Have you ever wondered how life would be if we didn’t have ‘sell by’ dates for food? And more so, whether our body would reap the benefits of not eating food with chemicals or preservatives in it?
I remember in the 60s and early 70s that when you went to a local shop you bought only the groceries you needed for the next few days. A few slices of cheese, a few tomatoes, a loaf of fresh bread, a couple of apples and a few eggs. These items didn’t have a sell by date and you knew to eat them within a few days. There wasn’t the enormous array of different brands or food types – quite a simple diet – and none of us went hungry or minded. I loved the fresh eggs when we had them, and having an apple when I got home from school.
Fast-forward to 2017 and we have a very different experience. I was looking in the supermarket at various foods and noticing the sell by dates – and that those foods with long sell by dates seemed to have more ingredients in them than those with shorter or more immediate sell by dates. I started looking up the aisles at things like jam. If we look at jam – the long sell by date jams are stacked full of sugar as well as the fruit, yet you can also buy some preserves e.g. strawberry preserve which has no added sugar – it only has apple juice concentrate in it, which once opened, needs refrigerating as it has a far shorter sell/eat by date.
Foods with long sell by dates have preservatives in them. There are a range of things we use to preserve food or elongate the sell by date e.g. vinegars, sugars, salt, other preservatives, and we use tins, jars, mountains of plastic packaging, and all manner of containers, all of which have to be disposed of while globally the necessity for recycling and rubbish disposal continues to rise. You only have to watch the news to see how far plastic travels and the dangers it poses to sea life, for example:
“An illustration of the sheer magnitude of the problem is that as much as 51 trillion micro-plastic particles – 500 times more than stars in our galaxy – pollute the seas.” (1)
How come we need so many foods with long sell by dates? How on earth did we manage all those decades ago without them? Hunter-gatherers aeons ago didn’t have sell by dates or have a problem with plastic. When did we start to make the simple act of purchasing food so complicated? I know we can manage very well without long sell by dates and the food we ate decades ago was less tainted with preservatives, sugars, salts, and there was no plastic packaging. And yet nowadays we seem to live in a way where we stock up, hoard, plan for the future and want our shopping to last for weeks, and when we are coming up to public holidays when the shops are open less, we stock up as though we won’t see another shop for months.
In an age where we have problems with:
- Obesity – worldwide this has more than doubled since 1980 (2)
- Diabetes – the number of people with diabetes has risen from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014 (3)
- Addiction to sugar (4)
- The overuse of salt in our diets (5)
wouldn’t it be a great time to consider how we could simplify food, with fewer sell by dates, fewer preservatives and packaging? Is it also possible that our body would find benefit in eating food that is simple, contains no preservatives, is in season and freshly prepared?
Letting go of sell by dates as they currently are is a public health initiative that is well worth considering. Whilst it may mean we shop slightly more often or we need to consider and plan our food with more care, it would completely change our relationship with food, with shopping, and at the same time support the environment. It would change food manufacturing, our use of salt, sugar, vinegars/preservatives, and the need for so much packaging. It would also impact on our health as we wouldn’t be ingesting so much sugar, salt and other preservatives or chemicals.
Equally significantly, it would also offer the opportunity for us to look at the recently emerged trend of stockpiling food and the panic buying that occurs at holiday times. Animals don’t stock pile food – they eat according to their own rhythm and according to a far greater universal rhythm and cycle where their body naturally knows what is needed.
What then if the answer to this stockpiling trend was simple and natural – just the same as it is with the Animal Kingdom?
What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?
I know when I choose to be aware, my body knows exactly what it needs when I go shopping, or when I’m about to prepare and cook a meal. And nowadays I shop, prepare and cook most of my meals for myself and the food I eat is mostly in season, fresh, and minimally packaged. More so, I know my body benefits from this – I love the seasonal fresh flavours, and the ease of cooking fresh food, and my body loves the simplicity of it. There is also less packaging to recycle after too!
Is it then possible that: Sell by dates are past their sell by date?
What if our body knows how to shop, when to shop, what to shop in a way that doesn’t need packaging or long sell by dates or chemicals, as the body can, if we choose, live in accordance with the rhythms and cycles of nature, the seasons, and can flourish very well without the need for long sell by dates? And in doing so not only are we more responsible for our own health and wellbeing, we are more responsible for the environment we share with everyone else, too?
By Jane, London
References:
- UN News (2017) ‘Turn the tide on plastic’ urges UN, as microplastics in the seas now outnumber stars in our galaxy. UN News Centre 23rd February http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=56229#.WLAznhCFBfQ
- WHO (2016) Obesity and Overweight Fact Sheet – http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/
- WHO (2016) Diabetes Fact Sheet – http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs312/en/
- uk (2016) Sugar reduction and obesity: 10 things you need toknow – Public Health Matters https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/01/sugar-reduction-and-obesity-10-things-you-need-to-know/
- WHO (2016) Salt Reduction http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs393/en/
Further Reading:
‘A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down’ – irony or just pure corruption?
The environment
Takeaways
Educated food choices – become your own physician!
Plastic packaging is now in our food chain so we have tainted the food we eat so I would say that ‘sell by dates’ are out of date. We demand food from other countries that have warmer climates so we can eat say Strawberries in Winter, as long as we keep demanding there will be a supply. Similarly we blame the drug barons and runners for supplying illegal drugs but we do not look at why there is such a demand for the drugs. Why is humanity so demanding?
“It would change food manufacturing,” This phrase stood out for me. When we shop and eat fresh and in season food there is nothing to ‘manufacture/create’.
Jane I feel that the way of eating, shopping and packaging of food that you are advocating is our future and that it will come very naturally from our re-connection back to our bodies. Currently we couldn’t bring in this way of living as we are all so disconnected from our bodies, it would lead to chaos and a massive rise in people eating take aways because we would get to dinner time and open our fridges to find a whole heap of mouldy food!
Thank you Jane, seeing microorganisms or probiotics digest our foods then any food that has the additives or preservatives to extend shelf life must take away from their digestibility as they are there to stop microbial acting on these foods!
I love fresh home grown produce, without the glyphosate and all the nasty chemicals, unfortunately I only manage to grow a small amount in summer time. I do wander round my local allotments, and it is gorgeous to see what some people grow, very inspiring.
Our bodies do know what they need, if we listen to them at all times, including when we go shopping, ‘What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?’
This is shocking: “An illustration of the sheer magnitude of the problem is that as much as 51 trillion micro-plastic particles – 500 times more than stars in our galaxy – pollute the seas.” When I came home from the supermarket recently I literally filled my bin with plastic that I had taken off the fruit and vegetables that I had just bought, the crazy thing is that these foods don’t even need packaging, its a huge waste.
With all the different chemicals put onto food during the growing process and all the chemicals put into food to preserve them it’s a wonder that the body is not reacting with greater intensity.
I find it more helpful to buy little and often for certain things because how I feel changes so often I could crave something one day and then not stand the sight of it the next. Feeling into what to buy also helps save me money because if I buy something on the back of a belief or ideal then it ends up sitting in my cupboard cause I don’t actually want to eat it.
“Because if I buy something on the back of a belief or ideal then it ends up sitting in my cupboard cause I don’t actually want to eat it”. How often do we do this Leigh, we buy something that has been described as the new ‘super food’ and we get it into as many meals as possible before routinely either leaving it in the back of the fridge or throwing it out. We draw on regurgitated knowledge that has come from a magazine article or friend rather than from the moment by moment intelligence of our bodies.
“I remember in the 60s and early 70s that when you went to a local shop you bought only the groceries you needed for the next few days” – living this simply keeps everything fresh, food aside!
It is so lovely to make a meal with ‘fresh’ or seasonal ingredients as we too can be with the flow in life and nature.
Our relationship with food in one that is not honouring of our body and being, disregarding the value of nourishing our body with food and instead more often than not abusing, medicating and entertaining ourselves what our food choices. It certainly makes me question where we are at to have created such a detached relationship with the purpose of nurturing, supporting and sustaining ourselves, our vitality with the foods we prepare and consume.
Just imagine the fact that there weren’t any sell dates on food 200 years ago. Food was fresh or not, you could tell,
I can see how sugar in foods as a shelf-life preservative is caught up in a momentum of many factors which are perhaps going unaddressed by our high-volume consumer/manufacturer culture. Factors such as the need for a constant profit, or the fear of being without enough food.
“What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?” This really would be revolutionary in terms of our relationship to food, both as individauls and to the food industry…the knock on effects of this actually happening would be gigantic!
The word “fresh” has itself been bastardised a bit I feel. You hear that used so often in correlation to food yet is what we eat really as fresh as they say it is or has it been manufactured to look and taste as fresh as can be?
Very true, I’ve had stuff straight out of the ground or off the tree and the taste is far different to what I can get in the shops. For example, British apples in May/June when the season is September/October. Often coated in wax to preserve or held in low-temperature storage for up to a year. It’s not exactly ‘fresh’. But this is how words and the meanings of them can deceive.
I feel we have lost touch with what fresh vegetables taste like.
When we buy food based on price it changes the farmers to produce food that is inexpensive.
The quality and taste are not there anymore.
If you have not eaten a fresh vegetable that has been grown with care, you do not know what you are missing. So you settle for less.
So true Ken and I feel that we are continually settling for less and less across the board, not just in the quality of our food. It’s the quality of life in general that is gradually diminishing and because it’s so gradual we don’t notice it but we are now in a pretty ‘tight spot’ not tight enough that we’re able to notice that the quality of our lives has gradually been eroded away, unfortunately we need to get into a worse spot than this before we’re going to be able to sit up, shake our heads and start to ask ourselves how we got to be where we are. And I feel to add that it is only by understanding that our way of life is being impulsed by a particular form of energy that we will be able to truly change things because until we understand that then nothing will truly change.
The use of preservatives can be seen as a great thing however it also opens the possibility to hoarding food. And the only reason we hoard food is the constant seeking of the security of comfort that fuels so many these days.
“When did we start to make the simple act of purchasing food so complicated?” Great question Jane, we have made it super complicated when it was so simple for so long.
“What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?”
Then we would all be healthier, happier, more energetic more, joyful, more playful have deeper and more meaningful relationships …. the list goes on ……
so true Jane – animals never stockpile food, just hunt for what is needed, even if having to remain hungry sometimes. How lovely and simple it would be to visit a grocery store for a few fresh provisions when required – for sure our manic, busy and push-through lifestyles would have to also change.
“What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?”
It makes sense that if we spray chemicals on our food to preserve them, then we will Ingest those chemicals, and even if in small amounts it will build up. When I was a kid, I could eat fresh apples from the tree now my lips swell due to the chemicals if I eat an apple and that is due to the chemicals to preserve. If I eat one from my local farmer, then there’s no problem although a bit too sweet for me these days.
It is crazy how we have come to rely on things like sell by dates and I know people who will not eat anything that has gone over that date which is often rather arbitrary. It is shocking the amount of food that is wasted because of it and great that finally some initiatives are getting going to make best use of food that would otherwise go to waste.
There can be great simplicity in life in eating what is seasonally available, fresh and unprocessed. It really also applies to living our true selves without all the extra expectations and complications we can add.
Great analogy and here’s to living in a fresh and unprocessed way.
“An illustration of the sheer magnitude of the problem is that as much as 51 trillion micro-plastic particles – 500 times more than stars in our galaxy – pollute the seas.” (1) This is an astonishing statistic Jane and with it comes a bigger responsibility on our part to be much more aware of not only what we are putting into our bodies, but also the process in which the food goes through, long before it ends up on our plate.
I am sure in the past more of us felt more competent with how to cook and what to eat. These days few truly know how to cook a meal for themselves without it being pre-prepared by someone else in a factory somewhere.
It’s ironic that we stockpile more food than we did in the past yet the shops are open for longer hours than they ever have been
Keeping it simple is a great way to go with cooking meals and as always fresh is the best way to go, the longer shelf life the more chemicals there are in the ingredience.
If you are lucky enough to eat vegetables or fruit straight from someone’s garden the taste is extraordinarily different to the produce you buy in the supermarket.
Changing our relationship with food as a society is certainly needed. Being in touch with the seasons, needing to shop regularly in the week to pick up fresh produce would certainly encourage a deeper connection to our body and what we felt was needed on a day-to-day basis. Instead we rely on over processed food with copious amounts of sugar and salt and veg that can last way longer than its natural ‘life’ span. Our bodies are showing that this is not good for our health.
So much food is wasted because of a “sell by date” expiring. We need to have a sensible approach to food where we look at it and learn to know when something is no longer fresh. This is an essential life skill.
Food is a great example of how we prioritise convenience and money over truth in life. The consequence is we are truly malnourished in every sense.
The simplicity of the body highlights how fooled we are when living life from our minds.
It is so true Jane, it is all about supply and demand. What are we demanding to be supplied with as a humanity, and are we willing to be honest and truly see what it is we are choosing and why?
The more our self-responsibility wanes for how we live and the choices we make, the more we seek to create ways to support our lack of responsibility and comfort the way we disregard ourselves, regardless the cost or harm. Such is the quality of food we allow ourselves to consume and to the volume in which we consume them, all totally normalised and championed as the pinnacle of living the ‘good life’. Yet our health and well-being as a civilisation tell another story, one that if our eyes were willing to see, reflect the damage we are doing to ourselves and how we are completely ripping ourselves off and away from living with true responsibility guided by our connection to our bodies and being.
“I know when I choose to be aware, my body knows exactly what it needs when I go shopping, or when I’m about to prepare and cook a meal.” I agree with these exact same words. The shame and guilt is the every-time I choose to not be aware however, the more I love the feeling and purpose I have in knowing what that awareness can bring, the more I am lovingly disciplined to sustain that awareness in appreciation.
Beautiful Jane, this is so true – so true. I love the realness as it is what we have not been willing to see, including my very self. Creating further creation within creation not caring about the actual effects on each other and nature. It is a behavior of our mankind that is driving this ill forth. A behavior that needs re-visiting for this is only damaging us all.
I am continually amazed if I happen to be at the supermarket when there is a long weekend coming up and the shops are shut for a day. The number of overflowing and groaning trolleys gives the impression the closure is going to be for one month, not one day. Maybe as you say so wisely Jane, we need to take a long, honest look at the way “Animals don’t stock pile food – they eat according to their own rhythm and according to a far greater universal rhythm and cycle where their body naturally knows what is needed” So who’s the wisest here, animals or man?
Ingrid, it seems internationally we are all stock piling on national holidays and have rush shopping frenzies…. I observed this even un Hungary over the easter weekend break!
When we consider that even a generation ago and not to mention centuries before, that plastic and polythene packaging didn’t figure. We were more in tune with nature and the seasons and could only buy seasonal produce, and or grow some of our own. It doesn’t make sense that we over eat, stock pile, pack food with preservatives and stuff our cupboards with food that we only throw out in the end.
‘What if our body knows how to shop…?’ The more I accept my body’s wisdom, the simpler my shopping list is and the less money I waste.
I was a bit ill this week and looking for a vegetable stock, and looking at the ingredients of a couple I was really surprised to find sugar on them as stocks are mostly salty in my memory. This really shows how our tastes are changing and we need more and more stimulation to enjoy the food we are eating. I have been sugar and salt free for a long time and now love the natural taste of vegetables and meat and fish more than something sugary or savoury. There really is a different way and I feel making our foods more simple again would support humanity as a whole.
It is such a lovely thing to buy foods fresh for the next couple of meals, no waste and planning meals to support what is needed in terms of our bodies and work days.
