Healthy Eating
Many women in the West have a poor body image. They see ridiculously thin models on the media presenting images that most of them are unable to live up to, and a proportion succumb to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Meanwhile, obesity is a problem that besets a substantial proportion of the community. Why women should be more susceptible to eating disorders than men is a good question that I will tackle later.
There is an industry, much of it government funded, advising us what we should or shouldn't eat and many people have turned their diet into their religion. Not just vegetarians, but people who will eat only certain healthy foods and avoid others which they fear will raise their cholesterol, or lower their IQ. What is deemed healthy or unhealthy changes periodically according to the latest study.
There's another group who will only eat a Big Mac or a Pizza Hut pizza. Many
mothers will let their children choose their own diet, which tends to degenerate
into the lowest common denominator of fast, sweetened, bland food. Because these
children don't develop their taste buds early in life they are unable to appreciate
subtle flavours later on in life. Cooking as a skill is derided, in part because
of pressure from the women's movement who want to escape from what they see
as a female stereotype. Fast food, so they argue, has 'freed' them.
The 'healthy' eaters and the fast food eaters have this in common: they have stopped listening to their bodies and instead listen to others to determine what they should eat. If you listen to your body it will tell you things.
Listening to your body means first stilling the mind. You can't hear your body if your mind is filled with the clutter of thoughts that occupy most people in their waking lives. You also can't listen to your body if you are caught up the latest fashion. These fashions dictate not just what you should eat and wear but also what you should think. Most of what passes for opinion is simply fashion.
Pregnant women get cravings for the foods that are good for them at that time and animals in the wild will eat only what they need. It's only domesticated animals, and people, who get overweight.
More on this later.
