Confused About Food ? Just Pay Attention!

One thing is for sure ~ There are very few of us who always “walk the talk”. After several weeks of grazing on healthy stuff, I noticed that the sum total of a recent day’s worth of healthy eating was a few carrots.

It started with a chai tea and a scone at the coffee shop around 9 a.m., and then I worked through lunch, munching some cheese and peanut butter crackers in my desk drawer. Mid-afternoon I headed out for a quick sandwich, succumbing to a grilled cheese. I had the choice of a side of chips or carrots, so I opted for the carrots. Dinner was crackers and tuna. Eating that day pretty much totaled a bunch of carbs with a trace of nutrition from vegetables and fish. The only plus that day was that I don’t drink soda pop.

But it was only because I’ve been journaling what I eat that I could see how well I can still fool myself about my own level of awareness as I went about my day. That day, I had other things on my mind, and so that day, I wasn’t focusing on what I know should be a priority.

So I realized this ~ Just like myself, most people know what they should be eating, so they really don’t lack information. Magazine, newspaper articles and health brochures abound with that kind of stuff.

I think it’s life. Other things get in the way.

It boils down to mindfulness, and being crystal clear on where you want to focus your energies. And every bite is a choice.

We assume that eating right is something we’ll get around to while we attend to everything else in our lives. For lots of people, it begins with a diagnosis that tells them their state of health has reached a tipping point.

There’s no alarm bell that goes off as you ingest food that’s been engineered, processed, or “pesticized”. You very gradually get older and sicker until one day a battery of medical tests validates it.

We’re living in uncertain times, true enough, and daily distractions can send us in a million different directions.

But every choice that isn’t mindful is siphoning away life energy, bit by bit. And the most important choice we can make is what we eat, because every single bite is an investment.

I think of it as a sort of retirement account. A healthy 401K will mean nothing if you get to age 60 just to hand it all over to pay medical bills!

If you get the chance, see Food, Inc. ~ the recently released documentary about America’s food industry. Small wonder we have the health crisis we’re experiencing now. Maybe our health reform package should subsidize anyone who has an organic garden and doesn’t eat processed food!

This all may sound radical, but that would be because it sounds too simple. It sounds simple because it is. We need to be mindful of what we eat. We’re all smart enough to figure out the rest!