do you create rules around food for yourself?

In the health-o-sphere nowadays there are so many rules around food, coming from so many different sources, diets, protocols, doctors, and government, even your friends and family! Most of these rules are highly conflicting and very confusing. Why? Because these rules are focused on making us into good, obedient, little boys and girls. They’re focused on ‘eating clean’ [I’m sorry, but what the FUCK does that mean?] or they rely on ‘purified nutrients’ in the form of supplements, powders, energy bars, and tinctures that extract pieces from a whole and then sell them as more potent, more “pure,” more complete nutrition. [absolute HOGWASH]

This paradigm is leaving many of us confused about what we’re supposed to eat. This issue is only further compounded by our chronic disconnection from our bodies. Many of us are terrified to trust ourselves, to give in to our desires, hopes, dreams, cravings, pleasures, and inner wisdom. This may seem normal, but it’s certainly not healthy. This is a maladaptive fear-based response to a world that demands we blindly obey the so-called experts and authorities; a world that trains us to distrust ourselves and “follow the science.”

We are trained from our youth to do what we’re told, to access our learning only within official, highly-regulated, mainstream teachings that stick religiously to one distinct narrative. Information about the world we live in, about our own bodies, our health, and our planet is tightly controlled, set up behind an intimidating pay-wall, within a paradigm made for only a few to ’succeed’ within. You must learn in the order you are told to, question things only when prompted to, and only with pre-approved questions, align your mind with the most popular, or loudest narrative, and always, trust the “experts.”

But what if we are meant to be our own experts?

I’m not an authority on anything except my own flesh sack and cholesterol laden brain; my own emotional expression, and my own experiences, too. This program is not about telling you what to do, providing more rules for how you “should” live. This program is about reprogramming you to access your own inner wisdom, to work out your critical thinking muscles, to break barriers around what narratives you’re allowed to question. This program is about teaching you how to alchemize your fearful reactions into curious explorations; reminding us that our curiousity is a guide to our highest self, to our greatest healing. More on this later.

What are some rules you follow around food?

Mindset, and beliefs determine our actions more than we believe. This is why it’s crucial to examine our mindsets before we attempt to change. If you aren’t able to openly acknowledge the rules you’re following around food, then it will be very difficult for you to move past your legalistic perspectives on diet.

Here are a few common food rules that people follow:

• Limit dietary cholesterol.

• Reduce salt intake.

• Reduce or eliminate red meat.

• Raw animal foods are bad for you or will make you sick.

• Fat makes you fat.

• Drink 8 glasses of water a day.

• Sugar is bad.

• Carbs make you fat.

To get the most out of this module: 

Please list at least 5 of your personal food rules, as well as 5 beliefs you hold around food or dietary choices.
This can be advice you’ve been given by doctors, friends, or family.
Don’t worry about whether it is “right or wrong,” we are in a state of observation; merely gathering information.  

Bonus Questions:

Do you follow those rules consistently? Do you ever “cheat” on these rules? If so, which ones?

Where did you pick these rules up?
Who told you that “carbs make you fat”?
Who told you cholesterol causes heart disease?
Have you ever looked into these ideas for yourself?

There shouldn’t need to be rules around food. Boundaries, sure; but when we start policing our own and each other’s plates for ‘health reasons’ we’re way off base. Let’s get one thing straight—most foods that are in their natural unprocessed states, that are then lightly processed at home [cooked gently, soaked, sprouted, fermented, aged] are reasonably nutritious for most people in most cases. 

Out of all foods, animal foods are powerhouses of nutrients; meaning they offer our bodies nearly everything that we need to function with vitality. Whereas plant foods offer us just enough nutritional value to keep us alive, but not thriving. Plant foods also have varying nutritional value to humans based on how they are processed and what other foods they are paired with. But above all, no food is ‘bad or good’ in and of itself.

This is not the same as “all food is food.” I’m not really sure what that statement is meant to convey, but I see it in the social media sphere often. My best guess is that it’s meant to be a positive message about how we shouldn’t demonize foods because they don’t fall under the made up concept of “superfood” or because they don’t fit into the mainstream ideas of “health food.” This sentiment would be inclusive, and beautiful if we as humans had done a better job of adhering to the natural world that we are very much members of, then this might be a more accurate statement.

animal foods are nutrient dense, life-sustaining, and ancestral across all cultures. Plants are survival foods.

The sad fact is that nowadays all “food” is very much not food. Far from it, I would venture to say that most of what people are eating these days, at least in the US, are not foods at all. Food-like-substances [FLS], sure. Edible only in the sense that a human can eat a certain amount of paint, or lead, or bubblegum, or that it can be swallowed and pushed through our digestive tract and out the other end, sure.

If you’ve ever been to a grocery store then you’ve had a chance to peek at the ingredients on various offerings. If you haven’t, consider this your next challenge:

the next time you go food shopping, read the labels of at least 3 items.

I’ll bet that most of the ingredients on these FLS are not food, rather, they’re: chemicals, preservatives, dyes, stabilizers, emulsifiers, conditioners, industrial seed oils [surreptitiously labelled “vegetable oils”], “fortifications”, isolates, even extracts of molds, and traces of heavy metals. This is not food. Not even close.

This is a carefully designed, time-released delusion of food mimicry. It is substance, not sustenance. Many of these ingredients are closer to plastic or poison than they are to food.

what happens when we lack proper nutrition?

I’d like to answer this question with a quick look at an uncommon disorder with “an unknown cause.”

