Food as fuel?!?!

 If you ever had the opportunity to sit around listening to the elderly in our communities talk about food when they were growing up and your ear was keen, you would pick up on a few things. They had a process by which they managed food from the way it was grown, stored, cooked and even consumed. Their methods ensured that they had enough to last the family for a prescribed time, and their measured usage ensured that they contained costs as money was quite scarce. 

We now put all kinds of fancy names to what they were doing. If you ever studied food and beverage, you would recognize that some of these practices are age-old and formalized in a manner so they could be taught academically. 

Let's cast our minds back with them and examine the benefits of what they call ground food. We would recognize that eating this way had benefits as those older generations were strong - mentally and physically, in a real way, not having to rely on a gym or other stimulants to get going. They were able to work hard and support large families which they themselves parented. To observe them, we would also learn the sense of community - where the youngsters were sent to another neighbour with a bag containing produce from your parents' property, only to be told wait by the neighbour, and the same bag was emptied, refilled with produce from their land and sent back by you. Yes, bartering worked. 

Many of the foods consisted of:

• Yams, sweet potatoes, English potatoes, breadfruit, eddoes, and cassava as the starches.
• Beans, lettuce, cabbage, christophene, and marrow as some of the staple vegetables
• Pumpkin, squash, ochros, bonavice, green peas, green bananas, ripe bananas, plantain, figs and the like. 
• Mangoes, Bajan ackees, cherries, soursops, and whatever was in season as some of the more popular fruits. 

Back then, most food production was basic, without too much combination of ingredients to make all the pies etc. known today. The food was as we call it in Barbados, stretched out. 

 Back then your parents made you eat it with comments like - it's good for you, this is all there is to eat so get it down, we don't have money to waste...and the list can go on. 

Nowadays this is what we want to eat: 

and it is killing us ever so quickly. 

Yes, tourism has broadened our culinary experiences, but we seem to just eat without understanding how it benefits our bodies. Our diets should sustain us within our environments - which has shifted from active to sedentary for many. 

We are eating loads of carbs without fibre content. We don't take time to understand the origins of food and how it will benefit our bodies. Instead of eating food as fuel, we seem to be eating for full stomachs; some don't even think about the whole concept of eating as an experience. 

We have developed the term foodies for those who delight in various gastronomic delights, but do delve deeper, do they have an understanding of food and its impact on the body? Too many don't know how to use spices nor the benefits of spices to the meal. Sure you want to escape the mundane but don't do so at the expense of detriment to one's health. 

Let's decide from to-now to look at the impact of our diet on our bodies. Let's practice what some may term mindful eating. Our diets should enable us to function within our environments.