I have always loved using fresh food, I agree Jane, ‘I love the seasonal fresh flavours, and the ease of cooking fresh food, and my body loves the simplicity of it.’
Not only sugar but salt as well are added to manufactured food items in order to give them a longer shelf and then pantry life – and then we might eat something because it has reached its use by date rather than preparing what is needed on the day and feels true.
In an age now where it seems the world is governed by time, we are led to believe that saving time is key, the long sell-by dates do nothing but confirm that food can be stocked up, that shopping can be minimised to once a week and that we need not listen to our bodies regularly to shop more frequently for what’s needed. I know I’ve fallen into that thinking of saving time and getting the shopping ‘out of the way’ but I can 100% see the real value in keeping it fresh, relevant and therefore healthier.
Reading your blog Jane has made me consider that I too buy nothing in jars or packaging except for oil and dried herbs, imagine if more and more of us did this, then the demand for these package foods would not be there so the supple would dry up.
Having a fridge is great as it helps us keep food fresher for longer but I am wondering if this is another form of preserving and stock piling food? My understanding is that fruit and veg are best eaten when they are fresh but if they have been stored in the fridge for weeks or even months but they still look fresh, I also start to wonder how much nutrition is left.
I agree maybe its time to review the need of a fridge.
It’s an interesting discussion and yet without a fridge would we need to go to the shops daily and is that a supportive way to live? For me that would mean going to my supermarket – perhaps it raises the question about our changing high streets and the return of local independent shops.
Responsibility with food, what and how we eat makes so much sense, ‘What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?’
Keep it fresh and the packaging is limited and it is more nutritious, have processed food and there are limited nutrients. This is simple, and simple is wise. Thank you Jane.
You are definitely on to something here Jane! To simplify our way of shopping and eating is the way to go.
We come up with a million ingenious ways to rewire life. Yet ultimately it’s us who have the short circuit – life is the way it is, to perfectly reflect what we need to see. There’s no mistake, and no need to reverse engineer what God has planned – thank you Jane.
A real responsibility shown here with food and how we live feels very nurturing and brings a real change to our health and well being that is a reflection for the world and how we can bring about much needed changes.
Beautiful deepening in our steps is the simplicity
Sell by dates are definitely overdue for a review! Today we are less aware of where our food truly comes from and how it is made and it’s impact on Mother Earth and in fact more demanding of the same food being there all year round. We care more about taste and comfort than true nutrition.
I agree Jane we have made the simple act of feeding ourselves into this grand world scale complexity. I sometimes look at the long rows of trucks on my nearby highway and think about all the foods that are being transported across the world..and back sometimes.
Processed foods with long sell by dates read like a veritable mystery story from a chemical lab when you look at the list of ingredients. And salt or sugar and water always get top marks in the percentage stakes. And that makes me wonder, “what are we putting into our bodies?”
Older people are sometimes considered to be past their sell by date and although medicine can provide a kind of preservative, it is the attitude of society that dictates their ability to contribute in a lively way.
The very nature of a cycle is renewal but we see life as a straight line that we drop off of at the end of and it is this very ignorant belief that influences so much of our behaviour.
Suggesting our bodies know what they need is outrageous! Who would have thought the very thing that manages to get us up in the morning, flush itself of toxins daily, operate like clockwork (in cycles I might add), move us from A to B all while maintaining the function of several organs all at the same time could possibly know what type of fuel it needed?
Surely it’s not smart enough for that!? Surely chips and lollies will be enough to get it through?
I’m looking forward to the time when shops around the world revert back to the fresh produce that is seasonal or at least does not have the millions of preservatives that mean it can last for 10 years in the cupboard. My feeling is not only will this change the way we eat it will inspire us to eat together more, deepen our connections with one another and bring true community back to the forefront.
If we didn’t have the actual seasons to guide us to what time of the year it is, and in some countries you don’t, if we go by what is accessible in todays supermarkets we would have no idea what time of the year it is. Our cycles with the seasons have been manipulated. If we look at cycles in our lives then what else has been manipulated to stop us from connecting to the truth of who we are?
We are moving further and further from the normal life span of food as there is an increase in the salt and sugar content in our foods so they can have a longer shelf life – but in doing so we are in a way denaturing the food we eat
Thank you Fiona, this is well worth exploring. I had not looked at it quite this way before.
Thanks, Jane. This is a beautiful presentation of how simple life can be when we go with the flow and listen to ourselves, our bodies and each other, to discern what is truly needed in each moment.
The omni-presence and omni-availability of all foods, whatever the seasons, separates us from the rhythms of nature. But I feel that this is a pattern that will be reversed and we will eventually be forced to see the arrogance of our movements and will humbly re-embrace the fact that we are part of a far bigger whole and thus it is our responsibility to move within that grander rhythm.
In the 70’s when I was a teenager I remember my parents and my grandparents would prepare for Christmas by buying a hamper of food. It was considered a treat and came with a mixture of items we usually associate with this festive period. We always got the basics in because we knew the shops would be shut throughout the Christmas period but there was no sense of panic or over buying, and we never went without. These days you can feel a real tension when visiting the supermarket as Christmas approaches, and yet the shops are open for longer hours and for more days.
What concerns me also is I found an iceberg lettuce in my fridge that was nearly 3 weeks past it’s sell by date and yet it still looked fresh enough to eat, something seriously not right here, was it genetically modified with the DNA of a tortoise?
There is a lot of waste in food and packaging true, but I feel that trying to shape ourselves up in that regard is jumping the gun a little bit. When we have a world full of domestic violence, genocide, rapes, FGM and so much more we ought to set our priorities straight and fully comprehend the mess we are in.
There are so many great points in this blog Jane, and one of them is a pet hate of mine and that is all the plastic packaging on so many foods in the supermarkets these days, I remember the shopping used to come home in paper bags and nothing in that paper bag was contained in a plastic wrapping or container just maybe the odd tin. We humans are so very shortsighted when we put profit and convenience over health and the environment.
Yep so we may have foods that lasts longer but what are the ingredients we put in it to make it last longer .. not that great!
What is the real cost of having everything in season, available all year? Most grown food has cycles so they are always seasonable someplace on the planet and most have early and late varieties. How can having fresh cherries from Peru in England in the winter be viable? What is the carbon footprint of flying seasonable fruit and veg to the other side of the world… every day?
Absolute arrogance of humanity
Such great points raised here Jane. It seems that we have lost touch with our understanding of what it is we value, and why. Do we value the importance of having foods that hold a longer shelf life more than we do foods that hold a greater quality of nutrients to support our bodies with? Do we value convenience/comfort more than we value listening to our bodies and what supports our well-being and what does not? As such have we lost touch with the guidance that is offered every moment through our connection to our bodies and being, and the natural innate understanding of our connection to the seasons, cycles and rhythms that we are part of. For as it is evident that what we value today does not support us to live with the vitality and well-being that we all are born to naturally live.
Getting rid of sell by dates and having to shop more regularly for fresh food would certainly get us to look at how we are living and the hours we are working as most of us would say that there isn’t enough time in their lives to shop so often. Living and eating in harmony with the cycles of the season is the way I was raised in the 50’s, as were most around me, and the stresses of life, the rates of obesity and illness and disease, and the need for everything to be done now was certainly not as evident as it is today. Life definitely had more of a natural flow to it.
I am a speedy shopper and not because I am rushing, it is because the way I eat now, as removed many preservatives and additives, and this means it is meat and vegetables on the menu, simple just a couple of aisles and I am done. Lots of benefits to cutting out the additions to our food, heavy processing is unnecessary and unsupportive.
!! Love this and totally agree. One of the mini bonuses of keeping a diet very simple and healthy is all this miles of supermarket aisles that I now never have to go down. In and out in a few minutes!
If WHO states obesity has doubled since 1980 and diabetes is escalating just as swiftly, we need to take these stats seriously as both obesity and diabetes are a massive burden the to the already overwhelmed health care systems of the world. Thus these issues need to be considered from every angle – from taking more care with the actual volume, type and balance of food we eat to eating fresh according to the seasons just as you have shared Jane. Also worth considering, is the food pyramid which was also introduced in the 1980’s really supporting us or should it also be reviewed and studied with today’s more scientific stringency?
When it comes to food quality, there is a huge difference when we compare Sell by date food with fresh food. This last one is far more tasty, healthy and digestible, so eating sell by date food is not only a burden for our environment but also for our stomach!
Contrary to popular belief, we only need a small amount of quality food to nourish us and sustain our energy throughout the day. All else is simply excess packaged as convenience that serves to dull and deaden us so we cannot feel the ill momentum we live in.
Well said Liane. As this is the key – quality. What is the quality of energy that moves us into place to decide what we want to eat, how to dress, behave, interact and make all the choices we are making in general? In coming back to the honesty of what we feel in our bodies, will see that our resistance to our innate way of being requires a loveless force to continue to move and live in an ill momentum, and allied foods to dull the awareness of this.
Its similar to reading the list if ingredients in each food item. A fruit or a vegetable, herb, spice, meat, fish, nuts, seeds and oils, won’t have a list of ingredients, but anything in a packet, jar, tin is potentially laden with innumerable ingredients with very long names that can be hard to pronounce, that we could question if it is really food. Food is so different from the 60’s and 70’s, where it has become big business, big cooking personalities, and big eating.
Even restaurants are now using pre-prepared packet food on their menus, it’s really quite revealing when you ask for ingredients and the waiting staff bring out the packaging for you to read the labels.
I feel like just the thought of minimising the offer from the supermarket would send society into a complete frenzy. I totally agree with everything you say and whilst we can say it was a response to the population growing rapidly and therefore there was a case of supply and demand, what stopped us from engaging in more farming and agriculture instead of leaning toward the manufacturing/industrial solution? It’s very interesting.
Jane this is a real pause for thought, the devastating impact of our mission to preserve food.
Really important to be asking what we would be called to without this codependence.
Due to your inquiry I am really struck how sell by dates have evaporated our understanding and connection with the seasons, the origins and growth of our food, you can pretty much get anything all year round, and I feel this kind of consumerist environment erodes our appreciation of the process of food growth and production and in turn there is less care and appreciation for what we choose to eat.
I once had an iceberg lettuce and tomatoes in my fridge for over a month. By week two I was already concerned but curious to see what would happen. At the end of the month they were still ‘fresh’. There are many ways of preserving foods and it makes me wonder… do we not question whats going on because we want mutant veg that can last for months and where is this want for this supply coming from?
Few years ago I was still eating 5-6 meals a day, constantly feeling heavy and bloated and needing energy drinks in order to push through a workout at the gym at the end of the day, physically my body was big and buffed but felt empty within. Since I have committed to develop a true relationship with food, I’ve let go of such heavy consciousness around food, so now I don’t eat as much, my body still feels strong and has a level of vitality and clarity like never before. It is definitely worth the try!
Oh my gosh…this is staggering! Why aren’t we marching the streets with placards, asking questions about why we are committing slow suicide….”Obesity – worldwide this has more than doubled since 1980 (2)” becoming obese in itself is dangerous for health but it brings so many other health conditions along with it, so what has been changing in the last 40 years to double it?….it is shocking that we call ourselves more advanced and civilized when many of us are more unhealthy.
Totally agree Samantha, Jane has opened a window to the devastating impacts of preserving food, both for health and the environment world wide. Truly it has halted our appreciation for the source and process of food production, the cycles and environment that we are living in – sell by dates have eroded our connection to our environment & in turn our appreciation and care for what we choose to eat.
It is lovely living, as much as we can, with the flow of seasonal produce. When I lived in Italy this was the normal way of life. The simplest meals cooked ended up being the very best because of the joy of living in this flow.
It’s crazy that some foods are half natural ingredients and half preservatives; do we know what we’re really consuming when we buy items from the supermarket? What if these ‘additives’ were having more of an impact on our body than we realise – this could be a very interesting experiment…
We were away this week – so the bins didn’t go out. My husband and I had a conversation about not throwing everything in the bin as we need to be careful about space. And it really put into perspective just how much waste we go through that is not recyclable. Even vegetables are wrapped in plastic. It is crazy to think that we use plastic and packaging so often – simply to market products, and then they are just thrown away. It says a lot about how we have set up garbage in the world and how much we are polluting the environment.
We have all become so lazy and in comfort with the convenience of so much of the food in our diets and less concerned about the consequences it has on our bodies and the environment. Both of which should be more in our focus because of the rise in illness and disease and the constant messages the earth keeps giving us.
I love the point you bring up here Jane. What came immediately in to my mind was that everything has to be fast in todays society. So no time for shopping regularly, no time for cooking your own sauce or soup, you need an already mixed and full of sugar and preservatives one. Everything is invented to save time and in fact not really caring for yourself with space when it comes to feeding yourself. The result of so many flavour enhancers and salt/ sugar is that the demand for simple food is almost gone, because it does not stimulate like the known kind of food.
In supermarkets today nearly everything is packaged. There is a massive industry here with packaging and food products that we need to look into because it also relates to advertising. And I know there is a lot of advertising today that is not always telling the truth or telling the whole truth. Say for example fibre on nuts. Nuts are a great source of fibre and may be considered healthy for this reason as they are often sold with labels advertising this fact. But as to whether we truly need fibre, that is a question only our body can answer.
“Food for thought”, that classic saying, and it is a stop moment. I find it a little disconcerting that I know so little about the food of different seasons, or even how to tend to a garden of crops. We have a world where 99% of us are disconnected from the process of growing food, and yet it is an activity we all do everyday. Is there anything else we do that has that kind of mismatch.
It is really interesting how influencing marketing and branding and consumer culture can be. So much so that they can actually persuade a person to override their body’s messages and continue to eat a food that does not sit right for them. But, it has to be said that perhaps the desire to gain the effects of ill-fitting foods comes first and is indeed greater than any marketing ploy given to us. Perhaps it is actually the case that we are the creators of the market – a market that responds to our call for foods that we can override the body’s signals with…?
We are plagued by convenience and so this opens up this belief that we need to keep everything. We want everything to last, just in case and we want the convenience of getting anything we want when we want it. In this we attempt to change the course of what is natural, like we are trying to create our own reality within a reality. I watch how we are wanting everything faster and faster and in that we want things to last longer and longer. Food is a strange one, how we are with it and where we are taking it is not natural for us and yet here we are being sold, selling and consuming it. It’s not about protesting against this but as the article presents it’s more about waking us up to what is going on around us and how we are still taking steps away from what is true.
There is nothing like eating a crisp apple straight from the tree or a fish caught that day. The taste and quality is entirely different to food that has travelled, been processed and wrapped in plastic.
What if our body knows how to shop, when to shop, what to shop in a way that doesn’t need packaging or long sell by dates or chemicals, as the body can, if we choose, live in accordance with the rhythms and cycles of nature, the seasons, and can flourish very well without the need for long sell by dates? This is a very important point you make here Jane, our bodies do know, we have just allowed ourselves to become a society that is happy to settle for much less and not be responsible for our choices. Unfortunately or fortunately, to our detriment, which is so unnecessary as we could easily turn it all around.
When I don’t choose to listen to my body and override it with even the smallest type of mindless eating, old patterns arise that are ‘well past their sell by date’ in being brought to the surface to be healed.
It’s actually really sad how as a society we have lost touch with the natural way of eating that we used to know. As new generations grow up they have no experience or knowledge of this, and are left to believe that the way we eat now is natural. It feels dangerous. Where are we heading?
We are heading into numbness- Food is the best ally for that. To not feel and stay in familiar circumstances and comfort- this is what mainly everyone is looking for. Or like you are saying there is for the younger generation no true reflection on how food can be used aswell. For many it is THE pleasure of life. It is indeed dangerous, because you get everywhere communicated that it is ok to eat so much and what is on offer.
