It's unfortunate that the healing powers of food have been kept a secret for so long. Although there's been no conscious conspiracy, no health-care cover-up, and no intentional oversight, most of us are in the dark about the many ways in which food heals us.
We're paying a big price for our ignorance: like a silent thief, it's robbing us of our health--physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially. I wrote this book so that the secrets inherent in food won't remain secrets. After all, they're too important to all of us. Every aspect of our lives--even of the world and the planet--can potentially be healed by them.
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I am inviting you to join me on a journey that charts new nutritional territory
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In The Healing Secrets of Food, I am inviting you to join me on a journey that charts new nutritional territory. With my groundbreaking, cutting-edge strategies, I'll take you to a place that nourishes you each time you eat. To help you successfully navigate your way through this new terrain, beginning with your very next meal, I'll show you how to: eat to prevent or reverse physical ailments, experience the food-mood connection, reunite with the spiritual meaning of food, and reclaim your "social nutrition" heritage. With these health-enhancing tools at your table, you'll be empowered to unlock your health potential and to achieve your personal nutrition and wellness goals.
If you've already glanced at the table of contents, you've seen what I've listed as the healing secrets of food: the links among food, health, and socializing, feelings, mindfulness, appreciation, connection, and optimal food. You may be wondering, What's so secret about these? After all, aren't most of us familiar with these words? Don't we know what they mean?
But have you ever considered these concepts in terms of food? Most of us haven't. Do you know that eating with mindfulness and appreciation, for example, may enhance your health? Most of us don't These healing secrets have been buried, ignored, diminished, and overlooked as the powerful healing tools they are. You can change this trend and reap the endless benefits of food--if you're willing to blaze a new nutrition trail.
In Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra writes, "The most significant breakthrough is not contained in isolated findings but in a completely new worldview." Our current food worldview encourages us to look at food with binoculars. One moment we point them at protein, the next at carbohydrates, and then at fat--both in food and on our body. Viewed through such a restricted field of vision, we see food solely from a singular, biological perspective of "isolated findings."
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What we eat is an amalgam of macro- and micronutrients that influence your health and well-being
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But toss away the binoculars and instead view food through a kaleidoscope, and the multidimensional healing secrets of socialization, feelings, mindfulness, appreciation, connection, and optimal food emerge. And then, with the simple turn of the kaleidoscope, suddenly the healing secrets are distilled into the "four facets of food." In place of our interesting but limited binocular focus on food, stunning new nutritional insights are revealed; suddenly, subtleties that reflect physical, emotional, spiritual, and social nourishment are manifested. Viewed from such an interactive, ever-changing, multifaceted vantage point, food and nutrition become integrated, interconnected, and whole.
Rather than thinking about the four facets of food as a new diet or as more dietary dogma, as you read about them, I ask you to consider that they integrate our current nutrient-oriented view of food while also acknowledging the harder-to-measure healing dimensions of food, such as its link to emotions, spiritual well-being, and community. At their most meaningful level, the facets are independent of one another but also interdependent and profoundly interconnected. Once you begin to view food from this authentic, multifaceted framework, your entire relationship to food--and your perception about its power to heal holistically--will change at its core.
If you've ever chosen a particular food after calculating its calorie content--with the intention of maintaining or losing weight--you've experienced the physical well-being facet of food. From this nutritional perspective, you're assessing food mostly as a "product" that is linked either to illness or to wellness. It tells us that what we eat is an amalgam of macro- (carbohydrates, protein, fat, fiber) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals) that influence your health and well-being.
Viewing food from the perspective of physical health means analyzing it for its nutrient content, as animal or plant based, as processed, enriched (nutrients taken out have been added back), or fortified (new nutrients have been added to the food), as neutraceuticals (foods or components that provide medical or health benefits), as being irradiated (food has been exposed to radiation), or as a solution to be administered intravenously. This biomedical perspective includes studying the metabolism of food, what to eat, portion size, weight (of both food and your body), and the effect food has on the body (or on an ailment). Its aim is to use food and nutrition to treat, prevent, or reverse an ailment and to maintain bodily functions.
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Viewed from an interactive, ever-changing, multifaceted vantage point, food and nutrition become integrated, interconnected, and whole
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Do you ever wonder why you crave carrot cake instead of a carrot when you're anxious? The facet of emotional well-being targets the effects your emotions and moods have on your food choices--and vice versa. Sometimes called "food-mood" research, nutritional neuroscience, or behavioral medicine, I describe the study of food and emotional well-being as psychological nutrition. This is because it is linked mostly to our emotions and food-related behaviors or disorders, such as food cravings, anorexia, bulimia, overeating, and subclinical eating disorders (SEDs), such as obsessions about food.
This emerging field of mind-body nutrition research assesses how food affects feelings via hormones (chemical messengers) that are released in the brain when we eat certain foods. The goal is to use food to achieve a desired emotional outcome and to understand how certain emotions and moods influence our food choices.
When you're not paying attention, are not fully conscious, food becomes merely something to eat. But if you blend the produce on your plate with "non-sense"--that which the ordinary senses cannot perceive--you're no longer eating only for your heart but also from from the heart. When you eat with such conscious connection, regard, and appreciation, food becomes a path to spiritual well-being.
The core concepts of this spiritual food facet are connection and interconnection with your food through awareness of the interrelationship among living entities: soil, water, air, sun, plants, animals, ourselves, and those involved in bringing the food to our table (such as the farmer, the grocer, and the cook). Such spiritual nutrition explores the consciousness (degree of mindfulness, regard and appreciation, loving awareness, sense of connection, and so on) that we bring to our food. This philosophy and mentality is at the core of the food-related wisdom espoused by world religions and cultural traditions for thousands of years.
The desired outcome of the spiritual food facet is to perceive food (both plant and animal based) as an "equal," in that it contains the mystery of life as do we human beings and to appreciate the alchemy, the interconnection, the "oneness" inherent in food and eating.
Think of your favorite food experience. Was it sharing food with some friends, family members and co-workers, or were you dining at a table for one? This facet is about the benefits that food can bring when you're dining in a socially supportive environment.
Such social nutrition asks that we bring an "other-oriented" awareness (consciousness) to our meals by regarding the relationship among food, ourselves, friends, family, and others (such as cooks, farmers, and grocers), and that we be aware of our dining environment. It includes being conscious of whether you are dining alone or with others; acknowledging the setting (walking down the street, sitting in our car, watching TV); as well as taking in the aesthetics, such as the presentation of the food and the atmosphere of the room.
