Imagine a sunny field of green, yellow and red. The sky is blue, a gentle breeze blows from the nearby hills, where a flock of sheep peacefully graze. What sort of produce grows on this field? Keep on walking and you see a farm at the end of the road, where chickens roam free and a grandmother is lovingly cooking large heavy pots of fresh food. A hearty, inviting smell of flavours and goodness permeates the farm’s kitchen and can be felt from the path nearby. It’s like a dream.
Now go to your local supermarket and pick up a ready meal of your choice, flip it over and read the ingredients. I did it myself and that’s what I found: WHEAT Flour, Water, Skimmed MILK, Whole EGG, EGG White, Rapeseed Oil, Salt, SOYA Lecithin, Pork, Water, WHEAT Flour, Salt, Ammonium Carbonate, Pork Rind, Sea Salt, Dextrose, White Pepper, Nutmeg, Paprika, Cayenne, Triphosphate, Sodium SULPHITE, Marjoram, Ascorbic Acid, Collagen, Water, Cellulose.
This is your standard processed food, down the local grocery shop, takeaway or canteen. Many people’s daily staple, so packed with salt, fat and additives you can’t taste anything else. It sounds like very loud music in a nightclub at 3am, hurts your senses like a flash-light on your face, a strong wind before a summer storm. It’s aggressive, impact-full and numbing for your taste buds. The salt, the fat, the sugar and the additives.
Many of us are so far removed from nature we don’t even know how real food looks like, let alone how it tastes. I remember watching a documentary style program where they carried out an experiment in a school. The kids didn’t know the names of very common fruits and vegetables and I’d be surprised if their parents did!
A step towards a happier, more fulfilling life is to learn what is real food and what is not. To understand it intellectually but more importantly to learn to taste it. So here is my one week challenge, something new and eye opening to do for 7 days. For one week we can only eat food we either cook from scratch ourselves using whole, not ready-made ingredients. Alternatively food with no industrial additives from outlets that give us full recipe transparency and where we can verify there’s nothing like triphosphate or other weird sounding stuff. And we can eat as much or as little of this as we like, for a full week. Let’s forget fad diets and “free from” regimens for 1 week. And when you eat the real food, remember to chew it slowly and close your eyes at times and think of the grandma in the farm with the pretty field. Or something else that makes you happy and relaxed. Eating isn’t just filling your mouth and stomach. Eating is experiencing, connecting with yourself, living!
Real food, nothing else. Because you’re worth it, for a week at least. You’ll notice it’s not so hard when cooking at home but as for eating out, you’ll struggle to go past some of the salad shops or health food restaurants. And if you don’t usually have salad for lunch or don’t go to these healthy places, try them for one week. And if you live somewhere where these outlets don’t exist, well, cook your own lunch and bring it to work for a week.
If you need inspiration, keep it as simple and fresh as possible. One day you can look for some really nice, high quality seasonal vegetables like celery or fennel, carrots or spinach, or whatever it’s in season in your part of the world, and eat them raw, slowly. Train yourself to taste the beauty of real simple food! I love rye crisp bread, or if I can get hold of it, high quality artisanal sour-dough wholemeal spelt bread. I slice it thinly and top it with chopped garlic and extra virgin olive oil. I sometimes use ripe organic chopped cherry tomatoes, maybe with fresh basil, or oregano. It’s good to keep it simple, no more than 3-4 ingredients at a time. Eat slowly and remember to feel all the flavours, contrasts and wholesomeness. Or make a soup, beans stew or casserole.
When it comes to appreciating good food, especially when we need to train our taste, we have to start with simple high quality ingredients and compositions and then add complexities as we refine our ability to taste.
Good news is that simple food is quick and easy to prepare. When you are eating dinner, can you really taste the ingredients it’s supposed to be made of? Or is it salt and fat or sugar that hits you first? If that’s the case, well, that stuff is NOT good! Condiments are made to help bring the flavour out, not to cover it. But in the world of appearance, marketing and camouflage it’s very easy and wrong to settle for low quality, shiny looking, empty stuff. Not in our plates!
Learn to appreciate the small and simple to then really taste the marvellous and complex. That’s my first basic contribution, a first step towards understanding what nutrition is. Eat better and have more energy to take more out of life!