There is now so much non-food that we classify as food, essentially dead items that we eat. If you are not sure what I mean then closely observe any aisle of a supermarket and it won’t be long before you find the crisps, the condiments, the sugar coated this and the salt laden that, which has a best before of months and sometimes years from now. It is very rare that any of these foods are good for us, and in some cases are they even food in the sense of nourishment and sustaining of vitality and energy. The deeper question then becomes why we wish to eat such foods and what do they give us on an emotional level?
How we grow, eat and consume food is a topic that needs much discussion… although we are reluctant to change through comfort, our bodies are protesting through ill health and disease.
There is a lot to learn from this sharing Jane! I’m with you on the need to step back and look at the way we used to do the food shopping. In some ways , with online shopping , it is similar as my Mother put in an order with the grocer and it was delivered at a time and day appointed by her. I know its not what you are getting at but there would have been a limited supply of in season fruit and vegetables to choose from. I do think we were healthier and agree that so much more is preserved with sugar etc. now.
Recently, I’ve been noticing just the fresh fragrance of homegrown fruit and vegetables which is so completely different to the fruit and vegetables that is cut, prepared and wrapped in plastic to preserve it’s life.
I agree, it is like dead food.. It might look good, but it feels like zero energy in it. I don´t want to know who or what chopped it up aswell, because the energy of how is in the food felt aswell.
A brilliant blog Jane, I know if I go to the supermarket I have no idea what’s in season or not as so much of the fresh produce is bought in from other countries. I often enjoy shopping at the farmer’s market where only fresh and local produce is available, not only supporting the local farmers but also my body with fresher and more nutritious foods that are more seasonal and in line with the cycles of nature.
Interestingly enough – I have been cooking all my own fresh food lately – and got into a rhythm of doing so. And last night we went out for dinner – and we felt really heavy afterward. It was totally different because we were eating things that were not our new normal – and we really felt it. It clearly shows how the body can actually become sensitive to foods that have long shelf lives and perhaps they are not all they are cut out to be.
All the preservatives in food makes me wonder about how we developed convenience foods and stores. There must have been a great demand for instant gratification, stimulation and dulling as many convenience and fast foods contain a lot of preservatives, salts and sugars.
Yes, Jane, we can learn a lot from nature and the animal kingdom in terms of connecting to rhythms and cycles to inform us of what is next or needed, rather than trying to control everything in our life ‘just in case’.
Allowing our common sense to prevail here; taking time to listen to our bodies, eat what we can feel would support us and, a big one for me at the moment, eating the quantity that supports as well.
You’ve outlined a very significant way forward here Jane, which interestingly enough is not so much a way forward as a return to the simplicity of something past. In truth the simplicity of life you describe where food is fresh, immediate and lasts only so long as is natural to it is something I live by now, as do many others I come across. The level of health and vitality I see in those who do this is markedly better than those who have become part of the consumer-driven pre-prepared, fast-food or convenience-food way of eating.
Inspired by your article Jane, we have stopped buying plastic bags with salad ready for use. Now I just do what we did before buy lettuce and other kind of salad, rinse it and make it in smaller pieces myself. The relationship with the salad on the table has changed and I love preparing the salad in this way instead of opening a plastic bag and put it in a bowl.
I love shopping at the markets where food is fresh and not packed. I also read the ingredients in food now at supermarkets and have observed that although a food may look delicious in its’packet the list of ingredients tells me otherwise- so many additives to make the food look good and last longer. A great sharing, Jane.
Gone are the days where we used to have the independent shops where we would go get our shopping from.. well you can find them but you really have to make the effort to find these shops and go there. Everything is always advancing and at a speed that is trying to keep up with the demand. Thats is a supply for demand and we are the ones call out for this way of shopping. If I ever buy in bulk like that , nine times out of 10 I throw stuff away because I didn’t fancy it or forgot I had it.
I wonder if the volume of food, it’s over-packaging and use by dates have escalated because we are using food in a way that is more than just survival. We want food to distract us, numb us from feeling what we don’t want to feel and we want it to excite us because life is otherwise pretty drab when we make it about function and not the essence of who we are.
When we listen to our body, it has an extraordinary amount to communicate… The thing is, we simply have to listen.
When I made the choice to go gluten and dairy free I could not believe how much more simpler life became.
As a society we complicate our lives as seen in the way in which we buy and consume food.
I recently viewed a video of the pollution of plastic carried on the ocean tides from one side of the world to the other. The volume was beyond staggering and the abuse and devastation this inflicts upon wildlife and land is totally shocking.
“You only have to watch the news to see how far plastic travels and the dangers it poses to sea life”.
The simplicity of food shopping and preparing our meals has changed dramatically over the years as has the length of time food is stored on the shelves and the seasonal products that are available all year round grown from around the world . Sugar is added to everything and the connection we have with each other from local stores has decreased also leaving us all lost in connection with what is really going on , our rhythms and our relationships. What a great sharing Jane for us all to ponder on and take note to make more loving choices that really can make a difference.
“What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?” We can learn so much from nature – if we lived and ate in tune with what was seasonal and fresh rather than eating so much processed, prepared and packaged food, this would undoubltedy increase societies current state of health. Clean and simple – its a great place to start.
I’ve had some Granny Smith apples in my larder for almost 2 weeks now and they look the same as when I bought them. Yet, the next door neighbour has an apple tree and the apples are decomposing so much more quickly (and naturally)…What exactly are we ingesting from supermarket shopped products?
Most people do care about the environment and are worried about the plastic waste that is polluting oceans and the earth. A simple solution to this might be giving to charities who take care of this yet we are at the same time buying many products every week that are packaged in plastic. The hardest thing about taking responsibility for many is that it starts with ourselves, our choices of what we buy, how much and how it is packaged. I also noticed most unhealthy products are packaged the most so cutting back on those would benefit both our bodies and our environment. True answers do serve the all so us, the planet and the environment.
There were times in the past when people had to preserve food in order to survive the winter, they did this by salting, for instance salt beef, pickling using vinegar, and sugar for fruit. This was in the many thousands of years before fridges. When I was growing up very few people had fridges, but of course they did have access to many foods in the winter, whereas in the Middle Ages it could be a matter of life or death. But now we do not need those survival tools theses days, yet many still believe they have to stock up in various ways. It is an ingrained habitual behaviour that it is time to shed, and the only way to turn this pattern around is to become aware of why we did it in the past and so be able to choose another way relevant to now.
I love this question Jane – “When did we start to make the simple act of purchasing food so complicated?”
I recently travelled away from home and stayed wth some friends and was really inspired by the simplicity in which they eat. They shop every 2-3 days and the contents of their fridge was very basic – some proteins (lamb/fish) and some greens (spinach, beans, broccoli…). With some herbs and spices, chilli and spring onions, simple and delicious meals were cooked and enjoyed. It was super simple, super tasty and super inspiring.
I reflected on my own fridge, and saw how I ‘stock pile’ which can work when I am super busy but also I ‘stock pile’ when it is not needed as well.
I have observed the stockpiling of food as well Jane. In fact there was a period in my life where I did something similar. Fortunately I have always lived in houses where I have not been able to sd this. But I could still feel that need within my own body. I looked at ways I could prepare things myself – almost needing to be self sufficient. Actually even though it looks different there is a very similar quality here.
Good questions Jane. Interestingly I don’t think I know what is in season and what is not any more because I have spent so many years being able to get and eat exactly what I want. You have offered me a new perspective which I will bring into my awareness as I shop now. Perhaps this will be impulsed from my body and I will instinctively know what is in season and what is not – either way – a new day dawns!
How fresh, literally, would life be if we removed all the processed and preserved foods from the shelves and had a diet that was full of the things our body is naturally designed to eat. It would be great to do an experiment like this, and thinking about it, that’s what our family does in the food it buys.. when we talk about the health crisis, the kids not concentrating at schools and all the issues of the world.. what if we started to address the route of them, the underlying problems including why we have set up our society to be so sugar dependent – one of many hundreds of little things that make a huge difference to how each person feels.
Yes Jane, some great points and some even greater pointers for the direction we might head with our food production and choices if we are to reverse the current trend, as you illustrate. Bringing life back to simplicity is an essential part of restoring something fundamental that we have lost, and learning to listen to our bodies again is a very good start to that process.
If we did buy and prepare food and eat by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body so many so called ‘food’ chains would be out of business very quickly. After all it is only ever about demand and supply .
I was recently on holiday in France and I really enjoyed going to shops where a lot of the fruit and veggies were fresh and loose and not in packaging so you could feel and assess the quality and choose which ones you wanted. It also felt different to go to the shops every couple of days and buy a smaller amount of fresh food and eat it over the next couple of days rather than a larger shop of food for weeks.
I have noticed that buying food in shops these days has become more about buying a product based on its looks or packaging than on the quality of the food inside. It also seems to me that the majority of the products that are in supermarkets these days are completely unnecessary in terms of nourishing and supporting our bodies.
This blog reminds me of the far reaching impacts of every choice. We may think our choice to eat biscuits only affects us but in truth we pollute our bodies and the environment. There is no escaping it.
Chomp, chomp, chomp, munch, munch, munch, I’ve eaten my way into not being able to feel so many times. Food’s a drug there’s no two ways about it.
Jane such a great sharing and awareness on sell by dates food and packaging coming from how we shop nowadays and the variety year long products of every aspect and season being the same. It has become the norm to live this way of supermarkets stock piling and the lack of knowing what is seasonal products and our natural education of this.
Growing ones own vegetables and shopping in markets is a real treat rarity and knowing of the quality in our lives and the lack of preservatives and sugars added to all this is huge.
Thank you Jane… so what we are knocking on the door of here is of course a giant industry with an enormous investment. And so advocating anything else could seem futile, and yet articles like this are exactly what is needed as bit by bit, we start to return to a livingness in our life rather than an existence
It’s scary what we as a society have become used to. If we are not old enough to remember when shopping for food was as simple as you describe then we know no different to the complexity of how it is now.
“What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?” – I certainly know that when I do that Jane I don’t get bloating in my tummy and that digestion is clear because of the way I’m digesting life – in natural rhythm.. the really healthy way to eat and to live.
In such a short period of time so much has changed and we have become entirely dependent on preservatives, long shelf lives and a constant wide variety of food rather than having a relationship with the natural cycles of the food
Great points you raise here Jane, that we are really using the longer sell by dates, so that we don’t have to take more responsibility for our own diet and what goes on in our bodies. We really don’t have to look at these dates, when as you say we reall.y do know what foods are good, what is ok to eat or not.
There is also an argument that anything fresh is good for us, but I consider some of the natural food I have eaten over the years with wheat and dairy and such like in it. The sweetness of honey and the effects on my body, and I get to see that eating fresh is only the start of the food journey. Then it is a case of responding to the feelings that are given out from the body, not always an easy thing to do given the array of messages we are strongly fed about what is good for us to eat. Thank you Jane, such an important discussion.
ha ha Stephen what can I say but yes, and we also need to discern the messages our body is giving us…mine would eat fresh fruit all day given half a chance but my pancreas doesn’t thank me for it! Goodness, food is a monster topic!
I have previously considered that we can use the length of sell by dates as a marker of how preserved/ additive added a food is. Generally, I would say this sell by date also relates to how vibrant and healthful a food will feel once it’s in your body, like the fuel we put in our cars. Why go for cheap substitutes when we can have high octane foods?
I have recently been in America and had a pretty interesting experience with food. I went to a supermarket that is also in the UK and positioned as a ‘health supermarket’ but in the US – it was the same as any other market – I found it interesting how many sweet things you could buy. In my travels. for the first time, we stayed in apartments only and cooked our own fresh food. And it was interesting to observe how much more I felt. It was pretty crazy and intense, but it really did show me how much more comfortable my trips have been in the past because I had food to dull me. So it is no wonder we eat the way we do when we see the world and where it is at. But it is a constant choice for us to say ‘yes’ to love and to the possibility of feeling more and eating less foods that can dull me.
I find it quite scary how some foods can look fine way past their sell by dates when naturally grown food only stays fresh for a couple of days. It would be amazing if we could eliminate all the foods our bodies don’t need and put all that energy in to producing fresh, healthy un-messed with foods that are accessible to all at reasonable prices.
This is scary! And I too have wondered wouldn’t it be great to put real care into the foods we eat so we can feel the difference. Simple recipes with amazing nourishing foods grown in healthy soils full of nutrients. No need for GM foods or bleaching garlic!
The extent of our processed food industry is evidence of just how far off the beaten track we have wandered. When studying the ingredients of many popular food items, it is plain to see that they are stuffed with artificial ingredients that bombard our bodies with chemicals that screw up the delicate hormonal and neurological systems. This in turn prompts us to desperately grasp for quick fix remedies in a vain attempt to restore equilibrium to our bodies. When we return to a fresh and simple diet, we allow our bodies to resume their natural running order, delicately tuned to the rhythm of the day and hugely appreciative of correct nutrition with which to accomplish all we ask of them.
The way that we produce food and packaging is a direct reflection of the absolute irresponsibility that we live with. In a nutshell it basically says that we care little about either ourselves or our environment.
I have a garden that is full of greens – lettuce, kale, silverbeet, rocket, herbs…When I’ve shared the excess with friends I’ve often had comments that it doesn’t last very long. Which is true it doesn’t. But this is the way it is. It makes me wonder what happens to supermarket food that a lettuce can last for weeks in the fridge. It is quite convenient but not really natural.
Very good point Nikki – what is really added to our food to make it so ‘durable’ or to make meat look bigger or to make fish a more appealing colour. Longer sell by dates could be hiding a whole host of other factors we may wish to be more aware of instead.
Most of us would rather eat a good looking plate of food that doesn’t taste fantastic rather than a plate of misshapen vegetables that taste great, we’re so influenced by what our eyes see and this is a massive problem, not just with food stuffs but with each other. We sum each other up in the blink of an eye and for most of us other people have to work damn hard at convincing us that they’re anything other than what we’ve deemed them to be.
Love this article, so much I just shared it around. This is a great factual account of where our food is heading and when I say food I mean where we are heading. I watch the patterns of how we consume particularly around our food habits. You only need look at our shopping trolleys to see where our focus is when it comes to taking care of how we each. There is a big focus on longevity and shelf stability but less and less focus on true quality. I have noticed the older you are the less you consume and in real term the more you shop. Doesn’t make sense? What I am saying is that the older you are you seem to shop more and buy less and only shop for what you need over the next few days or week at most. In making life so so busy we change how we consume. I would love to see the peel back of everything around food and the quality of our habits and it all starts in my pantry, thank you.
I remember when I was a very young child, world hunger and starvation was one of the greatest concerns for humanity, and had been for many years. Now, only 2 decades later and we are facing the crisis of obesity, something about this unbalance has to be wrong and until we begin to get honest with our very fraught relationship with food will it begin to be addressed.
We buy all our vegetables from a local fruit and vegetable shop run by a family, who have lived in the area forever, connected to it is a butcher that sells the best lamb ever. They get fresh produce Mondays and Thursdays so we shop on those days, no packaging, except plastic bags to carry it all home in. I love the simplicity and community feel of the shop, we know the family really well and often there are other friends in the shop. Reading your blog has inspired me to buy some hessian bags to transport the goodies instead of plastic, so thanks Jane for your blog.
I have recently been buying more of my fresh food from a small local shop where the food is not packaged and is naturally ripened. I love the feel of the shop, and although some of the food may not last as long as the pre- packaged stuff from the supermarkets, but boy it tastes and feels so much better when I eat those items.
