Let me ask you a question: how important do you find food?
A lot of you will probably respond: Well, food is important, because if you don’t eat you’ll die, right? And yes, you’re obviously right about that, everyone needs to eat to not starve to death. Isn’t food more important to you than that though? Do you treat yourself with chocolate or other sweets? Do you binge eat or do you diet? Do you find yourself not knowing why the packet of crisps is gone so quickly? Do you consider food as threatening? Do you have something that you just can’t stop eating as soon as you start eating it? Even if you don’t think about food, it is always there, it has a tight grip on you and a lot of you are probably trying to ignore what a huge impact it has on your life. Since when did you think that you should lose some weight? Do you ever think about vitamins, minerals or properly balanced food? If you never think about food in this way, you’re probably trying to avoid thinking about the fact, that food can also be poisonous and make your body ill! Did your doctor tell you, that you’ll be ill if you eat salty, fatty foods and you still eat it? “Well, it’s not gonna kill me, it’s only food!” –> Wrong! In fact it is going to kill you sooner or later, if you don’t care for your body!
Well, I for one find food very important! There can’t be a good day without good food. Every day I spend about 2-4 hours preparing and eating food and I cook at least once every day, sometimes even 3 times. I might be a special case, because I have to be very careful about what I eat due to my food allergies and I generally can’t eat out, so I’m bound to pay a lot of attention to food! My eating habits might be a bit over the top for normal people, don’t you think? Who has time to cook 3 times a day?! Well, I usually only find time for that on weekends, but it happens maybe once a week. And no, I’m not overweight: 1,70m (5.6 feet) with 50 kg (7.87 stone) – it’s even slightly underweight and I have been holding this weight for 10 years now (-+ 2kg)!
I can’t cook though …
… was what I said when I was a teenager. I never had to cook in my child hood and in my teenage years I could only reheat food, put stuff in the oven or prepare ready meals. I remember eating stuff like tin ravioli and frozen cheese pies, pot noodles or “miracoli” – which is a widely used term in Germany for noodles with some sauce powder to which you just have to add water and stir it up. With this kind of knowledge I moved out of my Mum’s place. I have no idea why I didn’t get scurvy! After about half a year I could cook eggs and pasta with lots of different miracoli sauces – like four cheeses, or romana, all out of powder with probably more flavour enhancer than should be legally allowed. Another thing I’d eat a lot was “yum yum” – basically ramen with absolutely no flavour and freeze dried veg. I knew how to make semolina, but even pancakes were absolutely way out of my league.
After half a year of this non-sense I couldn’t eat it anymore! It was horrible! Who can eat like that for years and years? My parents cooked a lot of “real” food in our child hood. They would rarely make miracoli or oven meals, and then only if we insisted or if there was really no time. Probably you actually can keep eating oven meals and miracoli or tin food all your life if you were brought up like that, but I was not! I started experimenting with cooking “real” food about half a year after I moved out and I learned a lot from just watching my Dad cook something random. First attempts are always hard. My first pasta sauces were basically tomato purée, cream, chicken, buried in rosemary, but hell, I sure tried!
It took a few realistic cook books – not the ones that list incredible ingredients that you can’t find anywhere – and some awful attempts that got binned right away, but in the end I learned how to prepare a healthy meal (without flavour enhancers, preservatives etc). Without even realizing, most of my cooking was lactose free, which gave me a good starting point when I discovered my food allergies.
Why suddenly allergies?
How come that after 22 years of normal lactose and gluten rich food I suddenly developed those allergies? Well, coeliac disease is usually triggered by something – e.g. an infection or a stomach bug. Even only stress can trigger it. When my coeliac disease became active, I was studying two degrees at the same time with a normal work week of 50-60 hours. I only cooked once or twice a week and the rest of the time I ate canteen food and pot noodles in the evening. My breakfast would usually be a yoghurt, a croissant and a coffee. I drank about a liter of coffee every day and I didn’t sleep more than 6 hours in about 6 months in a row – usually less. Even though I had spare time that I spent together with my partner, I wasn’t really relaxing. My mind was always working on some problem or analysing something I read that day. When I didn’t see my partner I would smoke about a pack of cigarettes a day. After 4 months of 50-60 hr work weeks there followed exam time. I scheduled 6 and only managed to do 5, because I became ill. Normal are 2-3 exams per exam period. Why did I become ill, that’s what you ask if you ask why I developed food allergies! I became ill, because I didn’t look after my body.
Of course I could have developed (i.e. triggered) coeliac disease any other time and it is very likely that my migraines and my depressions were also caused by the disease which was just not showing the “normal” stomach symptoms at that time, but if you’re prone to be ill, you will definitely be ill if you treat your body like a machine and food like fuel. If you’re prone to get a heart attack, go ahead, do everything the doctor told you not to do and you will get one! Think about it, you might buy yourself another 10 years if you listen to your doctor and stop eating that crap that you stuff into yourself all the time! On the other hand – “live fast, die young” is definitely an interesting concept as well, but don’t expect to be happy, healthy and good looking until the end!
Every action you take, every bit of food you eat will be reflected in your body. If you eat too much chocolate you’ll get bad skin. If you overeat, you will be overweight. If you don’t get enough iron, you will feel tired and stuck. If you eat too much protein, your body will take too much energy to process it and you will feel dead after eating. There is one little trick that will always help you find out whether you’re eating the wrong thing: If you feel worse after eating than before, when you were hungry, something is very wrong. If you’re very tired after eating, something is wrong. If you don’t feel energetic and “good to go” again, then it’s no good! You wouldn’t let your car run on the wrong fuel, would you? You’d know that this would break it sooner or later. Don’t treat your body worse than your car!
Why am I telling you this?
This article is only supposed to raise your awareness about what you eat and maybe even how you eat it: Do you eat in front of the TV or the computer? Do you eat while you’re reading? Do you eat very quickly to “get on with things” or while you drive your car or walk from the tube to your office? Think about it: It is much more likely to overeat while you’re watching TV or eat too quickly if you’re rushing to work. The result might be overweight, heart burn and even worse stuff.
Start thinking about your habits today and maybe you can even buy yourself a bit more life-time with it:
- Go to your fridge and have a look. Do you actually have anything in there that would be worth cooking? Do you keep veg in your fridge or are there only pickles, a bit of cheese, some ham and some soda together with some ready meals? How would you ever want to cook if there’s nothing in your house and you have to go to the supermarket first?
- While you’re in the kitchen: pull out some processed foods you buy (maybe cereal bars, ready meals, pour-over sauces?) and read the ingredients list. Did you know that “natural flavouring” only means that the flavouring is not synthetic? “Natural” strawberry flavouring is made out of wood shavings! With cooking and preparing your food yourself you can control what ends up in your pot. No artificial or “natural” flavouring or potentially risky synthetic stabilizers etc needed.
- Next time you eat at a fast food chain, ask for the ingredients list. They’re legally bound to have them around (at least in Europe) and I promise, you will be surprised! Why do you eat something if you don’t even know what’s in there?
- Inform yourself how the meat, that you find on the super market shelves gets produced. It is definitely used in your canteen, your next fast food chain and in your smart price ready meals to keep things cheap. A broiler chicken might have died from “natural” causes only days after it was slaughtered (after 6 weeks) due to over-breeding, while a healthy well-treated chicken from a slower-growing breed could live years (You want to know more now? Click here). If you cook your own food you can decide yourself whether you want to eat something like that or not.
Start living consciously today and make a difference for your own sake!
