idea. All the people that started it are dead. More so think of it as these things exist and we exist and just so happen to consume them. There were things that lead to this and now we decide what things happen next.
High sugar, and high fat are not found naturally in nature. Think of the highest carb food, honey. It has no fat to it and is freakishly hard to get. We went through literal pain to lick that honey cone, and then developed ugly outfits around it. We just love challenges us humans. It’s why we have the combs as a breakfast cereal, a morning way to flaunt our victory as we pour the milk of cow’s over it.
The highest fat food, butter, has no carbs. So the world naturally fell into places of foods that we could get and couldn’t get. It has now become way too easy for us to survive. It’s how we have fat people. They don’t fight to survive. They rolled over, gave up, and still eat over and over.
But think of bears again, and honey, they take jars of it and fill their gaping mouth holes with it. Then, they go to hibernate. They crash harder than a break up girl. Sugar makes them hibernate, crashing into sleep for months. Think of a lion. They eat meat, running after their prey. We are what we eat. Choose a lion or a bear.
Intuitive Eating
When was the last time you ate only pure ingredients for a day?
You ate a piece of meat with no spices, no fats, no added anything.
You popped a tomato into you and let it sploosh into your mouth alone. Popping a cherry, tom style.
Our bodies tend to eat foods with so many ingredients in, and on, them that you don’t know the individual flavors, scents, or spices. This can be a melody of delicious and a way to really flavor up the nutrients, but, does your body understand what it’s eating anymore?
Food wasn’t intuitive to me until keto, where I didn’t plan it but my body began to understand everything it ate. I went on meal plans and eventually knew exactly what I was eating. Arming myself with this knowledge allowed my mind to learn its nutrients, to know the filling nature of butter, and to get that green was mind food. I was in the car and ate some butter after craving food. Nothing happened. I saw kale and my mind lept for it, begged for it. We ate it and my mind felt full.
Food is knowledge stored over the centuries inside you. We simply have to let the body understand it again and the mind will signal what it needs again.