The relentless search for ever longer lasting bread has seen the manipulation of the gluten molecule over the years, genetically modifying it to be longer and even less digestible so that now we can store a loaf of bread for a week or more whereas I remember the fresh French Baguette that was stale the next day. Convenient yes, but more and more indigestible and this goes a long way to understanding why more and more of us are gluten intolerant.
Obesity world-wide has reached epidemic proportions and underlying causes must be addressed before we can reduce rising rates. . Feelings of need, hurt, inadequacy loneliness, lead to overeating and drinking for comfort or to numb the pain. Some people, unable to address the root cause of over eating, opt for a surgical procedure to shrink the size of their stomach. This is a quick fix solution, not a commitment to find long lasting answers.
In the supermarket I go to broccoli wrapped in cling film is more expensive than when it is loose, what is the purpose of all the packaging we have today? Who started thinking it was a good idea to produce so much packaging. Bring back the days of all loose food and less options that are packed full of sugar, salt and preservatives.
Whoo… this will set the whole current food industry on its head as we will return from the global multinationals back to the local markets and suppliers, there where it used to be in the past which was much more natural to our being.
There is a lot to be said for buying fresh food regularly instead of stockpiling with preservative -loaded items. We can support the process of going in this direction by doing it ourselves, relying less on packaged food and selecting fresh produce . . but not getting rigid about it and using packaged food when needed. I love the farmer’s market where people come in with fresh Tuscan Kale picked that morning – truly delicious. My son-in-law who is a well-known chef gets fresh food daily for his restaurant – he goes down to meet the fishing boats before they go to the markets and buys whatever has been caught last night –doesn’t even freeze fish for the next day (though I must say I freeze fish myself). He grows rocket, lettuce and kale on the roof of the restaurant in the middle of the city.
My parents are living on a small island off the coast of France at the moment and the majority of the produce is local which means it is all seasonal. It feels lovely to visit them and eat this way as it feels so natural and means that we enjoy the change of season and appreciate and enjoy what is available then.
Yes, this is a gorgeously natural way to eat. It’s sad that we have come so far away from this way of eating.
Recently I was in a farm shop buying food to take back to London with me because all of their produce is picked that day or the day before. It tastes so much better than vacuum packed produce, crisp, fresh and really flavoursome.
The crazy rates of obesity are an indictment of how much we’ve lost touch with our natural knowing of what to eat, and how to eat. Being surrounded by mass produced cheap junk food was only going to ever lead to a global health disaster, and that is what we’re now seeing.
It feels like this goes hand in hand with our modern day trend especially in the western world of cooking poorly as most do no know how to cook. We end up becoming dependent on quick and tasty meals that often contain heaps of unhealthy ingredients and lots of packaging. Perhaps we can all cook and very simply we have to be open to feeling what to eat not eating what we feel we need.
Yes Joshua. Recently, I met someone who and said she didn’t’ recognise half the food items in my fridge, mainly fresh vegetables, meat and fish. She admitted she couldn’t cook and depended mainly on processed food. There’s a vicious cycle where people’s, lives dictated by work, exhausted at the end of the day and seduced by supermarket offers and packaging, choose processed food and ready meals over nutritious food cooked at home. This also means generations of children growing up not taught to cook in the same way they’re taught to read and write. This is a worrying trend.
I have had many occasions in which I stockpiled a certain food and then found I suddenly didn’t like it anymore yet was still left with a lot of it. This simple example alone shows how it is simpler to buy small amounts when we need it and feel like it, and not just because it is cheap or on sale because I found there is a tendency to then still eat it because it would be a waste yet it does then not feel so good in the body as it doesn’t like it anymore.
I have heard that dead bodies now take a lot longer to decompose because of all the preservatives we have been eating, which begs me to question the reason for such preservatives in the first place.
This would be almost comical if it were not equally such a serious comment on our current way of living. Another key thing that is changing in America with their obesity levels is they are having to make tables in morgues wider, super sized coffins etc. The world is changing to accommodate our illness and disease, rather than being the wake up call that it really is.
Sell by dates fit in very easily with our modern food supply. The only problem is that our modern food supply seems to consist almost entirely of non foods that we have somehow accepted as a normal part of our diets. Return to a natural way of eating fresh produce with no additives and we remove the whole issue, and I would imagine a whole lot of disease would lessen if not disappear too.
I was talking to my mum the other day, and she said how she liked this particular vegetable when it’s in season – now I know I have been buying this vegetable all year round, and yet my mum remembers a time when the seasons dictated your food choices, and she still lives to that, knowing that the vegetables will be far better quality when they are bought during their natural growing season.
I remember eating from the seasons when growing up and how this brought an awareness of the seasons and what supported during these times of the year. Popping over to the next village to get the food we needed. We had a butcher, fish monger, bakery and vegetable shop and post office, everything we needed, bringing it home in a box that we used next time not lots of plastic packaging. There was soil on the veggies and they were naturally misshapen, I found it fun to see what shapes they were.
There seems to be a massive misconception that fast food, whether it be take away or store bought, offers a cheaper option than people making their own food. I question this and believe I can produce meals at an equal or lesser price, but more importantly they would be so much healthier. A big difference, which may be the real reason behind the rise in consumption of processed foods is that they contain a lot more salt and sugar to enhance the flavour, but when you cook with fresh ingredients, the flavour is already there, it’s about knowing how to cook simply keeping as much goodness and flavour in as possible. The internet provides an absolute wealth of recipes to meet all tastes and requirements, free of charge. The big question is, are we prepared to take our health seriously enough to put the effort into truly caring for our bodies by preparing nourishing healthy food?
observe in one city known as the ‘Green Capital of Germany’ a dedication to save the planet. Most people cycle or walk, avoid waste and use of non-biodegradable food packaging with a consistency and passion, not witnessed in the UK where I live. I noted also a lack of awareness of how we pollute our bodies with the food we eat. Imagine what would happen if the same dedication to save the planet was applied to save human beings. The real breakthrough would be when all households became aware of the harmful effects of eating mostly processed food and chose to buy fresh foods instead and care for their bodies. We best serve the planet by first serving and saving ourselves. This way illness and disease statistics would fall dramatically.
‘How come we need so many foods with long sell by dates? How on earth did we manage all those decades ago without them?’ – we don’t need all these processed foods. The truth is, we are becoming lazy and taking the easy option with ready cooked options to save time which then leads to a dependency and over time we loose touch with our own ability to produce a nourishing nutritious meal, which will always be a LOT healthier than anything out of a jar, tin or plastic container.
Sell by dates, largely a feature of western, affluent and technologically advanced countries are related to the development of large supermarkets and retail food outlets. I’ve lived in economically poor countries in which sell by dates are uncommon, as are supermarkets, often under stocked and over priced. People, rich and poor, depend on markets, butchers and fishermen or grow their own food. They often buy fresh foods in the market daily and cook them that same day. Food is appreciated because it isn’t often abundantly available or affordable. This is the natural and more direct relationship we once had with food. Today, in the West, food has become a commodity controlled by large multi-billion corporations, we have lost the capacity to feel food Observe how we often shop in supermarkets, like automation with little connection with items picked up, most packaged and casually tossed into the shopping trolley. This is remote controlled shopping. Imagine most people look at sell by dates, before (if they do) contents of food they buy or quality. I prefer to shop simply in markets when I can, but also supermarkets where I buy mainly fresh food items.
Jane, those statistics definitely show that there has to be some connection with this. It wasn’t until I started to look at packaging and reading all the ingredients did I realise how much stuff is in our food. The amount of sugar that is in a lot of the food is crazy.
I never appreciated just how sensitive and precise my body is until I stopped filling it up with sugar, caffeine, milk, alcohol and gluten, but now I do! I realised that my body is designed to run on fresh and simple and the more I honour this, the more amazing I feel as a consequence.
A brilliantly simple and yet powerful article Jane and one that makes me realise just how far from our natural rhythms we have allowed ourselves to stray. The further away we get from our natural rhythm the further away we get from true health, it really is as simple as that.
If we could tune into exactly what the body needs nutrition wise so many of the worlds problems would disappear over night. Maybe it’s not that simple but if food waste and food produced out of want instead of need was eliminated, pollution would be reduced and their would be less starving and obesity would cease to exist.
“Are ‘Sell by’ Dates Past their ‘Sell by’ Date?” – and if we continue to be lived by fixed, extendable dates over and in oblivion to natural cycles and rhythms as reflected to us by nature to be our very own inner nature, then as a human race we are passing [if not past] our own sell by dates given the rate the world is going with illness and disease expedition.
Certainly a panic does come in general to the public at Christmas or Easter time to stockpile food. i used to get caught in that fever too. But now nothing much changes as these times come around – I just shop as normal and buy whatever is required for the festive day. I feel that this panic arises from some deep seated fear about not having enough to eat which may be there from a past experience, and also around feeling ’empty’ or even vulnerable about life. Food feels as if it really cushions that emptiness that is lurking inside and it can act as a ‘fortress’ albeit a false fortress.
Jane, this is such a great article, after reading this I have become aware of all of the unnecessary packaging that comes with food, what was really noticeable was that until reading this I had considered it normal to get home from the supermarket, unwrap all of the fruit and vegetables and fill the bin with plastic – what a waste, a lot of it cant be recycled and so ends up in landfill, it now feels completely unnecessary to wrap everything in plastic just for the trip home from the supermarket and so I am going to contact my local supermarket to discuss this.
I love your sharing Jane and agree whole heartedly with your outcome. Life can be simple again if we listen to our bodies!
Superb article Jane and a topic that really need to be discussing. The more I have listened to what my body works well on, the simpler my diet has become. When I going shopping in a supermarket, I engage with a fraction of the food produce on offer because I know that the majority of products for sale are in some form or manner toxic. We are in dire need of a real clean up around our food industry, the question is are we too economically invested in these products and the related packaging and promoting of them to be honest about the destruction they are causing, in order to make the vital changes required to address our spiralling health issues?
I worked with someone that had been at one time a plastic wrap engineer. He told me about the science of wrapping produce and different types of plastics and their properties. Products are sealed in with inert gasses that displace air that slow the decay. Cucumbers are heat shrink wrapped for the same reason. And, let us not forget the irradiated fruit that lasts for weeks! All of this and more to give it a longer shelf life.
Wow, I’ve never heard this before, Steve. It may give the food a longer shelf life, but what is it doing to our ‘shelf life’?
I’m a rather traditional cook and prefer to buy fresh produce and make my own meals, rather than buying pre-made things/sauces etc. With a family of 5 adults, that’s a lot of fresh produce and I notice that in my desire to limit the number of times I go shopping during the week, I tend to buy a lot of food in one go, which is exhausting, both physically and energetically. When the fridge is so full, it can be easy to forget something is there and it goes off before it’s used. It does feel way more supportive to develop more of a rhythm with the food shopping, keeping things more simple, not stock piling and having more space in the fridge to see what is already in there. Thank you, Jane.
It’s very interesting reading your blog, Jane, as a few days ago, I noticed a carton of juice that I’ve had in my fridge for months, I was about to throw it out and noticed that the expiry date is March of next year! It states that there is no added sugar, sweeteners, colouring or preservatives but after opening it must be consumed within 5 days. I find it hard to believe that something can last for almost a year in a carton without anything being added to preserve it!
This blog raises a lot of questions to consider, use by dates has just become an acceptable part of life in the way we store and make our food last. Definitely a reflection of how we live as a society – not about the quality, the freshness, and supporting our body – but convenience. We live in a society that values convenience over everything else – the cost on our environment and our health.
Great question Ariana, from being a health professional in Colon-hydrotherapy, the food takes longer to break down and therefore release more toxins in the body which eventually travel through our lymphatics and and blood system.
I am very used to eating whatever I want being in London with supermarkets full of produce from around the world yet I can’t help but feel this way of living is counter to the harmony of the planet. We will need to change our expectations and demands and return to a more in tune with season and life.
One of the things I find with sell by dates is that it is standard to say ‘use within 3 days’ once opened and certainly the case with fish. Yet, I would keep an open pot of hummus on the go far longer than fresh fish because of the salt content. Even my own homemade hummus lasts far better than fish because of the lemon juice even though there is no salt added.
There has been mention that bodies take longer to decompose on death now because of the preservatives we ingest…whether this is true or not I am not sure, but as everything affects everything else surely the impact of preservatives on the body, it’s vitality, health and function must be affected in some way.
I agree, our food can be much more simplified, basically we do not need all the foods with artificial flavours which are made of so much ingredients that are not natural to us. Our body simply needs vegetables, some protein like fish, meat or eggs some oils and minerals. All the rest is in truth not needed. I love that if we simplify our food, a lot of other problems like the waste gets cared for as well. Plus it would support to clear the waste inside our own bodies too!
Our addiction to sugar, and the manifold ways it is delivered to us, is responsible, to a huge degree, for contributing to our ill health, and disease – everything from life impacting illness such as diabetes, to lowered immune system – and the many everyday impacts of it.
Great article Jane- I was shocked to hear the devastating longterm impact the plastic packaging we all use is having on our environment especially the sea. Also the reality check about our health as a nation, with illness and disease skyrocketing despite increased availability of a multitude of foods at our beck and call. Could it be our relationship with food- needing it to be fast food, on the run, look attractive (so we have waxed apples, plumped grapes, perfect round tomatoes, but with no flavour)etc, undealt with emotions- using food to dull, dampen, numb or stimulate our body.
Simplifying food – not THAT’S something that would turn our society on its head. What if food wasn’t designed to be so glamorous, and that actually our ‘designer meals’ are a large contributor to the over-indulgence in food and obesity, diabetes etc. we’re seeing today?
Jane this is an awesome reminder of the simplicity that we can have in our lives and exposes the very unneeded and unnessary complication we are currently living in.
“Have you ever wondered how life would be if we didn’t have ‘sell by’ dates for food? And more so, whether our body would reap the benefits of not eating food with chemicals or preservatives in it?” – Jane i love these two questions, and considerations… i know that when i travel to less developed countries with open spaced areas, that the produce grown there and in the season, tastes so wonderful and fresh compared to many supermarket foods in western countries where nutrition of produce is well reduced because of the need for preserving for shelf life… and for having ALL fruit/vegetables available at ALL times of the year because of our consumer demand for life being 24/7 on-demand over respecting the natural cycles of nature and of ourselves too.
The fact that we have moved away from a time of naturally knowing when to eat and not storing food longer than its natural expiration shows how we have moved into a much more artifical relationship with food
The aisles of a supermarket say it all. I can remember when I was younger my mum buying a garlic chicken dish which was a relatively new thing and being delighted by the ease of having something preprepared. The problem is we have taken this to the extreme and now the majority of food is preprepared and so many live off processed food.
Great article Jane, and with frozen food being deep chilled at the farm gate we need never go short of an available source of good nutrition. “New research from the UK has found that, in many cases, frozen produce is just as nutritious as fresh.” Natasha Murray of the Dietitians Association of Australia agrees. “Some fresh fruit and veg spends days, even weeks, in transit from farm to market to fridges, where they can then sit for a few days. During this time, many nutrient levels decrease. Frozen fruits and veg are snap-frozen shortly after harvest, which locks in nutrients.”
Some interesting points Greg I know for me I always used to avoid frozen veg as arrogantly thought it was cheap and not as good. But cooked the right way it can be equally as good and nutritious, sometimes more so depending on what it is. I find it is incredible how much food, and money, we actually throw away which if thought about before hand could either have been used, or frozen. Somethings do tend to go off very quickly whilst others seem to last for aeons. It all comes back to how much are we willing to care for ourselves in the way we shop, cook and eat. I love to prepare the week ahead feeling into which meals I will have when and then this preparation means I fidn the food is generally much more supportive rather than simply eating what is in the fridge.
