Eating has become an entertainment, an addiction, a pain-reliever, an emotional cushion and a severe form of lust – few will pardon the sacrilege of calling their food consumption a carnal greedy sensual indulgence, they will put on an expression of injured pride and might even threaten physical violence at such an idea, but if they keep a log of how they are pigging away every moment on foods which serve to satisfy nothing more than their perverted sense of taste, developed through years of numbing their delicate taste buds on highly spiced and salted foods, they will find it hard to come up with an excuse to dispute this allegation.
We eat when we are bored, we eat when we are depressed, we eat when we have nothing else to do, we eat while socializing, we eat when we are not hungry, we eat while watching TV, we eat while talking on the phone, we eat while watching a movie, we eat while waiting, we eat in anger, we eat for stimulation, we eat to suppress loneliness, we eat to forget a break up, we eat because we think we should, we eat because our parents ask us to… the list can go on. We, in our present mental condition, would rather eat than live healthy. It is not rare to hear an addicted snacker (the typical overeater of junk) scoff at the idea of eating healthy food using self sabotaging expressions like – who the heck wants health, it’s for morons. The truth is, and anyone who is still in touch with their inner voice would agree, that we want to be healthy, we want to live a long life, we hate being ill, we hate being depressed and most of all we hate feeling ugly inside (and outside).
Stop making excuses
So why are we making shameless excuses to cloak the evident truth that we are a generation steeped in the practice of what might be called “food lust”. We hardly ever eat for nutrition; the very act of eating the various pungent, spiced up, salt laced, sauce rich foods can be compared to a lusty indulgence or craving for stimulation. Aren’t we naturally supposed to eat what’s tasty? Yes of course, provided your taste buds have not been perverted through years of eating salted and stingingly spicy foods. I have not personally tested the authenticity of this fact but it has been said that a baby spits out salted food the first few times it is fed. Of course, with time, the infant realizes that it has to make a choice between eating this salt laden and artificially sweetened food or starving to death. So it starts eating the unnatural food, processed powdered foods and other concoctions that the modern day health industry shamelessly calls baby food, only to develop a perverted sense of taste as time goes by.
Spices, sauces, herbs, salts and other condiments like vinegar are essentially responsible for cheating our taste buds into accepting foods that are unnatural to us humans; it’s no surprise that we are a generation that looks reverently at doctors, seeking medical consultation for disorders brought upon through subjecting our body to toxic substances eaten in the name of “tasty food”. In our ignorance we consume pills, tablets, tonics and powders prescribed by our family physician, whose very profession thrives on unhealthy people, only to end up taxing the body further. Now the already ill body has to content with chemical salts (we call medicines) along with toxic food. You can overcome the symptoms of an illness through numbing the vitality of the body by taking strong medicines but doing so will terribly weaken it in the long run. Disease is not what the body inflicts on you, it’s the other way round – you inflict the body with disease (in the name of food). It is only trying to get rid of the toxins; this activity manifests in the form of a fever, cold, diarrhea, vomiting, head aches, acnes and other types of inflammations – its best not to suppress this act of elimination.
Are you waiting for statistics?
You don’t need statistics to prove that overeating is deadly. But the medical research industry, that has plenty time to conduct painful experiments on rats, has confirmed that overeating is easily the single largest reason for cancer. If we were to overeat on natural foods the conditions would be far less alarming, but unfortunately we find ourselves gorging on extremely unhealthy processed and spiced up cooked food. Anything which is processed, either through cooking or drying, is already denatured on top of it we add layers of unhealthy spices and seasonings to make it worse. Cooking removes the natural flavors of the vegetables and denatures most of the nutrients. Naturally it would be impossible to eat cooked food in the absences of add-ons salts and spices – but in essence we are just cheating our systems. No sane person would consider eating a mouthful of spices or table salt, but he wouldn’t mind consuming several ounces of the same when mixed with his food. There is essentially no difference – a poison stays a poison even if it is well cloaked in the name of taste.
