Meat and Potatos Enlightenment
Our new-agey p.c. society is never short of advice on diet, exercise, life-style, meditation. In fact I frequently find myself giving it. But is what’s good for me right for you?
During a long trip to the United States - I could afford either to travel around by 'Thanks for going Greyhound' bus or to stay in one place - I covered some 40 states all of which seemed to be carnivorous, from the roadside diners of Route 66 to the 99-cent 24-hour casino breakfasts of Las Vegas. My hitherto macrobiotic diet was forgotten across the Atlantic.
Three months later, back in (what's now) Fresh & Wild Healthfood store in London I filled my basket with miso soup and aduki beans, tofu and sea vegetables, organic produce and short-grain brown rice. Then the girl at the checkout spoke one of those throwaway life-changing lines, “A happy man can eat what he likes!”
Pause for silent thunder.
Was I a happy man? Did I like what I had bought to eat? Well, yes, well, but! But what? But I found it hard - no, let's rephrase - I found it impossible to pass a sweet-shop without buying sweets, icecream, chocolate. Why? Oh, such a very good reason: the comforting words of Cam, my macrobiotic teacher “each day you should eat something bad for you. Keeps the organs functioning.” Macrobiotics went along very well with practising shiatsu, my main job, and made me feel at home among other practitioners, students, teachers and fellow-travellers on the path to ensomethingment.
Reflecting, in the passing of millionths of nanoseconds, I realised I was using my diet as a kind of passport to acceptance by my peers. I was paying lip-service without lip-licking, except indulging in the salty, sweet and fatty luxuries of my hunter-gatherer ancestors. I had so loved my eating abroad!
With a brief insincere apology I restocked their shelves and went down Victor's caff in Whitecross Street market: bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade, hot strong tea with milk and sugar. Over the weeks that followed I reverted to the diet of my upbringing: meat and potatos, lovely fresh veg, and discovered that eating what I like can keep me happy and healthy too, because if I take a huge meal early in the day then not only do I not need to eat again - maybe a piece of toast in nthe evening - but also lost, immediately, the cravings for sweets and icecream that had lasted throughtout my macrobiotic years.
I still take care: with a long-term dodgy gallbladder too much of certain foods makes me uncomfortable, or ill: but listening to my body I made friends with it, so I eat what it likes and what I like. And still a happy man, perhaps a little less p.c. - thinking of giving up blondes for Lent.
Tuck In! to whatever is right for you.
ps did you lknow that bacon is the downfall of many a vegetarian?
Taoist saying: the pig is made to be eaten.
During a long trip to the United States - I could afford either to travel around by 'Thanks for going Greyhound' bus or to stay in one place - I covered some 40 states all of which seemed to be carnivorous, from the roadside diners of Route 66 to the 99-cent 24-hour casino breakfasts of Las Vegas. My hitherto macrobiotic diet was forgotten across the Atlantic.
Three months later, back in (what's now) Fresh & Wild Healthfood store in London I filled my basket with miso soup and aduki beans, tofu and sea vegetables, organic produce and short-grain brown rice. Then the girl at the checkout spoke one of those throwaway life-changing lines, “A happy man can eat what he likes!”
Pause for silent thunder.
Was I a happy man? Did I like what I had bought to eat? Well, yes, well, but! But what? But I found it hard - no, let's rephrase - I found it impossible to pass a sweet-shop without buying sweets, icecream, chocolate. Why? Oh, such a very good reason: the comforting words of Cam, my macrobiotic teacher “each day you should eat something bad for you. Keeps the organs functioning.” Macrobiotics went along very well with practising shiatsu, my main job, and made me feel at home among other practitioners, students, teachers and fellow-travellers on the path to ensomethingment.
Reflecting, in the passing of millionths of nanoseconds, I realised I was using my diet as a kind of passport to acceptance by my peers. I was paying lip-service without lip-licking, except indulging in the salty, sweet and fatty luxuries of my hunter-gatherer ancestors. I had so loved my eating abroad!
With a brief insincere apology I restocked their shelves and went down Victor's caff in Whitecross Street market: bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade, hot strong tea with milk and sugar. Over the weeks that followed I reverted to the diet of my upbringing: meat and potatos, lovely fresh veg, and discovered that eating what I like can keep me happy and healthy too, because if I take a huge meal early in the day then not only do I not need to eat again - maybe a piece of toast in nthe evening - but also lost, immediately, the cravings for sweets and icecream that had lasted throughtout my macrobiotic years.
I still take care: with a long-term dodgy gallbladder too much of certain foods makes me uncomfortable, or ill: but listening to my body I made friends with it, so I eat what it likes and what I like. And still a happy man, perhaps a little less p.c. - thinking of giving up blondes for Lent.
Tuck In! to whatever is right for you.
ps did you lknow that bacon is the downfall of many a vegetarian?
Taoist saying: the pig is made to be eaten.
posted by Kris Deva North at 10:49 AM