Somehow we live our lives by ‘sell out dates’ – either as if nothing would happen thereafter and or holding back so much on living life in full as if we need to preserve the ‘good piece’ for as long as possible.
Lots of interesting questions – thank you, Jane. I particularly like the opportunity to consider why and how we have made food shopping, cooking and eating so complicated. This seems to be a reflection of many other areas of our lives that we have done the same – we seem to have an aversion to simplicity.
‘When did we start to make the simple act of purchasing food so complicated? ‘ – I have refined my food choices over a few years now and I realise how simple it is when we stay true to what we truly need and how that also simplifies both shopping and cooking – whereas I remember in the past I would spend ages in a supermarket and frequently being tempted to buy much more and very different things to what I had initially planned, totally overriding any signal from my body of what would be honouring and truly nourishing for me.
Many of us do buy a lot of processed food and so there is a lot of salt, sugar and fats in it, to enable the shelf life to be extended….and of course as you say there is the packaging….it makes you wonder about the word convenient…short term imagined benefit rather than sustainability. Convenient is very different from supportive, nutritious and responsible. many of us go for the quick fix and say we do not have time with food, it is worth observing what we do use our time for in the day and then assess why we are not making space to buy and prepare food that truly supports us.
Some one at work brought in a box of sweets that was in a vendors pack, a clear plastic bucket that had 120 ‘Strawberry Straws’ contained within. They were pretty with their strawberry colour outside and white centre and looked like straws. I read the ingredients and cringed, and the first three items were different types of sugar, nine E numbers and lots of artificial things. The best part was the warning on the last line; ‘May have an adverse effect on the activity and attention in children’ Are sweets on their way to where cigarettes packs are now? Will photos of obese people and rotten teeth be on your sweeties one day?
I love what you describe about how life used to be- shopping for a few days and buying fresh produce and having more of a connection to what was in season, when food was good, how to cook it etc. In regards to our diet and way of life there is so much for us to look at and consider as so many people are struggling with lifestyle related illness and disease that going back to this way of living would be very supportive for many.
I often buy things when they are on super special. I don’t eat many food items with preservatives but I do have some long life items such as nori, tinned sardines, olive oil and frozen veggies. Guess it all comes down to our individual discernment and schedule.
These are all great suggestions Jane. And yes the whole key is that we have forgotten our bodies in this whole process of shopping FOR the body to eat. Shopping has become dominated by a wayward force that wants to suit itself all the time. There are actually good ways of preserving food so that it is available for us on busy days when we are home late, and that includes freezing food, something I would have never done in the past as I was a ‘fresh food make-it-from-scratch’ person. I make a beautiful green soup and freeze about 10 serves of it – then this is always there but doesn’t need a use-by-date.
I often note and wonder at how we always refer to our bodies as an it. For example if we have a female body it is interesting that we don’t say things like ask her what she would like for dinner?
I don’t have much idea just what gets done to foods to make them last much longer than foods that have not been tampered with, and until now I had not considered how strange it is that we have made it a policy to include the ingredients in foods, and there is a lot of hype about the goodness or damage of this or that ingredient.
Is it not curious that processes that foods go through, some of which I am sure would do more than just turn our heads, so far all just go under the radar and are rarely considered.
The food we eat nowadays seems so normal, like that is how human beings have always eaten, but the manufacturing of food has changed immensely, and so just stepping outside of the “normal” thinking gives an opportunity to ask is there a more healthful way of eating.
This is something that I was very confused about when I arrived in England, the first time going to the super markets and everything having plastic trays and then wrapped in plastic bags. I absolutely love going to the shops and picking out the items that look delicious and being able to choose the ones I fancy. The whole process is supportive and then the appreciation when you go to cook such pickings is even more nurturing and delicious. Minus all the packaging and waste.
I remember when I was a young child, seasonal food was still just about clinging on in the super markets – you have to savour the fruit while it was in season and when it wasn’t, you ate other things. I used to love planting my own vegetables and although they rarely made it to bear any food, there is something very grounding about having a connection to and respect for nature and the old ways which were very much in touch with the seasons, allowed soil the time to regenerate, animals the space to roam and raise their young – now the farming process is so intense and unnatural it is like raping nature for all its resources and propping up the damage with artificial preservatives, artificial chemicals to make plants grow bigger, faster, factory farming where animals are kept in the poorest conditions, all to feed our insatiable hunger which is causing us serious health concerns.
A much needed conversation Jane – it is time we all truly contemplate what we are contributing to the whole.
I love this call to keep things simple, especially around food. Our bodies do not do well with complication.
Where there is a supply there is always a demand and the excessive packaging and use of preservatives is a response to the customers demanding a certain type of product that is based on society’s relationship with food. Are we placing more emphasis on food that lasts longer and/or a product that is comforting and tastes a certain way rather than asking for food that truly nourishes and supports the body? So the first place we need to look at is our own personal relationship with food and whether we need to make any changes to that.
I often like to cook in big batches – especially soup and freeze it for when I need it. That works very well for me, especially when I know I have a busy time ahead or some veggie I really like is in season. So for me planning ahead is definitely something I find supportive.
Yes. Me too. It feels great and super supportive when I realise that I have got plenty of food prepared during impromptu busy periods.
I used to do the same Nicola. Now my work rhythm has changed, I’ve reverted to having a few frozen items in the freezer mainly lamb and fish, lots of fresh green vegetables in the fridge and cook daily. Simplicity is beautiful and we can adjust our rhythm and way according to what best supports us at the time.
It seems so obvious to look at our relationship with food and what we are eating with so many related illnesses and health conditions and yet we are not going there. So important that we start this conversation and keep it going.
We seem to really have lost touch with the food we eat. I used to like the markets in the far east where the meats were obvious which animal they came from – at times it felt a little brutal but it was honest. Now it seems we can eat food and be distant that it was an animal. And often these animals are reared in the most unnatural ways – like how cows are forced to produce milk. I had a friend who told me about chicken machinery he used to inspect where the chicken walked in and came out a few minutes later all wrapped up ready for supermarket shelves. And then there are the items that you just have to wonder what is the cost of the pictures we have of ‘perfection’ like the garlic that’s bleached to look purer I guess.
If I buy fruit and vegetables from a local farm shop they last twice as long as the produce from a super market, not only that but I can literally feel the difference when I buy them. The colour is more vibrant and there is more crunch / smell of freshness to them. It is a little more time consuming than ordering on line but it is a lovely experience for my daughter to learn what is in season and what is not whilst understanding where fruit and vegetables come from.
I am always fascinated by the foods in the supermarkets and what we eat. So often most of the ‘healthy’ foods are laiden with all sorts of things which the body would not actually consider healthy. I find the more we complicate and change a food, ie. take it further and further away from its natural state the more the body finds it harder to digest and get the full goodness out of. Are we choosing to eat to nourish our bodies to sustain the love we are or are we seeking something else from food?
James your sentence “I find the more we complicate and change a food, ie. take it further and further away from its natural state the more the body finds it harder to digest and get the full goodness out of”, lead me to consider that it’s the same for us as a species “the more we complicate and change ourselves ie. take ourselves further and further away from our natural state the more the body finds it harder to digest and get the full goodness out of life.
Apart from anything else, eating fresh food feels so much better. And the preparation of meals is a big part of it. To me it has never felt great to grab a ready meal and stick it in the microwave. The love we can show ourselves through the preparation of food that is going to nourish our body is paramount to our overall health.
There were time in my life when fast food options for home were my choice but having been there and now made different choices to discern the quality of the food I eat i could not go back and now pay more and more attention to food and the quality of it and its production.
The old saying,’We are what we eat’ is just as true today as when the first wise person who coined the fraise, coined it. We all know sugar and preservatives don’t do us any good, we all know fast foods are bad for the health. Maybe we need to slow the pace of life down so we have the time to prepare fresh healthy foods for ourselves.
True Kevin – we all know that food affects the way we feel, question is, do we care to listen to what we know?
This is definitely food for thought. It is worth considering where we are at as a society and what we have readily swallowed and accepted. Perhaps it is time to return to true nourishment and this is well worth digesting.
“What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?” – totally revolutionary Jane what you say here and which boils down to connection – are we connected to ourselves, or instead connected to the marketing spin of the food industry and its profiting sell-by dates.
I so agree Jane that the world has gone mad on processed packaged food!
I remember clearly a puzzlement I had as a child in the 1950s. My mother would send me to the local corner store to buy Arrowroot biscuits which would be decanted from a large tin with a brightly coloured parrot illustrated on it, into a brown paper bag. There were strict instructions to not fall over on the way home and crush the biscuits! Then one day I saw the biscuits in packages ( a completely new thing) and I remember puzzling whether the same species of product was inside that package as the ones that came out of the huge tin. This was the cross-over time when packaging everything was just beginning to happen.
I feel that there is something to be said for packing certain things, but certainly the proliferation of plastic in our seas is a disaster. Yet I do very much appreciate there being a use-by date on packets of baby spinach, which uses cellophane( not plastic) as its wrap. It is brilliant to be able to get baby spinach here as it wilts quickly if not packaged, and I do appreciate the courtesy of having a use-by date on it.
Making food convenient and the rise of supermarkets has changed how we buy food almost unrecognisable – I still prefer a good butcher and green grocer whenever possible. How food is taken care of throughout its journey to your plate matters.
Yes me too, I love building a relationship with my local green grocer and fishmonger. I can get fishbones whenever I want to make delicious fish soups which are full of flavour and my daughter loves. I feel rather spoilt as I live in London next to a beautiful village which has a butcher, green grocer and fishmongers.
I learnt recently that salmon is only in season for a very short window in the summer which of course makes sense because when I was a child it was a real treat to have poached salmon and salad in the summer followed by strawberries.
Thank you Jane. It is so easy to be caught up in the immediacy of our food and packaging culture without considering the bigger and overall impact this is having on the world around us.
I shop once a week sometimes more for fresh food and cook all my meals. This is my usual rhythm since becoming aware of the damaging effects of processed food and preservatives in food. The whole process brings about a lot of joy. I love every stage from driving to the particular shops, planning, shopping, interacting and being with people, organising what and how I will eat, preparation for my week, cooking and finally eating in the respect and celebration of my body. The whole process supports everything in my life and is very healing for me and others.
It would take a society to connect to their bodies to stop the excessive food shopping that occurs. It’s another path that is blindly walked when we have not stopped, connected and asked could there be another way.
Are long sell by dates an indication not to have that food? Tinned tuna aside, of course?
What an interesting article, I had never considered packaging and sell by dates in this way. There is nothing that means nothing – everything is a reflection. Thank you for the moment to pause – I will take a fresh look in our kitchen to see what our patterns are – you never know the things that are in there the longest may well be the foods we actually don’t need on so many levels!
When I travel to Italy this is the way people shop buying only the groceries you needed for the next few days, if they’re not living off the land or a family or relative’s land then they are shopping at the local markets… maybe THIS has a great deal to do with the widely accepted phrase; healthy ‘Mediterranean diet’.
This is such a great blog as it invites us to question the system we have allowed to govern our food purchases – do we throw something away because it’s past its date or do we smell and check the freshness for ourselves?
What a brilliant blog and one I will come back to, there is is a lot of wisdom concerning how we care for ourselves and with the ripples of our choices so to the planet. I have noticed the less processed food I eat, the more I go shopping, but the less I buy. It is great what you say about there being a time when we did not have sell by dates, we used to buy what we needed, used it and then repeated this process. When we have processed food that lasts a long time, it is as you say necessary, it has preservatives in it, these preservatives do not support our body. A new angle, perspective concerning looking after our bodies and the planet. Love it.
We are so used to having all the food we want all of the time that the idea of foods being seasonal and having to wait to eat a kind of food is so alien to people – instant gratification is something we have gotten used to and often demand more and more of in many areas of our lives, and yet what we have lost is connection to a simpler and more natural way of living and eating.
Amazingly presented Jane, and this epidemic of over produced food with preservative, additives is a sign our relationship with not only food but how we live our lifestyle has become so out of wack. Our relationship with food is one where we demand it to be there at our call but don’t have an understanding of the processes, natural use by dates and proper cooking etc.
A very interesting topic to consider, we know that the chemicals, sugar and salts used to preserve our foods are not benefitting our health, this asks us to look at this reality deeper and see that there is maybe a different way to eat and shop. We are so consumed by the current rush in society though that we feel we don’t have the time to care for ourselves in the way of buying healthy foods wich is sad, and should really be reconsidered.
Getting one’s groceries on the weekly market still has a simplicity that is very enjoyable; a personal connection with a person passing you fruits, veggies or flowers to just be put into one´s basket or maybe a piece of paper wrapped around, with hands touching the food you buy, unsterile without the need for a contamination panic attack.
Despite the inclement weather open air markets seem to be making a comeback in rural parts of the UK. I support this wholeheartedly. There is no plastic in sight, no sell by dates and the vendors, in my experience, are usually open and friendly.
The small shops seem to have disappeared I guess because the supermarkets have taken over. They buy in bulk and the small shops cannot compete. As an example I recently drove through the village where I spent my early adulthood and the two shops that were the main stay of the village had gone. And I wondered how the elderly managed because the village was a good 8 miles away from the nearest town.
Your article reminds me of Christmas and New Year, when everyone floods supermarkets and stocks up for weeks of meals when they close for a single day (or perhaps a maximum of 2). Do we need to stockpile like we do, and is food really designed to be THIS relied upon, where it is the centrepiece of life and our daily and weekly rhythm depend on consuming it?
We have a lot of habits and ways of being that are well past their sell by date. They are rotten and stodgy, mouldy and bad for our health, yet we continue to choose these patterns that make us ill. Why? Well we like to repeat what we did yesterday, to build a routine that we think keeps us safe. But the truth is things are continually expanding and so it’s only natural that we need to keep adjusting and growing too. If we go with what feels right and not force of habit we will never need anyone to tell us when something is past it’s use and no longer nourishing us with the truth. Thank you Jane for this food for thought.
Totally agree with all you have written Jane. The detrimental impact we have on our health and on the environment because of the way in which we choose to unnecessarily stockpile our pantries full of over packaged foods and our obsession with having everything being sealed within plastic for the fear of coming in contact with germs has made life more complicated. It is time we returned to being more responsible for what we choose to buy and not get deceived by packaging that promotes taste and making meals faster to prepare and ‘healthy’. When we all really know a nourishing diet of fresh vegetables and proteins that we prepare ourselves is the best and most healthy diet we can have that it doesn’t have to be complicated, but can be kept simple, still taste yummy and we feel great afterwards not bloated, tired or be over stimulated. As for all that unnecessary packaging I feel having it recycled is only a small part of the answer, it is mainly the responsibility we have in not using it in the first place when and where it can be avoided even if that means if is a bit inconvenient for ourselves. “..the sheer magnitude of the problem is that as much as 51trillions micr-plastic particles – 500 times more than stars in our galaxy – pollute the seas.”
“I remember in the 60s and early 70s that when you went to a local shop you bought only the groceries you needed for the next few days. A few slices of cheese, a few tomatoes, a loaf of fresh bread, a couple of apples and a few eggs. These items didn’t have a sell by date and you knew to eat them within a few days” – quite Jane, observing the quality of the produce in the fridge or fruit bowl… you knew it using your senses and that its ripening quality, changing colour, shape, smell, not a stamp marked ‘sell by date’ meant quick consumption!