There’s an eating disorder called “Pica” where people eat things that are not generally considered edible. It’s been around since at least the 6th century AD, and it mainly affects pregnant women, people with developmental disorders and children. Each group represented requires extra depth of nutritional value to maintain their health, grow their bodies and mitigate symptoms. Most individuals with pica present with “iron deficiency”[which is actually a copper deficiency, or a vitamin A or K deficiency] or heavy metal toxicity, from lead or mercury.

This disorder makes sense to me in a lot of ways, especially when looking at the ingredients that comprise most of the American diet.

Here’s the connection I see:

I believe humans are designed to eat intuitively. This means eating that is led by desire, eating what you want, when you want. There is actually scientific backing for this because our cravings are one way that our bodies can communicate our needs. Trouble is, your body can only ask for something it’s had before. In lieu of a varied and balanced diet your body will be forced to rely on instinct. Most people who are diagnosed with Pica are nutritionally deficient in various things. Nutrient deficiencies are one of the main issues in any dis-ease, or state of disregulation. 

When your body sense a deficiency it signals a craving or more hunger. This is how it signals it’s lack of satiety. Satiety is the state of being ‘full-filled’ by what you have eaten to the point where you are satisfied, content and feel no need for more. Put another way, satiety is the experience of being nutritionally balanced.

A lack of minerals are one of the most common and most detrimental deficiencies we can have, as they are responsible in part for the majority of our systems proper functioning, and all of our electrical conductivity within our being [brain, nervous system, energy, etc.]. When children are deficient in minerals, as is often the case on a vegan or vegetarian diet, they can often be found eating dirt, sand, boogers, fingernails, licking their limbs or other people’s, eating bugs and when available eating large chunks of butter. While this might sound maladjusted these are actually very primally protective mechanisms in a child. Every substance on that list offers a different range of minerals. This is instinctive behaviour signaling a need for better nourishment.

In a similar vein people with Pica often eat very “strange” things, but when we look at the list of the most common items, “paper, soap, cloth, hair, string, wool, soil, chalk, talcum powder, paint, gum, metal, pebbles, charcoal, ash, clay, starch, or ice” all of these things are also sources of either minerals, or chelating agents.

Not one item on this list is surprising to me from a nutritional perspective. Especially if we consider how those items were made traditionally. Our bodies and their ancestral wisdom haven’t had time to catch up to the changes in production in the last 150 years, so our instincts may still connect us to these items based on our body’s remembrance of survival instincts.

so let’s look at why someone might eat these substances

Paper is essentially cellulose, wood pulp, an insoluble fiber, which may signal gut irritation. Hair is one of the places, like fingernails and dead skin where our bodies use a lot of minerals, you can get a minuscule amount of nutrition from eating hair, or fingernails, and this behaviour has been observed in desperate survival situations. Soap used to be made predominantly with animal fat. Gums have been used as gut soothers for centuries, though the gums used were nothing like the synthetic rubber we chew on today. Paint is probably the strangest one, but I can see how it may trigger a connection to dairy products, like cream, yogurt or milk due to consistency.

Our bodies do need trace amounts of various metals, but too much metal is toxic. Talcum powder could fall into the metal or chelator categories, depending on how it was made. Chelators like charcoal, ash, clay, chalk, and even soil, in a way [fulvic + humic acids from compost] would’ve been used to ‘bind’ to those heavy metals, thereby assisting detox of them. Pica sufferers are very likely to suffer from heavy metal toxicity, and parasites—they go hand in hand. Heavy metals are one of the preferred foods for the parasites that live in most of us, and there is growing evidence that parasites may be able to influence us to eat for their benefit as evidenced by heavy sugar, starch, and grain cravings when infested. Ice is a mineral craving, as water was at one point the source of 10-50% of various trace minerals. Wool is coated in a fatty acid called lanolin, and the wool itself wold have a mineral content.

Of course none of these things are nourishing, not even in their original forms, however, I can see how a body in disarray, desperately existing in an unrecognized survival state may resort to extreme measures to fulfill primal needs. This is not far off from the way that the children mentioned above, likely raised vegan, vegetarian, or on the Standard American Diet are often found eating socially unacceptable substances. It’s maladaptive to be sure, but to me the cause is clear. Mineral deficiency and heavy metal toxicity.

Yet, Pica is labelled as an idiopathic condition—i.e. it has an “unknown cause.”

Our bodies are so wise. They know how to take care of us through so much, but they can only do so with the tools that we offer them. When we don’t offer our body’s real food, or we don’t eat with emphasis on nutrient density, our body’s are forced to rely on instinct. A body cannot crave a food it has never had before. In today’s world, that is further complicated by psychological pressures to stick to various diets or eating regimens to be accepted in our social circles. Now add to that the fact that the vast majority of food-like-substances on the market are little more than clever and insidious marketing ploys for an already deprived people, you’ve got yourself a recipe for disease!

Food shouldn’t have rules. Food shouldn’t need to be defined and distinguished from the chemical slurries being sold to us everywhere we look. Food should be something we can understand the second it touches our tongue. But big box manufacturers have invested a lot of money into making that nearly impossible. They’ve studied nutrition science just enough to know the magic combinations of macronutrients that create desire and cravings in our bodies, and that’s their recipe for most of their products.

Beyond that, they diligently pervert these highly processed ingredients to be as synthetic and cheap as possible [for simple profit], leading our bodies deeper into a state of major deficiency despite ever growing portions. They’ve even tricked our taste buds into believing it’s the real thing. Your taste buds may be fooled, but body knows when it’s not the real thing, and it continues asking for more until it meets it’s quota of nutrients. This quota will never be reached on diets of food-like-substances.

I don’t make this distinction to be mean, or to shame people who can’t afford the highest quality foods. I say it because it’s the truth. Plain, simple, and upsetting, it’s the truth of our current world.