I moved from eating animal foods to eating a purely vegetarian cooked food diet a few months back. I realized that though it was less harmful to eat vegetarian cooked food compared to non-vegeratian food it was still far from optimal because I was still eating denatured cooked food combined with unhealthy spices. I moved over to a complete raw food diet consisting purely of sweet fruits, dry fruits, nuts and a small portion of raw vegetables. It’s a fact that our body does not digest vegetables well (we are starch eaters), we are essentially frugivorous (fruit eaters). I saw a huge boost in my well being with each change I made. Before I started out on raw food I was suffering from severe acid reflux problems, joint pains and back aches. After a few weeks of detox, that I had to tolerate, my body regained its vitality and I have been healtier. I have feeling that my mental clarity has reached new levels as has my immunity and strength. I can subsist easily on small amounts of food because these natural foods, fruits and vegetables, are packed with living energy. Do I have cravings for cooked food? Certainly; it takes time to get over the addiction of cooked food, but I have a pretty strong motivation to never succumb to these cravings – the benefits I am enjoying while eating natural far out weight a few uncomfortable cravings every now and then, which I am sure will subside with time – I have only been on a complete raw food for the past one month.
Just because everyone does it…
Why do we depend upon unhealthy food to help us through when we feel emotionally low? It could be an expression of self sabotage or it could be because it helps us numb our brain. Digesting junk food takes a huge toll on the body with most of the blood draining from our brain towards the stomach – this results in a feeling of numbness or light headedness. It’s akin to taking drugs or alcohol to escape the pain caused by an emotional situation we’d rather not face. In the long run, these escape mechanism do us more harm than good as we end up developing life threatening addictions. Overeating may look harmless on the surface due the fact that we find evidence of this behavior in most of our peers, friends, family, causing us to believe that it’s normal. The common argument being – I love food, everyone overeats, why should I be left out? Its like saying since everyone is jumping off the building so will I. Most Romans practiced food orgies where it was common to self induce vomiting to eat more food – just because everyone followed this practice did not make it normal.
If you value your well-being start eating consciously and conscientiously. By consciously I mean – eat when you are hungry, and by conscientiously I mean – eat healthy. Stop making eating into a habit. The body needs nutrition and it can well be served by eating small quantities of natural foods like fruits, vegetables and nuts. Not only is it easy to digest but its also free of toxins.
You will never overeat on natural foods, eating a small portion of fruits is filling because of its high water content. Fruits quickly restore the sugar levels in the body as they are made up of units of glucose, called fructose, that are easily assimilated. It is far easier to eat several pounds of meat than to eat a few ounces of nuts or fruits. The former is toxic and yields very little nutrition, the latter is natural, highly nutritious and easily digested.
It’s your life
Most people who are emotionally attached to their food will certainly feel resistance welling up inside them at the very thought of accepting the truth about the toxicity of their daily consumption. The truth is often bitter, especially when we are close-minded, but with time it makes its point evident. Do you really need scientific statistics to convince yourself of the deadly effects of eating fried, spiced and fermented foods? Is it not evident in your own body or in the body of the others around you? Isn’t the onset of diabetes, high blood pressure, rheumatism, arthritis and cases of cancer of various forms rising alarmingly enough for us to stop and take stock of the real cause? For how long will you stay blinded to the truth and blame factors like genes for the condition you have brought upon yourself. Every body, if taken care of properly, has the immunity to survive any disease but when we allow the body to rot inside, by eating wrong, it won’t be long before we succumb to the onslaught of degenerate ailments.
Your digestive system was meant to last for as long as you live. Allow it some rest and recuperation time by declining food when not hungry and eating healthy natural food as much as possible if not entirely. Some people have no idea why the surgeon is talking about cutting off a few inches of their colon or stomach, due to tissue putrefaction or cancer; if you are wondering how this condition came about I will give you a little hint – overeating. The choice is yours.