I agree with you Jane I guess it all comes down to something I am becoming more and more aware of that was shared at the Universal Medicine Retreat 2017 in Vietnam and that was .. supply and demand. The supply of preserved foods and sell by dates is only there because we as the consumer want everything made easier for us, more convenient which is pretty much not in tune with the body. I have a feeling this is going to take some time for us to all reach this point you have come to! With the plastic .. I know it is shocking. I saw something the other day where a company are making machines that are put into the sea to help clear up all the waste and bottles … no wildlife harmed. It looked very cool but again the thing here is for us to stop wasting so much and littering so much in the first place so these machines do not have to be made. It comes down to our responsibility .. to live responsibly.
So true, supply and demand is equally applied to clearing up the complication we have made in the first place! Very useful but sad that it is even needed.
Even vegetables seem to be appearing all year round – we’ve lost the idea of seasonal produce – and when you look at it, a lot of the root vegetables are around in winter and the lighter salads are around in summer to support what the body needs at that time. But these days that is all out the window. It seems we’ve thrown out the natural cycle of our bodies a long time ago and eating based on how we feel and what is going on around us. Certainly, something to consider given the rise in illness, disease and obesity levels.
The explosion of additional foods in the supermarket and especially those with a high sugar/fat/salt content is exponentially linked to the increase in illness and disease. The producers of said food will not stop producing until we stop asking for it. It is up to us to bring more love into our lives to stop eating such unloving foods.
I also remember the days of going to the local butcher, grocer and green grocer to buy fresh food with my mum before I was old enough to go to school. What I have noticed is that the packaging and preservatives have come with the drastic rise in ‘busyness’ which seems to have infected society. We now want instant everything including food. I feel we need to look at the pace we live at that has changed the way we shop and the foods we seek to deal with the exhaustion of the busyness.
This blog makes so much sense. The way we used to eat was so simple and there were lower rates of obesity and diabetes. It is so glaringly obvious that the way we eat today is not natural. This needs to be taken into consideration when approaching illness and disease in health care.
Jane this is a great topic you are sharing, I feel we don’t stop to think why our food is lasting longer than it used to, nor do we stop to consider what this would mean on our health as, obviously for food to last longer it has been modified or preserved in ingredients which could be more harmful in the long run.
Correct. Not doing ourselves flavours (couldn’t resist that!)
Our continuing separation from the offering that the rhythms of nature reflect to us. When we treat our bodies as machines, is it any wonder that our shopping habits have also become so mechanical.
If you thought the packaging was bad in the UK….I’m currently in America – it’s insane!! Mountains of plastic, and then the one thing they are quite good on is giving you paper rather than plastic bags to take home your groceries – except they double-bag everything, just in case it might break!!
One of the amazing outcomes of not having sell by dates would be increased attention on what we are buying as well as our personal needs and responses. It would cut the current over-dependence on information being fed to us by others and the wishful assumption that the system and its regulations will take care of us.
The need for us to discern more carefully would call for a greater awareness and responsibility for ourselves.
We have great recycling options here where I live, most of what we buy can actually be recycled. What I notice yesterday though when I took my recycling to the recycle centre was how much plastic and Styrofoam there was. I don’t recall seeing this when I was a child. We went to the butchers and our meat was wrapped in brown paper, now the demand is quick and ease so the supply is everything is packaged so you can grab and go. It made me stop and realise the changes I can make to my shopping that reduces rubbish… no feeling of needing to save the planet anything like that but just a responsible and aware look instead of what is just easier.
Great call Jane this is a fantastic blog questioning the state in which we have relationship with food and our environment. When we do stop and look at what ingredients are in our packaged food I certainly started to question if they were any good for us and if my body wanted it. I was brought up with a fairly healthy relationship with food, learning to cook fresh and to buy from local suppliers. Now in London, in a city you could say that it was hard to do this but because everything has become so easy and now days with the supermarket delivering to the door that type of approach is very rare these days. I have started to do more regular shops and feeling what I fancy for the next few days and it is super supportive.
Eating a natural food diet over the last 30+ years have raised so much awareness in my body to the affects that certain food-groups were having and by dropping them I have become aware of the adverse affect they were having on my body.
Jane as I opened my Friday I realise that the vast majority of the food we have is short sell by date, i.e. its fresh and it goes off. Yet turn back a decade and 95% would be packaged and full of everything to make it last as long as possible. I love the idea of going back to the fresh foods and exploring how the entire infrastructure of the worlds farming and distribution could support health instead of contributing to illness and disease.
There are very few packaged foods we can buy that do not contain sugar and salt. Bread, chicken, you name it, sugar and salt are in it. They are added for preservation of the food and also for taste.
Many would herald the developed worlds bountiful choice of foods, yet in truth it only serves to feed the function, by not asking people to connect with what they feel to eat but instead to get intoxicated by the variety, the packaging and inevitably the preservatives that keep us operating at half of our true vital capacity.
Not only intoxicated by the variety but it seems at the expense of the quality.
The convenience of ‘preserved’, high sugar and salt foods are not so convenient when the body starts to reveal the truth about eating these foods. Pain, illness, and dis-ease are never convenient and can be very expensive. When we look at the bigger picture, fresh, wholesome food just makes sense.
In considering making food simpler, we will have to come up against all the deeply held ideas and beliefs around food and our right to do/eat whatever we like – humans have become addicted to and frankly religious about food – if it tastes great it doesn’t really matter what impact it has on us, our bodies or the rest of the world is producing it. When you spell it out like that, it’s a really quite selfish approach, but a great thing to look at and begin to unpick – why is it that this is now our relationship with food? Is it possible we get more from food than just the momentary pleasure in the mouth? Is it possible we find comfort, dulling, false racy energy, enjoyment etc that makes life seemingly easier to handle? We all know about the tradition of chocolate and ice-cream after a break up, comfort food that helps dull the pain and make us feel better because if we can’t have sweetness and happiness in life we can at least experience it fleetingly on the tongue – but we haven’t stopped and really considered the fact that we are experts in using food like medicine or drugs to deal with situations we don’t want to look at – the glass of wine at the end of a hard day or week, the big pizza that makes us drowsy enough to feel like we are able to relax when really the body is just struggling under the pressure of digesting the food.
Well said Rebecca, also do we ever stop and even consider the slavery that is behind producing many of our food choices? The need is so great that consideration of how our choices impact on others, ourselves and the planet is very low.
I love this – revealing another instance where we have lost touch with what we innately know and placed reliance outside of ourselves. i Know that I will check used by dates occasionally but largely will make choices according to how I feel about the food and trust this.
Great blog Jane, does the convenience of our current shopping ways truly support us? it seems not with the eye opening statistics you share of our health and the impact on our planet.
Sell by dates contribute to the enormous amount of food waste that we produce which is a scandal in a world where most people are either starving or malnourished despite being obese. A sign of the crazy sales mentality that so many are hooked into and which is destroying our health and well-being as well as that of the planet.
Jane, this is a great article and has made me consider many things; such as all of the plastic that our food comes in, even a cucumber is wrapped in plastic which goes straight in the bin when I get home, the same with lettuce and carrots, shopping at my local village market I really enjoyed taking my own bag and there being no plastic and packaging to deal with afterwards, this felt simple and why could it not be like this in supermarkets? we dont need everything wrapped in plastic, we can simply wash fruits and vegetables when we get home and save our environment from having to deal with all the plastic.
I recall someone shared that if the food companies were made responsible for disposing the packaging appropriately and safely then they are more likely to reconsider how they package foods. I often wondered what the food on our supermarket shelves would look like if this did take place. I imagine there would be a lot less packaging and waste. But also, I feel the consumers are also responsible too and I feel we all have to take responsibility for what we use and how we use our resoureces.
I saw a news report recently about the amount of food wasted every year in the UK and was totally appalled, I wonder if it would have been this way before sell by dates, I think not.
I was staying in a hotel six months ago and the meals were presented in a buffet style. Huge, gargantuan, excessive amounts of food put out for the guests, table after table of the stuff – catering to every single possible whim of any one of the guests. One day we came to eat and there wasn’t anything that I wanted so I asked the lovely chef if I could have any of the delicious lamb from last night. And found out that every single piece of food, every salad, slice, cake, dish, side, pudding…everything that is put out for every single meal is then thrown away. Everything. Because they can’t risk being sued by anybody for food poisoning. It’s utterly crazy.
I really enjoy shopping for groceries and find myself wasting a lot less food these days and also buying smaller amounts as I need them. Shopping consciously instead of conveniently as I used to has changed my whole outlook on shopping for food and how I also nourish myself too. I buy far less processed food and really enjoy reading labels and ingredients in everything I buy unless of course it is fresh veggies and shopping at veggie markets is so much fun too, you get to connect with the growers and learn a lot more about where your food comes from.
I shop far more frequently today too and enjoy it. There’s something lovely, rhythmical and nurturing about taking care of ourselves in this way. There’s another word too – it feels more modest, or perhaps humble – to buy simple foods simply.
Food technology, the modern science behind long shelf-lives, is – like many modern ‘innovations’ – actually a by-product of the machinery of WW1 and 2. Countries at war for long periods of time and operating far from home had to figure out how to feed their soldiers without killing them before they got to the battlefield. That same technology, now in the hands of big food, is now killing us.
Thanks for sharing this Jane as it is a growing concern. More and more there are products with extremely long shelf lives and we are not questioning it but seeing it as convenient. I love your approach to fresh eating, and I too really enjoy shopping at the farmer’s markets, butcher and fish mongers which actually rid me of the need for a supermarket altogether.
“Are ‘Sell by’ Dates Past their ‘Sell by’ Date?” – Jane I went away to a remote place where they grew their own vegetables, herbs, and found myself (as a result of the remoteness) having to eat certain veggies I’d not eaten for a while, and found all the veggies zingy with natural flavour, tasting like a vegetable and the nutritional value of them I could feel inside my body. So many times I’ve had to stop eating certain vegetables because of how they’re being changed for sell by date purposes e.g. being injected with colours, sweeteners, growth hormones which means an eventual non-consumption of produce that would otherwise have great nutritional value.
There is something very satisfying about preparing food that is fresh… apart from the fact that it tastes better anyway, there is a feeling of truly honouring and nurturing our bodies – the love and care that goes into the preparation – from growing or buying the food… it all provides a deeply nourishing meal on many levels.
This stockpiling of food feels like an obsession with food – a desperation of missing out, of not getting the comfort from our food, and yet our bodies can survive without food – we won’t die in a few days!
A great article Jane… and what stands out for me is how this has happened in half our lifetime – we have let this happen in our lifetime, and will live in the consequences of this, of not stopping this trend, for lifetimes to come! It is very exposing of our lack of foresight, how we have become so insular in our own little worlds, and lack of expressing what is truly going on in the world.
My friend once did this art exhibition for a local community whole-foods store, and bought a cake from a local big-chain supermarket and left it in the shop window for months. It did not change its appearance at ALL. Now what is in the cake, that it can sit in on its own, outside, unrefrigerated and not go off, mouldy or change its appearance in the slight.
Not something that I would want to be eating that’s for sure! Actually in writing that, I have eaten those cakes from that store, and realised that it is only now since I am choosing more self-love and self-care in my life, that I would not want to eat that any more.
We see food as a convenience now, not as something that will nourish and support us. Humanity has stopped caring what they put into their body as long as it is available and looks and tastes ok and offers instant gratification. In the 60’s and 70’s before prepared food and ready meals became available and fast food was in its infant stage, all the food was fresh and cooked over the stove, for that day and people didn’t shop for the next couple of weeks as is the case now. Nothing was pre packed except for frozen food, which has a long shelf life. It is the consumer that is demanding fast food and as long as we refuse to see the damage we are doing to our oceans our fish and our land and to our bodies we will continue to demand food that is full of sugar salt and preservatives and a sell by date.
Really great insighhts Jane, you gave me some things to ponder and also to appreciate. I too shop for food often and most of my meals are cooked from fresh and simple ingredients. I can relate to the ‘panic’ of stocking up food – and very interesting that I am reading your blog today as it is bank holiday in the UK this coming Monday and I was feeling this ‘despair’ to buy food! I then remembered that it so often happens that I buy too much, more than we actually need which then creates a pressure to cook all the food so not to waste it or as it has happened in the past, the pressure to eat the food even if that’s not exactly what you want or even eat without being hungry! So this time, with the growing awareness of my body, when about to buy food for ‘the days ahead’, I decided not to buy extra food because of the holiday. it feels great to have this space – in the fridge and in myself! An opportunity to try different recipes, to perhaps eat a littel less, to be more creative with ingredients. Super inspiring!
Has anyone also noticed just how much of the food in our supermarkets is grown in another country? So we can now have say Strawberries and other soft fruits all year round. So we loose the sense of the cycles and that time in the cycle ( Summer) when the Strawberries were in season for just that short while. There was an appreciation of the short growing season and the taste was delicious, because the strawberries hadn’t been forced as is so often the case now.
A great sharing Jane, how our food is preserved is a product of how we live, we mostly treat food as function and our food chain has become all about profit. So those long sell by dates also allow food to go further away to market and to be stored longer. We’ve lost that connection with food to nurture and sustain and how our relationship with food and our production of it affects the wider world. There’s a lack of awareness in how we are with this and sell by dates are a symptom of this – what if as Jane offers us here, we came back to being simple with food and just getting what we need when we need it in the cycles it’s produced? Isn’t that more honouring of us, our bodies and our wider environment?
Sell by dates encourage us to be less discerning – we learn to rely on them, when we are able to make the decision and take more responsibility for ourselves with what will support our body.
The Food industry is one of those things that will continue to grow as long as we seek it for reward and relief.
It wasn’t until my flat mate was diagnosed with diabetes that I started reviewing the sugar content on the back of packages. Then I started reading the other ingredients. I was shocked to see what went into things I thought were about simple. Perhaps it’s experiences like mine, blog posts like yours Jane and simply having the conversation about it that other people, too, will begin to see and understand what it is we’re putting into our bodies.
Great article and yes I do feel there are some foods which would naturally be over their sell by date. I know when I’ve bitten into an apple and it is all rotten inside and returned to the store they have said it is because the irradiation has not gone all the way through the fruit. I find this shocking as if the apple was in its natural state it would naturally be rotten. If something is in reality this old to rot how nutritious is the fruit despite looking ‘fresh’?
I have noticed that more and more people are spending more and more time at the super market or in cafes or restaurants than they used to. It would seem food is forever becoming more of the focus of our society and I too have noticed that within myself. We cannot delude ourselves by saying we are just hungry and our body needs the food when we have already eaten so much! Could our hunger be coming from our reactions to life too?
A lot of the processed, ready to eat foods I have found are there to quell what I am feeling. It’s like those break to call fire points (the little red box with glass) in an emergency of feeling something heres a stockpile of chemicals and compounds shaped into something we can eat. I found this because when I make the cake or snacks myself they are eaten rapidly fast to the point I realised the effort in having seconds of relief wasn’t worth it. It was far simpler to deal with what was being buried than to keep making treats!
Food has become so much more these days than just providing nutrition for the body. Food has become an entertainment so that we can avoid feeling what we know and see around us. We need to return to a way of eating that is super simple and supportive for the body.
Food as entertainment to avoid feeling sounds spot on Elizabeth. And is it possible that we entertain to allow our-self to over eat and indulge?
