Why is it that when our bodies get hungry, which is a normal
human function, we don’t crave nourishing foods that our ancestors would have?
Why don’t we simply go to the fridge and choose some vegetables or a piece of
fruit to satisfy our rumbling tummies? Why do we find ourselves driving to the
local shops, by-passing all the fresh fruit and vegetables to grab a candy bar
or salty crisps to satisfy ourselves? It’s simple. We’ve been brainwashed.
We have become munching, crunching robots. It’s sad but true.
Slowly, marketing and media has taken over our instinctual hunger and thirst
signals and programmed them for maximum profit gain instead of nourishment.
They have successfully altered our own natural instincts to automatically
turn to food which should never have been available for us to consume. Think
about it. Food corporations have had to spend millions upon millions of dollars
over many, many years to convince us to buy their products that we need their
products. No one really needs to do the hard sell on fruit and veg because we
all know from thousands of years of human consumption that these are the basics
with which we need to nourish ourselves. Nobody needs potato crisps or candy
bars or pastries to survive, but we all do need dairy, meat, fish, vegetables
and fruits to ensure our bodies have adequate levels of vitamins and minerals.
So we ask why, then, do corporations continue to manufacture
these food products which we do not fundamentally need to survive? It’s because we keep on buying them. What we
need to do to start making change is to extend our buying power and choose
healthy, nourishing food. We can’t do it on our own but, if enough of us make
the change, eventually the corporations will have no choice but to listen and
begin to produce the food we want to consume.
So do you want to continue to live life as a programmed
eating machine, purchasing food with little or no nourishment, or do you want
to start to break free, think for yourself, act upon your hunger instinctually
and do what is in best interest of your health?
If you’d like to become a free thinking spirit you need to
break the cycle. This is the hardest part. To try and defy the programming we
have become so accustomed too. You see companies have developed products which
are addictive; they add high levels of sugars, salts or bad fats to products
which by-pass our appetite satiety controls. These products taste so moreish once
we start we can’t seem to stop. A mental trigger goes off and we eat and eat
and eat, only stopping when we are physically over full. This doesn’t happen
with unprocessed produce because during eating our satiety controls switch on
and we stop eating when our body knows it has enough food. I mean you never really
hear anyone complaining they binged on a bag of carrots now do you?
If you’ve read David Gellespie’s Big Fat Lies you’ll
understand that this is going to be a complete detox. It’s like a drug addict
trying to break a drug addiction. We are so hooked on the additives because
they hide in everything. We get a hit at breakfast in our cereals, another hit
in our morning tea muesli bar, then again in our white bread at lunch, again at
our 3pm fix and usually a pretty big hit in our bottle sauce dinners. There are
two ways you can detox yourself 1) cold turkey and 2) ween your self off it
slowly.
These are some of my tips to stop being a munching crunching
robot:
- Always opt for local produce. Support your local
industry over the big corporations - go to your local farmers markets or
grocery shops. Encourage good quality local produce by simply buying it! My
rule is buy local and then if I really need to, resort to imports (interstate
first then international).
- Buy fresh fruits and vegetables. Where you can afford
it opt for organic options.
- Purchase natural locally produced dairy products
without any artificial flavours or additives.
- If you can afford it, eat organically certified
meat, poultry and fish. Otherwise try and opt for free range grass feed meat
and poultry and locally sourced fish.
- Ensure that products you buy have less than 15
grams of sugar, 10 grams of fat and 400mg of sodium per 100 grams. This rule is
for a majority of foods, all though there are exceptions. For example something
sweetened with honey or agave nectar might have higher levels of sugar and
products containing coconut oils or olive oils might have higher levels of
fats. If you’re just buying honey or butter, remember levels will be higher
than recommended but just read the labels to ensure they have no other added
nasties.
- No numbers listed in the ingredients.
- If a product claims to be made with a certain
ingredient, look at the label to see what percentage of the product actually
contains that ingredient. For example Macadamia Cookies with only contain 6%
macadamias, this means 94% of the cookies are made up of other ingredients.
So with this in mind, next time you find
yourself hungry or doing the weekly shopping ask yourself “will this item of food
truly nourish me?”, “Do I need what is in this product to continue to function?”
If the answer is no put it back and consider a healthier, nourishing option. If
you’d like more information on how to shift towards a healthier way of shopping
drop me an email at objectivehealth@hotmail.com
I can do one on one or group education sessions.
Remember always be the best you that you
can be!
References
D. Gellespie. 2012. Big Fat Lies – How the
diet industry is making you sick, fat and poor. Penguin: Australia
