How come there became the ultimate diet and the ultimate super foods? Aren’t we all unique and isn’t our environment and circumstance all unique? While most people are aware of this, travelling made this uniqueness about the appropriate food choices to the environment you are in even more apparent.
Has our ability to import and export food actually complicated the best food choices for the environment we live in?
For example:
Scotland is freezing cold! Going in summer was still colder than any winter day I have experienced in Australia.
Aligned with this weather is obviously the foods the climate can grow. Not a fruit tree or leafy green in sight, however the rolling hills are lined with newborn lambs and calves. And the fields were freshly ploughed of tuberous vegetables.
No matter how much I tried to have a fresh salad and fresh fruit, there was so many reasons that did not happen. Firstly, all the imported fruit and vegetables looked awful, I bought so many dud avocados it isn’t even funny. Secondly, I actually craved the things that were readily available. I craved potatoes, in every way. Mashed, roasted you name it, potatoes hit the spot. Also when you are so cold you just need a good meat that fills you and doesn’t require all this wasted warmth/Qi to digest it.
However let’s imagine eating how I have been in the cold, in the opposite environment. In hot Italy. This was the reality, I went from cold 3 degree days to 37 degree days. It would just be horrid, eating those warming meals that heat up your Qi. Imagine on a sunny warm day eating haggis (traditional Scottish dish) and potatoes.
And again this corresponds to the food available in Italy, they don’t have land or the beautiful rolling hills that Scotland does to allow animals to roam freely. The only animals I saw in Italy were lizards, pigs and wild dogs.
What is beautiful though is the fresh fruits and veggies in Italy. The sun provides the perfect environment for growing fruits fast and vegetables fast. And funnily enough again, it is what you crave. Juicy, cooling freshness. I would have fallen asleep eating anything warming. The other main food widely available was cold meats. Oh my gosh the salami, everywhere. Now I’m not talking about the Don’s salami you get in Woolworths Australia, I’m talking about beautifully aged cured meats. A source of protein which you still need, however without that heating on your body. The meat was also easily digestible with the acid they use to cure it as well as the fermentation process.
So,
I’m not saying to eat meat, don’t eat meat. Do eat fruit, don’t eat fruit. I’m saying look at the environment around you, what is readily available (not maccas readily available) but what grows around you. Do animals flourish on the lands near you, which animals flourish?
And start also listening to your intuition, what do you feel like eating. ‘Salads’ for example have this reputation of being healthy which in some cases they are but they aren’t in other. E.g. if all the ingredients in your salad are imported, there is not much of those antioxidants and vitamins left by the time in reaches your plates. Again, in a cold climate the body is treasuring its body heat/energy and every time you eat something cold this requires your bodies warm energy/Qi to break it down. When really you should be getting warm energy from your food.
And then there is the broader issue of importing and exporting ingredients and the impact this has on our beautiful nature.
All this plant-based eating swarming the world now has good intentions for the environment however it is doing quite the opposite. Plastic packaging, transport, manufacturing etc. That is not a shift to sustainability. Eating our environment is.
Now, Australia happens to be one of the best countries in terms of sourcing its own food. However, let’s expand this narrative to what we should be growing. We shouldn’t have cattle on Australian soils we should utilise the red meat that naturally exists in Australia such as kangaroo.
Should we freeze/refrigerate/preserve all the fruits and vegetables we grow in summer (mangoes, lettuce) so that they are available in winter or should our diet shift for those cooler months to the fruits and vegetables that are naturally available (oranges, apples, root vegetables).