I was discussing with someone last night the shocking state of the food industry and the barbaric farming processes that are now adopted – the food we eat is processed and mistreated and the end prodcut is worlds away from what it would be if we raised or grew it naturally. The simplicity and health of the what we ate not too long ago is being lost under preservatives, added salt, sugar, chemicals and genetic modification. Someone cited the out of control population growth as to blame for this shift in food production, trying to keep up with demand. And yet we have a epidemic of obesity, so is the problem really a shortage of food or is it that we have lost our natural and healthy relationship with food, eating more than we need to and accepting the processed junk that gets added in in favor of chasing ever increasingly extream moments in the mouth.
We have been focusing on and priding ourselves with the ability to manipulate and control all things in life, at the expense of our naturally ability to constantly and in every moment feel the rhythms and requirements of our own body as well as the flow of the universe we are a part of.
We have our huge issues with our ‘success’ in making things non perishable for convenience as evidenced in our waste mountains. The fact that we have been applying the same mentality even to our food, as evidenced by profit rather than care of people being the primary motive, should rightly raise alarm bells.
Brilliant blog Jane. I notice the more responsible we are with our diet the less waste, packaging and plastic we tend to use and produce, because fresh food requires less packaging. The pollution of our sea is a reflection of the pollution we are putting into our bodies too. The facts you present re the condition of our sea is shocking but makes sense to me why we are living with such pollution because we are collectively making irresponsible choices regarding how we live and how we treat our body which naturally has an impact on our environment. This is a great example of how our choices affect and impacts on everything around us.
To eat products with less preservatives in them can only be a good thing. Looking at what we are choosing compared to previous generations gives a prominent marker as to why our health and wellbeing is declining.
Great question Ariana. I am not sure how true this is, but I have heard that when people are buried, their bodies take longer to decay because of all the preservatives in the food consumed over a lifetime. And then of course whilst we are alive, how is this affecting our health?
When I go food shopping with my kids, I point out the fact that most of what is sold in supermarkets I call “fake food” because in truth that is what is consumed when we eat the packets of processed, salted, sugared and chemical enhanced muck that is sold in supermarkets.
Love the ‘fake food’ Matthew, very cool to show your kids this.
Someone told me that they put processed fast food in the composting bin in their garden and it didn’t break down and decompose like all the other vegetable matter. They reckon it was because of the huge amounts of chemicals used to persevere the food which delayed the natural decomposing process.
For over 30 years I have been reading ingredients and it is simply easier to buy unprocessed food as Looking for a product that has no bad constituents is almost impossible so as you say Mathew “fake food”!
I bought some fish the other day from the market and was at home gutting them and cutting their heads off and preparing them. Some of the kids that were in the house were grossed out and thought it was totally disgusting. I had to teach them that the fish they eat everyday once had heads, guts and tails!
Absolutely Jane, we live in an age where we say there is ‘not enough time’, we rush from event to event and indulge in meetings without a break, and then to top it off eat a meal that comes out if cans and packages that sit for weeks on end on shelves. We surely have this recipe for life the wrong way around. For how would our body feel if we made space to cook and feed ourselves with ripe and nutritious fuel? What if we found that our performance improved? Perhaps then we would start to see life’s all about the quality we’re in not the speed we live. Living rushing around is out of date.
Yesterday at home we were having a discussion about this same topic, and how things were very simple when growing up. If we needed perishables we would simple nip to the local shop, which was usually within walking or biking distance (not forgetting our string bag), and we would buy what we needed. These days we end up in a huge supermarket with aisles of different brands, and it is quite an exercise workout to get one end of the store to the other. Then there are the enticement buys ‘Buy one get one free’ – who hasn’t succumbed to those from time to time. As a result shelves at home are stocked to the hilt as if prepping for the end of days.
It is a great question you raise, Jane, and one that is very thought provoking and the points you raise extremely valid. Throughout history we have preserved food but that was out of necessity to cater for winter periods unlike now which is for convenience and from commercial greed. The consequence is we have lost connection with the rhythm and cycles of life and the Universe and hence with ourselves. To practice on a global scale what you are presenting would be a revolution for self-care in the true sense.
Some great points here Jane. Indeed, what has happened to the simple way we used to shop and eat? Our lives are so busy that we put convenience before anything else without considering the greater impact of this.
Yes Rebecca. This blog made me wonder how people used to buy food and cook when there were no shops open on every day of the week. Perhaps there was more interactions within the communities to cater for this?
Why do we need food that is out of season all year long? Our food has more air miles than we do. There is an old apocalyptic movie set in London where a group of survivors were a grocery store, and the fruit and veg section was full of dead and decayed stuff, but there were some perfect apples! At the time the film was made, a new controversial process of irradiating produce was being trialled. Today this is just one of many life expectancy methods that have crept into the food we are sold.
Personally, I can feel anxiety if I think too far ahead with what I am going to eat on a specific day, especially if i am travelling, going on Holliday or simply bringing some food at work. As a result, I have seen myself ending up buying food that wasn’t needed.
Such a cool piece of writing Jane. I never really thought of it but it is so true that there are now so many sell by dates in place that we might have let go of our natural feeling of what we need to eat at certain times. Sell by dates can of course be useful but now it is governing for a lot of people. In the supermarket I work products almost over their sell by date get reduced in price and this gets people often buying things without really wondering if they feel like having that at that moment and if it really is something that is going to support their body.
Jane, great article, you raise some really important points. I watched a video recently about a whale that had come to land and was dying because in its stomach it had over 30 plastic bags and it was starving to death, this made me realise how we are polluting our seas with plastic, most of which is unnecessary – we don’t need fruit and vegetables in plastic bags, local fruit and veg shops use paper bags that can be recycled, there are such simple solutions if we are willing to care. I can also feel that as consumers it is us that needs to ask for change from shops and supermarkets so that we stop polluting ourselves with sugar, salt and other preservatives and stop polluting our seas with unnecessary plastic.
If you visit the local farm shop you will find unpackaged produce which is in season and grown locally. The farm shop near us will also buy from me any surplus vegetables grown in our garden. We do have a choice.
This is super cool Mary!
It greatly exposes where we are at and where we are going if we do not begin to make changes in our relationship with food. We live in the twentieth century where most of us only care about convenience, comfort and the array of products to choose from on the shelves that only keep and deepen the numbing, distracting us from truly living a life that is in harmony with our body and with the universe.
Indeed Caroline, how deeply we have invested in the Western worlds plentiful choice of food, it’s such an illusion for in truth it’s in league with our escalating rates of illness in disease and daily environmental concerns.
Jane you make some incredibly valuable points that to me raises the question on the entire food production, distribution and supply network that we have today. It also shows that whilst we have advanced we’ve also gone backwards as the traditional family butcher, green grocer and local shop whilst unable to supply 60,000 items did provide a local, fresh and more healthy selection of food without the sugars and salts of today.
It is good to take a stop and look where we are att. In this case the way our food is produced, processed and brought to us through the shops, mostly big chain of supermarkets nowadays. How different indeed from 50 years ago, where you had a myriad of little shops, bakeries, butcher’s, greengrocer’s shop and so on that all sold locally or self produced products. It is the whole food chain that has been enormously commercialised. The supermarkets fight each other with price wars, they force farmers and other suppliers to produce cheaper and cheaper and import food that comes from all over the world and sell processed foods that can last forever – we kept in its original packaging. What has happened you may ask and why have we let this happen? I do know that people in general go for the low prices and the comfort these processed and preserved foods deliver but do we ever stop and ask ourselves to what price we have sold out our health and wellbeing to the big food chains that are only looking for shareholders value and gaining more market shares. It might be a good thing to look at this more carefully next time when we are going shopping for all and fresh products to return in our shopping streets.
One of the more disturbing consequences has been that fruit and vegetables have been modified for looks and durability (and sweetness in many case) but not for taste, making them more and more bland and, perhaps, sweet.
I absolute love what you have shared Jane and the question I have got while I was reading your awesome blog was, what would happen if we all would abstain from these preservatives for a while? How would our life and our bodies look like? Perhaps most of us would be much more healthier in so many ways . . .
51 trillion micro plastic particles in the sea! – This is an extraordinary statistic that certainly makes you stop and wonder what on earth we are doing as a species to this planet. The pollution of the Earth and the consequences of us increasing its used by date so to speak, is a great reflection of the harm that can be done to our bodies when we pollute them with substances that are not natural.
One of the difficulties of shopping is that the concealment of what’s in the product is part of the process of selling a product. There is very rarely an honesty and truth by the seller to let you know what one is truly buying. The sole purpose of the seller appears to be to sell more produce. An example of this is to have sale targets to be met each week. But these sale targets are profit driven and take no real account of what’s best for the customer, for if it did we would not have as big an issue re diabetes and child obesity .
The concepts you propose here make a whole lot of sense Jane, and I could really feel just how much we have complicated things with all our food choices and the myriads of additives in processed food. My rule of thumb has been to avoid any food product with an ingredient list that takes me too long to read. It never made sense to me to add all those crazy additives and preservatives to food as it seems like more of a hassle and expense to do so. Why not keep it simple and just eat these foods earlier, which would taste better and be more healthy anyways, as the nutrients would not degrade with time as they do with processed foods.
Another aspect to this that came to me is how years ago there were more small ‘mom and pop’ family owned grocery shops, butchers, cafes, etc. that one could go to and build a long lasting relationship with their owners that would bring people closer together, rather than the current prevalence of disconnection with super big stores today. Although, the choice is always there to create that connection with people, no matter what the circumstance or environment.
This is a revealing reflection of what we are asking for and what is being supplied; though it is obvious it is at our own peril. It is not only in the fast food and ‘used by date’ foods but also in the move away from simplicity in many areas of life. I am fortunate to live in an area where there are local fresh food markets and you actually meet the people growing the produce. The quality of the greens are so alive and they last longer than shop bought greens, they are not transported long distances either. As buyers we get to choose what we want to invest in.
There is much to ponder on in this article and thank you Jane for bringing it to our attention – having recently moved to a town where we have access to weekly organic food markets, we are loving buying fresh vegetables. Unfortunately we have not yet established our own vegetable patch and are having to buy some things from supermarkets, but little and often works much better than stockpiling and freezing.
Adding sugar and salt to food makes food harder to resist for humans. It also extends their shelf life but then there is a need for colouring and other agents to make the preserved food look palatable, leading to a long list of ingredients. Few of us can only go to the supermarket once a month so it becomes a question of why there is such a demand for these items?
If we loved ourselves and our body truly, wouldn’t we go after fresh, good quality food with no harmful additives that would support build and maintain a body that would stand our everyday activities, and perhaps we might choose a way of being that would not put us into exhaustion so much so that we need our food to be more stimulating or dulling than simply nutritious? But we wouldn’t know the difference, would we – unless we are prepared to be very honest with ourselves and where we are at? I for one used to think I was ‘loving’ and rewarding myself with junk food and alcohol and eating whatever I fancied, as much and as often as I fancied (or craved).
I really enjoy shopping every night as I find it more simple than buying in bulk ahead of time and having to cook certain dishes because of what I bought. In the “busy” lives we have chosen for ourselves, in convenience we want everything to last, but in convenience to what and who? Is it more convenient to eat certain foods in disregard to what our bodies say because it’s cheaper or because we have them in the fridge? I have tried to make it more “convenient” and cook the same things every night, I found that it may take less time, but my body wasn’t enjoying this and the time I apparently saved, I still rushed so I can get to bed at a certain time all from my ideal of how life should be. But this choice was robbing me of truly living. When I chose to not be afraid to live, all the imperfections would surface and then I would really have to learn what simplicity is from scratch. But this way of living, learning, eating and all, is a much more true way to live than I have ever experienced.
Brilliant super common sensical blog Jane! So much to comment on. Let me start with this: ‘And yet nowadays we seem to live in a way where we stock up, hoard, plan for the future and want our shopping to last for weeks, and when we are coming up to public holidays when the shops are open less, we stock up as though we won’t see another shop for months.’ I have noticed this hoarding with people especially by registering the Easter and Christmas panic-rush shopping. I used to do a bit of that myself! Now I am much more surrendered about shopping and buy simply what is needed and regularly. The hoarding is part of a security bid, a fear of hunger and survival, and probably many other momentums as well. And so this anxious way of living has demanded from the producers of food these long term sell-by date products. W just have to stop buying them and the market will collapse.
A very thought provoking sharing Jane as usual! I feel you are really onto something when you pose the question’ Are sell by Dates past their sell by date?” We can simplify our way of shopping and not storing food away like we do at present, but instead by what we need in the short term and therefore eliminating the excess waste and packaging.
Interesting post Jane, and great to go back in years to see how things were, and how they are changing – what a contrast! As well as everything you share about sell by dates, it’s also about relationships too because I remember when supermarkets were not open Sundays [or public holidays] so there was more time spent at home with family, and also frequent visits to the local butcher, baker, fruit and veg place down the road meant you enjoyed friendly relationships within the street community, and for example, if you were 10 pence short for the produce, you could pay it later no issue, or they would throw in an extra apple ‘just because’. There was more trust in people through this way of being, and to me they were sunny and blue days. Nowadays such community and food exchanges are a thing of the past or are today in the form of ‘organic farmers markets’ to recoup what has been lost, though typically at a price found in the produce ;
Great points Jane. At the end of the day it always comes back to supply and demand. It is up to us . So if each and everyone of us that stop demanding these products they would stop producing them. Educational blogs like yours are so needed to wake people up to what they are supporting.
Great point Kathleen, it’s the supply and demand we have asked for that is allowing the production of these foods, we need to be more responsible and aware of what we have subscribed to.
Food for thought Jane, as food seems to be a global dilemma that we dance around the edges of and what you put forward is a simple approach that returns us to the way food was used and prepared in our living memories. All we can do is set a standard of transparency as you have laid out Jane “I love the seasonal fresh flavours, and the ease of cooking fresh food, and my body loves the simplicity of it.”
I have been guilty of throwing good food out because the use by date has passed or something looks a bit wilted. A dear friend reflected a way of living and celebrating food where nothing need be wasted which is so enriching. Is it possible that the culture of ‘use by dates’ actually is yet another imposing weight upon our lives attempting to distract us from the simplicity of living day to day?
I observe convenience to be such a huge factor in what so many of us eat. For myself, I live with my husband and will almost always eat what he is eating simply because it’s convenient to do so and not because it’s what will support my body the most.
We have created a shopping environment where it can be quite tricky to shop without sell by dates as gone are many of the local greengrocers, butchers and fishmongers. But it’s not impossible, and is a great reflection of our commitment to life in general if we look at how much effort we are prepared to put it in order to be able to nourish our bodies with food it is asking for, not what is convenient.
The simplicity and joy of life is in what you’ve written – there’s no need for the highs of artificial flavours and additives that are short-lived, unhealthy and probably addictive. I would say the urge to stockpile is born of a fear that there isn’t enough to go around and one won’t survive without hoarding one’s share. I can feel fear when I am hungry sometimes which doesn’t make logical sense – I’m not going to starve before I reach a shop!
Sometimes I can feel ravenously hungry when really physically I’m not. So what may happen is the thing I don’t want to be aware of – e.g. if I don’t want to admit I was upset by something – may not be able to be ignored before I hit a shop and able to eat to distract myself from feeling whatever is there to feel.
The stock piling thing is an interesting habit. I’m inclined to buy ‘just in case’ items. Food that is for no real emergency, it’s more of a safety net if I need some sugar or salt fix or similar – as if, if I didn’t have it, I’d be in trouble (of course nothing would happen). It’s like a security blanket, which ultimately I know don’t need.
A great article Jane for further consideration on how I shop and how I can simplify my diet and not waste food. I usually shop for the week at the local market and sometimes at the end of the week there are some foods that I have not used, so shopping every few days for what my body needs makes more sense.
