Ever heard of TED? TED is this amazing compilation of though leaders on every subject from art to food to education.
Yesterday my brother-in-law B., who is a classically trained chef, sent me this link about lessons learned about food preparation from goose liver. As a guy who was trained that all things great come from the fats of animals, I appreciate that he has a much more ecological and dare I say even spiritual approach to food than his training provided.
I think there is a lot to learn from this 20-minute video that can apply to more than just fois gras. For instance, the same laws of nature apply to us as to the geese. When we ‘force feed’ ourselves the quality of our physical and emotional bodies is nothing close to what organically happens when we allow nature to be our guide. WE are more collaborative, connected, heartfelt, healthy, dynamic, and vibrant when we follow the wisdom of our bodies and nature.
As somebody who has spend a lot of time and money studying nutrition, I’ve always been incredibly disappointed in how little attention is paid to the personal experience of eating and relating with food. So much emphasis is put on the importance of ‘experts’ to teach you and I and everybody what we should eat, when we should eat it, and why. Isn’t it a bit ironic that one of the most basic tasks of survival, like eating, is so complex and confusing for so many people? We’re really pushed the nature right out of the whole process, from production to consumption. This is why people are so confused as to what to eat for healthy living. We’re taught to get so caught up in the external fascination with calories, fiber content, vitamins, etc that we forgo the synergistic benefits of treating ourselves as though we are part of the food system and therefore eating in relationships with it.
This video was a beautiful metaphor of how simple the solutions to our food experiences can be. Each of us, like the geese in the segment, have innate wisdom, that when cultivated, can guide us to answers about our own bodies and our own food needs. How can we practice listening more to them, and less to ‘experts’? Do you trust your inner wisdom? Can you tell the difference between a food experience that is born out of innate knowing and trust and one born out of fear or stress or feeling like you ‘should’ do something because somebody told you so?
Don’t get me wrong: there is a time and a place for expert knowledge. But that time and place should be used to compliment the efforts directed to learning about our own intrinsic awareness of our needs. Your body, your DNA, and your cells are very wise. You wouldn’t be here today if your genes hadn’t give you something very powerful to help you survive generation after generation and navigate the complexities of life. It’s true that our modern world changes quickly, but perhaps the answers to the food questions which arise as a result of modernization are really quite simple, just as they were for the geese.
What do you think?
Off White Living 