Today, the choice of food is huge. From fast food and supermarkets to gourmet restaurants and farmers’ markets, consumers seem to have been given every possible option. With this in mind, it’s easy to be tempted to eat for fun, forgetting the old adage that food can be medicine. So what is this food? Should food be medicine for us or just pleasure? Are our attitudes towards food changing?
Different points of view
Around 431 BC. e. Hippocrates, known as the father of modern medicine, said: “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.” We are all familiar with the phrase “You are what you eat” and many people today are supporters of vegetarianism, veganism and even a raw food diet as a path to health. The ancient wisdom of the Yogis speaks of “moderation”, while emphasizing that we are not only a body, but also an “unlimited pure consciousness”, and that nothing on this plane of reality can change who we really are, not even food.
Every kind of diet has been created and promoted for health, whether it’s the high-protein, high-carb, high-fat Mediterranean diet rich in nuts, fish, and vegetables, or the famous mushroom diet that so many celebrities use today. Some say you need to reduce your fat intake, others say you need to increase it. Some say that protein is good, others say that excess protein will give negative results: gout, kidney stones and others. How do you know what to believe? Many people get confused and resort to eating again as a pleasure, unable to make sense of conflicting facts. Some have switched to healthy eating and are proving their point with their own results.
While doctors are trying to make us healthy with drugs and surgery, traditional medicine advocates often prescribe diet, attitude, and lifestyle changes. Many people follow the advice of both, combining both types of therapy to become healthy.
However, more and more attention is being paid to how food affects our health. We can’t help but toss between thinking about food as medicine and gastronomic pleasure.
Is there any development?
Perhaps our relationship with food is changing. Sources say that the first step to taking control of your health and life is to become aware of what you are eating and begin a smooth transition to a “cleaner” diet. For example, choose organic products instead of regular ones and buy fewer products with chemical additives and preservatives. As the intelligibility increases, the taste buds will begin to improve. As many healthy eaters say, the need for sugar and “less healthy” foods is beginning to fade as cleaner foods replace the old, chemical ones.
Further, along the path of nutritional evolution, we find that as soon as processed foods in the diet are replaced with fresh vegetables, fruits and whole grains, the view begins to change. The perception of food, interaction with it and its place in life are changing. A person becomes less dependent on the desires of the stomach, more attention begins to pay to the mind and how it is influenced by what is happening in the body. At this stage, food can become medicine because of the knowledge that everything that enters the body has a profound effect on it. But this is not the end of the transition.
Those who continue their path to the development of consciousness, at a certain stage, realize what yoga philosophy says – we are not only our bodies, but also pure consciousness. When this stage is reached depends on the person, but if a person has reached it, he will feel a completely different attitude towards food. Food will again move into the pleasure section, as the person realizes that he is not only the body. At this stage of the evolution of consciousness, there is little that can drive a person out of himself, illnesses practically disappear, and if they happen, they are perceived as purification, and not as an indisposition.
With the realization that the body is a field of consciousness embodied in a denser form, quantum physics takes on a new meaning, a person begins to feel the power of knowing who he really is.
As you can see, there is an obvious transition in relation to food: from unconscious enjoyment through a world where food is medicine, back to a simple feeling of pleasure. All stages are needed to understand who we are and what we are doing here. As more and more attention is paid to the quality of food, do not forget that this is just one stage of expanding consciousness regarding food, eventually you can rise above these concerns. This does not mean that you do not need to think about the quality and impact of food on health, just that you need to understand that awareness does not end there. Many people will not reach the last stage of this game in this life. There is something to think about. And what do you think?