“Fresh produce does not need fancy cooking, the taste comes from the freshness.” This is powerful statement and so true.
From experience I know when I compromise on the quality of anything, it is not as satisfying and I end up wanting more or try to find ways for embellishing it.
Fresh produces do have so much flavour some with out much cooking, the natural freshness and the smell. Their is more nutrients in the natural produce, we start to kill the nutrients when we start cooking, there for over cooked food may taste good but with little or none nutrients.
This is a great exposé of our relationship with food – it’s not a healthy one.
I agree and our relationship with food is reflected in our relationship with our environment too. Every choice we make has a direct impact on everything else but it is not always immediately obvious especially when we are not embracing energetic responsibility.
It would also enhance our connection to community because we would need to shop more often and therefore there would be a call for the return of the local grocer with locally grown produce. I love this – what a great plan.
These are unfathomable statistics relating to plastic packaging and pollution- wow, more than stars in our beautiful galaxy! What are we doing to our particles with the food substances used to preserve food with some ridiculously long sell by dates (2 years plus for some).
“An illustration of the sheer magnitude of the problem is that as much as 51 trillion micro-plastic particles – 500 times more than stars in our galaxy – pollute the seas.” (1)
It is useful to have an indication of how long something has been sitting on the shop shelf – but who determines the use by date of an item and what that means.
‘Sell by’ dates are a great example of how we have disconnected from the world around us and what to buy and eat that would support our bodies. Instead we tend to shop less frequently and feed our bodies foods that do not support us and are so out of touch with the food we are consuming that we have to be guided about when it is no longer safe to eat it. Removing sell by dates would encourage more responsible buying and eating so definitely worth exploring.
Creating (tampering with) food to make it last longer and then stockpiling comes from a place in us that feels empty and seeks to fill up the space, not with anything of substance but with all that keeps us dull so as not to feel the emptiness we create when we withdraw from the love that we are. Until we address this root cause we will continue to have increasing rates of obesity, bulimia, anorexia, diabetes, exhaustion and general lack of vitality as we turn a blind eye to what is really at play when we eat to ‘fill space’ and not for true nourishment.
That statistic of the microbeads in the sea is so awful to feel how we have just accepted the abuse of our food chain all for comfort and convenience. We are without doubt the most obnoxious living animal on this planet. It’s really shocking when you look at the mass destruction we have caused.
It makes a lot of sense, but of course will only come from the public, the people, as longer sell by dates means more profit for businesses. To make the change will require education and a willingness to put our health first. You would think this would be a no brainer but time has shown us that wellbeing is not currently high on the priority list as evidenced by the soaring rates of diabetes that Jane highlights.
Indeed Stephen the drug dealers are only where they are at because of the demand from addicts – it’s a game we’ve mastered to keep us where we’re at.
Thank you Jane, working in a supermarket I can tell you the amount of brands, types and variations of one particular food is just crazy… one day we will return to simplicity ????
It is ridiculous the length of time food can last when it is pumped full of preservatives. Years ago I lived in a flat and someone had dropped a sweet on the stairs a couple of floors down, and that sweet was there for two years without even changing in shape or colour. At the time we found it amusing because even the ants did not want this sweet, but it is actually horrifying to know that these things and more are going into our bodies.
Our food and how complex we have made it, with all the choices that are there, is one reflection of how society is nowadays, also very complex and far from simplicity.
It is just so not possible to separate this issue surrounding food away from the rest of our life and there’s a whole industry more than willing to support and feed our want for convenience and speed and we have learnt to cut corners and compromise quality, and food is only a part of this trend. It is rather surreal because we have access to various food that we probably wouldn’t have even heard of 20 years ago and food has elevated itself as a culture of sort, and we seem to have grown more willing to ingest what doesn’t agree with our body as long as it fills up our emptiness and satisfies our taste buds.
It’s an interesting topic to ponder on, when I was growing up we knew what was seasonal but now apart from some fruits i’m not sure what is seasonal. Where I live we have foods transported in from warmer climate countries so when I think about it we are eating to another area and not our own. When listening to our body we naturally choose foods that support us for a day, week, season etc. In winter I naturally move to more warm hearty meals to support my body to stay warm.
There have been so many simple options to change by our food choices etc. We know sugar is not good for us, all the preservatives are a bit much and too much food is not good either, but we keep eating it. Wouldn’t it be also a question of do we really want to change?
It makes sense to live by the dictation of our body in our choice to eat, what to eat and how much. The hunter gather yakked only what is needed and then gets on with what is at hand, this feels like it is our natural way..
This is a great artifle Jane. Comes with the wisdom of shopping and knowing what to get to support us as well as how much to get – to be in the flow for the week. I agree it’s important to eat our food at its freshest quality, so sharpening our relationships with these things brings a great deal to our bodies and family.
We think we have improved life and made it easier but what you show here it that we have made it more complex and less and less according to our natural making.
I love the straight forward common sense of what you share, Jane. I have been aware of the problem with plastic, the sea and wild life for some time, but it was only in preparing to teach the topic with the children in my class I realised that of course the micro-plastic particles come back to us via the food chain in the fish and sea food that we eat… so we are of course also polluting ourselves… (and that’s without the extra sugar, salt, and number of preservatives.) A call to come back to a simpler way of living with our food is very needed…
It is certainly something we don’t consider Rachel, how our carelessness with our waste actually ends up in our food chain. We certainly need more education on this, and how our toxic behaviours are destroying our natural world as well as our health.
Our relationship with food, the process of production, marketing, preservation, packaging etc is telling of how we live as a society in general. While we intend to streamline production and working processes, be more efficient and simplify a lot of things through e.g. technology life has become much more complex and complicated. Against any faith in the future and high hopes of improving life with the modern means, it seems we move further away from the simplicity that allows for more space, quality and focus on humaneness and brotherhood.
I agree Alex, perfectly put – we do have a tendency as a species to complicate situations of which food is but one great example. I remember a naturopath said to me once ‘if your grandma would not recognise it as food, don’t eat it’, and I thought this was good advice!
Through simplicity we know God and through complexity we avoid him.
This last line can also be expressed as – ‘Through simplicity we know truth and through complexity we avoid it.’
It seems there is method to the denial of truth/God on a global scale. We know precisely what to do to not know how to undo what we want to change because of the suffering we have created by being out of touch with truth and simplicity.
When we consider the levels of obesity, ill health and pollution of our environment (and our bodies) and regard this along side the shift in food-buying patterns, food branding/marketing and advertising over the last 30-40 years, there is no denying there could very well be a correlation between the two. What you propose here Jane is simple; eat fresh, seasonal and make the time to shop (look after one self) on a more regular and consistent basis – and we could well see a shift in the health of nations
Rosanna, you are right – the extra effort to use these ingredients more than repays itself in the higher energy levels we then have.
I am totally with you on this one Jane. I also find the wastage of foods hard to accept. When a food is on it’s sell by date supermarkets take it off the shelves whether it is perfectly edible or not. It has to go so tonnes of food is wasted every week this way.
What this blog reveals is how easy/tempting is to avoid a relationship with the whole we are nonetheless buying into and are affected by.
Sure Eduardo, it is the temptation and the avoidance of having a relationship with the whole that has led us to the situation with food we experience today. But that also means there is a way out. When we let go that temptation and choose to be consciously be part of the whole instead, we can change things, sometimes even faster than we can imagine what can be possible.
Our bodies would definitely benefit with much less chemicals and preservatives in them. And if we started to buy more organic produce or went to the local market, there are no use by dates on those veggies. There is something about shopping in this way also, it is much more enjoyable and you definitely need to be more focussed on what you feel to cook but its really more like how we used to shop many years ago when I was younger. We used to have the butcher and the grocer come to your door, and of course the milkman and baker. There was no real need to go to a supermarket. And a lot of families grew their own veggies.
This is great to read Jane as I have pondering on this topic a lot lately. I have always wondered what is in a packaged cake that it can have a six month expiry date and who on earth would want to eat it when its expiry is almost up? It appears that food is being produced for those with a busy lifestyle who think that they have no time to shop for fresh produce and the demand is definitely there from the public for instant food, fast food and comfort food; no wonder our worldwide health statistics are making very shocking reading.
The busy lifestyles cause rush, anxiousness and stress on the body and then compounded with eating pre-packaged, instant foods that dull awareness and are addictive with substances like sugar and salt to prolong a long shelf life– the cravings for more of the same is another downward spiral in the true health and wellbeing –mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
It is fascinating and very telling to compare the lifespan of a spray-free lettuce to one purchased from the supermarket. The demand has been and continues to be for convenience above all else with a myriad of pressing lifestyle factors contributing to this, and with that the notion of fresh food is desirable only on the condition that it is packaged and ‘prolonged’.
Food has lost its simplicity, because life has lost its simplicity. When we make our lives simple again, the wonder and joy of real food, fresh, nourishing and vibrant becomes just part of our normal everyday way.
Great blog Jane. What I find alarming is foods that should normally go off quite quickly like fruits and vegetables actually stay looking ‘fresh’ for weeks. This is partly because of genetic modifications and also the irradiation process. Our food really has been messed with.
Great points Debra, indeed even the fresh foods may look artificial as well!
Yes that is a great point Debra and also some apparently not fresh food such as frozen vegetables can be frozen when they are fresh so may even be fresher than so called fresh food that was interfered with. It always comes down to our choice and discernment about what we eat and very often it is emotions we eat that cause us more harm than the food.
A lot of consumables that are found in supermarkets today are actually not truly fit for human consumption; some are mainly a concoction of salt, sugar, cheap gluten and some artificial flavours with a minimum percentage of ‘real’ food thrown in for the consistency. Would we be much better off without these consumables and to what degree would that then make a dent in our ever worsening lifestyle-driven illness and disease statistics?
Have you ever gone to be supermarket and seen foods close to their sell by date they do not look fresh at all but they are still sold at full price! I have noticed that with many things including meats and fish which actually smell too even though they are ok to eat. Have we accepted a lower quality and care in our food and hence in the quality of what we eat?
I know from experience that when I don’t value myself I can go looking for reduced items in the supermarkets as if thats all I am worth. Yesterday was a prime example as I found a packet of Rhubarb for 29p (normally £2.20) but it was rotten on the ends and clearly past it’s best! I stopped in that moment and said No, I don’t deserve that quality even if I could ‘just cuts the ends off’. I went for the full priced, fresh rhubarb as I held myself in a higher value in that moment.
Great point Joshua, this shows me a few things, one is that people buy the long life items, the ready meals and not the fresh produce as otherwise the fresh items would not be near their sell by date. So not only do we end up eating foods that don’t’ truly support us we then leave all the foods that do to rot, which in-turn puts up the price to cover waste and becomes a cycle of lower quality.
I would say from my own observations that the packaging of food and preserving of food is a commercial decision based on making as much profit as possible from the supermarkets for if food lasts on shelves longer they can keep the stock longer so that is one factor. We need to change our whole attitude towards food in general from being something that is comforting fuel and a commodity to something that can really nourish and support our bodies.
I agree Andrew, We just need more health stores in our communities, a real health store being a greengrocer that sells fruit and veg. I wondered whether we also have to accept paying a little more money for our food. But then I thought, well actually probably not as the smaller suppliers are not normally looking to make as much profit as the big companies, and I know from my own experience that shopping in smaller local stores is often actually cheaper.
I agree Jane years ago we used to buy what was needed and nearly all foods were local produce, now we have food flown in from all around the world. While it may give us more variety and the opportunity to have foods out of season this has meant we don’t have to listen to our body and feel into what food is needed to nourish and support us.
Great point you make, with food flown in from around the world we are confusing our bodies even more, not listening to what the body is asking for but getting caught in temptation, desires and over-riding what the body truly wants.
Sell by dates…. I like this article! I find it quite shocking how long things are made to last.. but at what expense. To make them last they are fumigated and packed and this and that extra ingredient added and none of that is good for us. I try to only buy food that doesn’t have all the added nastiness in it but it seems to be quite challenging at times as sugar for example and salt, seems to be in everything in addition to preservatives xyz.
Jane I feel everyone has got so used to the convenience of produced being available in many ways, they have not actually stopped to consider the packaging or the chemicals they have gone through to prolong the life of the food.
“What if we bought and prepared food and ate by listening to our own body, feeling what to eat, what to buy, how to buy it in accordance with the natural rhythm of our body?” Now there’s an idea worth progressing! If we listened to our body would we have that second slice of cake – or indeed eat cake in the first place?! Back in the 1950s I would go shopping with my mother nearly every day and we would queue at different counters to buy and pay for butter, bread etc. Yet there were far fewer shops than there are today. Today most people have at least a smallish shop nearby where they live or work. It is thus possible to purchase fresh foods a few times a week. No need for packaged food filled with preservatives…. and far more healthy.
“Sell by dates are passed their sell by date?” This is an interesting point – if someone asked me what foods and vegetables were seasonal I wouldn’t actually know! While I love the idea of a more old fashioned way of shopping where food is fresh and preservative free but that option is not readily available to us. I would say the quality we choose, prepare and cook our food in is equally as important as the packaging and preservatives in it, and our ability to tune into exactly what nutritional needs our body has that day.
It is an interesting point Meg, what is seasonal. I have always liked going to local markets to buy foods and you get to know a bit more about what is seasonal when you talk to the grocers, but they too still buy their produce from importers, so most of the year what is on offer is the same. Interestingly often when the more local produce (anything grown in the UK) comes into season the price is usually a little higher! I do agree though what is key is ‘our ability to tune into exactly what nutritional needs our body has that day.’
I love going to the local fruit and veg market as I learn so much about the foods which are in season. The other day when I went the stalls they were full with brightly coloured strawberries, blueberries and raspberries and the owner of the stall was telling me that it was too mild to cut the curly kale that morning and he would only cut it if the temperature dropped. I also find that when I buy products like broccoli covered in plastic it goes off quicker than when it is loose because of the damp that the plastic holds.
Yes so true and sadly so many of us end up eating food which has virtually no nutritional value even believing it’s healthy.
Great point Jane, I feel we as a society to just eat without even really stopping to understand that what we eat will effect us in different ways if we do not eat nutritious foods.
Yes, we bring little consideration or awareness to the fact that our bodies need a certain balance of nutrients and when we are eating the wrong food for our body, even if it is seemingly healthy we are still causing harm. It is only when we tune in to what our bodies are telling us we need and couple this with awareness of nutritional values that we start to have real understanding of what will support us.
There is a lot of irresponsibility that is marketed with eating and how often we eat. When we fall for these ideals and beliefs rather than stopping to feel what is right for us we are adding to the current world trend of escalating ill health and disease.
I grew up with parents who owned a considerable hobby vegetable patch and was amazed at the conversation they would have over planting that always revolved around the moon phase displayed in the local paper delivery. My father would cut out this page and pop it on the bench and together my parents would plant seasonal vegetables that I had the joy of eating growing up. Reading this blog has allowed me to appreciate the old ways and how far we have come from living that level of connection to the land and to ourselves.
Its interesting a lot of the older generation can still talk about food in season, however I have no clue what is in season or not. Just goes to show how much has changed over the years and how quickly we have lost the connection to nature and seasonal produce.
The conversations are a marker of how the connection to nature and the cycles were a way people lived. Not looking to consume or produce what was not in tune with this order.
I love shopping at our local Harris Farm Market, which always has an array of very fresh, in season fruits and vegetables and they send out a weekly update on what is in season and what’s on special. For example there is an over supply of garlic at the moment so it’s about a quarter of the price it normally is!