Food Vitality - LOVE!

When I used to farm, seeds formed a major focus of my endeavors. In farming and gardening, it is common knowledge that seeds have a vitality. For many plants the newer the seed, the more vital. A packet of 5 year old seeds could be worthless. The seed storage conditions impact the vitality greatly: cool dry temperatures being the best.

I think the vitality issue carries right over into food. Oils can go rancid in a few days. Vitamins, minerals, and subtle biochemistries can change within a short time from harvest. In sweet corn, for instance, sugars change to starch during storage. Other crops, such as potatoes and winter squash store well for a longer period of time. Processing can affect storage characteristics. Dried sweet corn or popcorn for example will keep better than fresh sweet corn. Yet, grinding corn into cornmeal exposes the grain particles to air and reduces shelf life. Many flours and grains are processed to take the vital/vulnerable nutrients out of them and increase shelf life.

Modern vegetable hybrids are chosen for storage and appearance characteristics which are inversely proportional to flavor and nutrient content. Chemically farmed vegetables have less nutrients/minerals than vegetables grown in rich, balanced organic soil. Take a handful of humusy soil and think how much is going on there, compared to an aquarium like hydroponic medium. Pesticides kill life and reduce the complexity and richness of the plant environment.

Our modern American life favors quantity over quality. Mega markets offer us great quantities at a low price. I was reading that a major superstore was offering a gallon jar of pickles for $3! Who eats a gallon of pickles? Our pantries burgeon with bulk packaged cheap foods. When I lived in San Francisco, I was fortunate to have a local grocery where I could buy bulk items... meaning I could take what I needed from a bulk bin and pay wholesale price. I could buy a table spoon of cardamon. This saved me money and kept my food fresh. No five year old tins of herbs and spices in my pantry.

Living in East Coast suburbs lately has left me more dependent on chain stores and corporate chains. Marketers have picked up on the perceived lack of time in our lives and offer produce pre washed and chopped to bits in plastic bags. Whole carrots are virtually obselete, along with heads of lettuce, and bunches of greens. Sometimes they coat these chopped up bits with preservatives which may contribute to food allergies.

I feel a certain void with all this prepackaged, processed food. I've been trying to wrap my head around it. I know on one hand that freezing and refrigeration preserve things and some nutrients. And yet there seems some quality that lacks in a frozen burrito compared to a fresh made one. Even dried beans cooked fresh seem to have something over canned beans.

I see how easy it is to buy cheap food and store it in the pantry, freezer, and refrigerator. It's easy to eat a complete diet of food a year or more old! Without any standard of freshness we can't tell the difference. Enough salt, sugar, hydrogenated fat, and corn syrup can mask anything and make it all taste the same.

In the quantum paradigm, I wonder if it's all in my head? a victim of my own food wisdom and judgments? and yet I feel a difference in my body based on what I eat. I think of Ram Das' guru who ate a sheet of LSD and remained unaffected. And I think of my body and the glee it felt after eating raw food meals prepared by a chef and friend of mine. And then there are times when I've eaten frozen pizza or hamburgers and chips with such glee and run up mountains.

Probably when I've truly been happy and hungry, it hasn't mattered so much what I eat. And yet other times what I eat can fuel my appetite and happiness.

I think it can all be summed up in food vitality. There is life force and chi in our food. You can see it in the vibrant green of spinach out of the garden, and you can it's lack in year old frozen spinach quiche. You can feel in in viable almonds, and note the subtle difference in flash pasteurized almonds. I think there are subtle chemical compounds that are beyond the vitamin mineral contents determined by turning something to ash.

And on the other side, there is LOVE. The Love or lack of love that go into the food along it's path from garden to mouth. That Love can transmute a whole angry chain. A loving chef can transmute even lackluster ingredients into pure prana. And the lustful eater can transmute the whole food chain if their love is pure.

I think of the animals and plants that (in the empowerment paradigm) have chosen to give their lives for us. If we eat them with shame, fear, ingratitude, then we have not honored them at all. If we eat something with the consciousness that it will make us ill, then we are doing ourselves an injustice. Regardless of whether that plant or animal was raised in torturous conditions or at the hands of loving care givers, the final person in the chain has the ultimate say.

The single most important thing you can do with your food is Love it and be Grateful for it!

That can transform everything along the food chain. That is why the diet craze is so flippant in the effects of a given diet. Dieters are merely loving themselves by feeding themselves according to some plan that makes sense to them. There is great difference between eating fast food fries made by an frustrated worker with an acknowledgment that you know that food is not healthy for you, and eating homemade fries made with love from potatoes you believe are healthy for you. And even then, there is a difference for someone who loves their fast food fries without shame, guilt, or belief in their potential harm.

One of my friends gets acupuncture weekly and his acupuncturist got after him to change his diet. My friend, instead of changing his diet, took the approach of trying to love what he eats and eat what he loves. At his next acupuncture appointment, his acupuncturist thought he had changed his diet!

Our reality and science is confused as our quantum consciousness realities overlap with the cultural whims of the day. We see 30 yo smokers die from cancer while some 100 yo smokers survive. To confuse matters more, there is even evidence that newer generations are more resilient, more adapted to the chemical conditions of the times. Some people thrive on raw food, others on vegetables, others as omnivores, others on virtually all meat diets.

I find I feel and enjoy best eating the most "whole" foods I can. Sometimes I prefer cooked foods, other times not. I like most of my food to be something someone's great, great grandmother would recognize as food. I prefer the freshest least processed ingredients. I avoid corn syrup, white flour, and white sugar like the plague. And yet I try to let myself live and enjoy where I am. A scoop of ice cream doesn't bother me. A steak doesn't bother me. But eating steak and ice cream everyday I feel throws me out of balance.

The bottom line for me: eat vital food. The vitality can come from you, or the food, or both. Love what you eat, and eat what you love.