“A veces no podía ir a trabajar, por que estaba muy enfermo para poder trabajar. De vez en cuando iba a Misa. Yo me sentía culpable cuando no iba a Misa. Yo no entiendo porque, pero yo no lo pensaba mucho, lo ignoraba. Yo apreciaba los domingos cuando iba a Misa. Rezaba de verdad. Siempre le pedía al Señor que me curara o me ayudara con este habito de tomar bebidas alcohólicas. Pero entonces semana después, volvía a lo mismo, de regreso al bar con mis amigos y llegando tarde a la casa por las noches. Me sentía muy frustrado por no poder cambiar”.
Food and nutrition play a vital role in our health and well-being. We make choices about whether and what to feed our bodies each meal. These choices can nurture our ability to grow and learn and pursue other endeavors.
Food choices are not as simple as they used to be. We hear so many often conflicting reports today about how and what to eat: eat carrots/don’t eat carrots, eat ‘em raw/cook them, juice them/don’t dare juice them. It’s sad that some people feel the need to be ‘food police’ for themselves, monitoring every ingredient, depriving themselves of the joy of food — the cooking and the eating. Others have given up sorting out the overwhelming amount of information available, and eat whatever is at hand. Following either of these paths can leave the body depleted of necessary nutrients and the individual exhausted from choosing.
While our food preferences are very personal, the choices we make must be suited to our dietary needs (allergies and sensitivities, heart or other conditions) and lifestyles (age, children, fitness level, type of work). Regardless of what you eat, or how you prepare it, balance is always key.
In the older cultural systems of the world like China and India, much attention is given to this concept of balance, with the recognition that foods have different properties and can be used to strengthen the body’s natural healing. My mother had an intuitive sense of this and I learned from her to balance cold and hot, sweet and savory, crisp and soft, spicy and bland, and always color. “Oh no,” she would say at the last minute, “there’s nothing green, or orange, or crunchy!” And then she would add that to ‘the menu’ so as to appeal to the aesthetic as well as the nutritional needs of her family.
Food is one of the best tools we have for practicing self-care. In a complex world of HMO’s, increasing use and cost of pharmaceuticals, diseases and syndromes with no obvious cause or cure, a healthy and thoughtful approach to food may be our best defense. Preventive care is being touted as the way of the future.
Well, it was also the way of the past. Today, however, we have a more scientific approach. We have identified nutrients, vitamins and minerals in specific foods that can strengthen the immune system, detoxify the heart, liver, lungs or other organs, and support overall health so that we have the energy and enthusiasm to thrive in our daily lives.
Have You Eaten?
We know food is necessary for our physical health, but it does so much more. In rural China, people greet each other with the question, “Have you eaten?” It is not an invitation to dine, as it might be perceived here. In a country where many people live in poverty, it is an inquiry to the person’s well-being: do you have enough to eat? Are your needs being met? Are you well?
Food is one of the ways we say we care about one another, our family and friends. In our culture, when we have guests, our preparations include planning for what foods we will serve. When friends move, we might bring a meal to share before they get their dishes unpacked. We bring muffins, fruit or baked dishes for the freezer to the new mother and her family. And nothing seems to soothe the stuffy-headed patient with a cold or flu better than hot soup. Many adults can still hear the voices of their grandmothers admonishing them to not arrive empty-handed on the doorstep of a home where they are going to visit or dine. This is a notion well worth passing onto our children also.
In a world that holds independence in such high regard, our children need to see how ‘Lean On Me’ works – how we help and hold each other. Food is one of the greatest gifts we share. Simple or elegant is no matter. We nourish and nurture our loved ones with the effort we put into food, with our hearts, our willingness to share and our intention.
Some of our finest sense memories revolve around food, as part of every great celebration and our closest, warmest comforts. Do you have a favorite holiday bread? Secret ingredient mashed potatoes? An aunt’s cookies, cake or pie? An uncle’s barbecue recipe? Whatever the meal, we all have foods that at their very mention make our eyes glaze over and mouths water. These foods are clues for us, keys that can unlock our histories.
I grew up watching my mother and grandmother cook and bake, turning out delicious dishes from seemingly innocuous ingredients. It was a magical thing to me, what they did in the kitchen, every day.
Food’s Special Meaning
Family recipes are part of our heritage. At a time when people move about more than ever before, these culinary links to our past can be a safe way to embrace where we have come from. They can also be a way back home. As children, my brother and I were charged with the task of being sous-chefs to our mother. When it was time to freeze strawberries, we hulled them; peaches, we skinned them; cherries, we pitted them — you have the idea. We would do our jobs of pickling and preserving until Mother’s patience would run out and she would send us back out to play. We complained then, but now have colorful memories of those afternoons.
Now that I am a mother, keeping my own home, I too want to preserve nature’s bountiful harvest for the dark winter. The labor-intensive process of canning and preserving food is certainly not for everyone; but for me, it is a path to my roots. I may not make jam side-by-side with my mother as she did with hers, but the very act of preparing it now connects me to something larger. And I have some of my grandmother’s pickle recipes to show for it.
What foods bring you back? What foods hold special meaning for you? Which do you celebrate with? Which help you heal when you don’t feel well?
Knowledge of how best to take care of our bodies on a daily basis can come from a variety of sources. My goal is to make this column a useful resource for you on matters of personal health care, child development, conscious parenting and the recognition and celebration of life’s natural cycles and rhythms — all part of living well.
