Eating right is basically a part of growing up. When we’re children, we basically eat what our parents do, and we learn to assert a bit of control over our lives by making food choices. We generally choose foods based on what looks good and what tastes good.
As we get older, we learn about nutrition and theoretically we start to make choices for ourselves and our families based upon what’s good for us rather than what satisfies our base cravings for sugar and fat. Meanwhile, we are bombarded with advertisements from large food corporations that have only a single motive: appeasing shareholder desire for short term gain in their company’s stock value. These companies feed “news” stories to the media about their products, pay scientists to produce favorable research (or risk losing their future funding) and help to create a general air of confusion about what’s healthy and what isn’t. They also pay lobbyists to corrupt our politicians into supporting their agenda for profit over the health of the citizens who elected them. You can fight back by voting with your dollars… choose products that are good for you and the earth. If everyone did that, these companies would produce them for us.
As we learn more about food in general, we begin to understand how our food choices affect the environment, and we learn about the suffering of animals, and the collapse of natural fish stocks worldwide. A growing number of people are choosing to cut off or cut back their consumption of animal products.
The funny thing is that everyone knows the basics of what’s healthy, but we continue to make bad choices. Vegetables, fruits, organic, locally produced and unprocessed food… these things are obvious, but in our busy lives we often go for what satisfies our cravings and what’s convenient.
So maybe it’s time to think about growing up when it comes to our food choices. Make adult choices about food. Pick foods for you and the people you care about that are good for them and planet.
While in Costa Rica, support the businesses and organizations shown here, who are dedicated to your health and improving our corrupted culture of food.
Geoff McCabe
Pura-Verde.com