Eating To Nourish
As living beings, our brains are programmed to like food. This hunger for food motivates us to go look for food on a daily basis. Without this motivation we would most likely starve as finding food was not always easy in the past.
Due to the scarcity of food before the modern world of agriculture, high calorie foods were rewarded by the brain with pleasure inducing hormones. The effect of these hormones is intentionally strong to promote choosing of the highest calorie foods and increase our survival.
Unfortunately, our bodies have not yet caught up with the evolution of our world around us. High fat and sugar foods that trigger the most intense reward response in the brain are easily acquired anytime of day or night.
To make matters even worse, the food industry has poured millions into research and development of making products highly palatable and sought after, if not even addictive to our brains. They essentially have found ways to exploit our reward system through increasing and modifying sugars and fats in our food products.
Living in such a surplus of high calorie, high reward food can make it difficult to eat the foods that are the most nourishing to our bodies. Fruits, vegetables, tubers, beans, etc. come packed with minerals and vitamins essential to our body's everyday functions.
Many of these nourishing foods such as fruits, berries and tubers are able to trigger the reward system in our brain. Unfortunately, they are not able to compete with greater intensity of man-made foods.
It’s not until you cut back on man-made foods, especially those loaded with sugar and fat, that you can really taste the natural sweetness of a peach or strawberry. If you stop eating man-made foods for a long enough duration, you may also find that a piece of cake or cookie now is too sweet and makes you sick to your stomach
Changing your mindset on food
As we increase our lifespan through modern medicine, the need for nourishing nutrition becomes even greater. Many diseases of old age can be prevented through diet and lifestyle in our younger years.
When our brains and bodies were evolving in our earliest ancestors, the possibility of living to over 80 years old was not even a factor. Many of our early ancestors most likely passed away young from predator attacks, injuries or illness.
The most pressing issues at the time were getting enough calories to survive and have energy to fight off danger. The need to prevent the body from developing diseases of old age (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc.) were not of any concern as it was unlikely to live that long.
Luckily modern medicine has allowed us to survive illness and injuries. Unfortunately, it has advanced faster than our bodies own evolutionary systems. The need for high calorie food is no longer important to us and has even become detrimental to our own long-term health.
This puts us in a situation that we have to start purposely changing ourselves now, regardless of your age, to nourish the body and not just fulfill its need for calories.
When you have to decide what to eat for any given meal, apply these principles to ensure you give your body what it needs to function properly and ensure a healthy life well into your eldest years.
Does the meal provide some form of protein?
Does it provide healthy fats (Mono- and Poly-unsatureated fats)?
Does it have different colors (each color indicating a greater amount of different minerals and vitamins)?
If you answered yes to all of these, then you can rest assured you are having a pretty nourishing meal. If you answered no to any of these questions, then find a way to adjust the meal or choose something else.
The Key Takeaway
In our modern world, we need to change our mindset from eating for calories and energy to eating for nourishment and sustaining our body through old age.
Simply eating to satisfy hunger and letting our brain’s craving for high calorie reward foods dictate what we eat can be detrimental to our body as we get older.
Applying our ability to make decisions based on foresight, we can choose to eat foods that will satisfy our hunger and sustain the health of our body and mind.
If you want help with improving your food choices to sustain a long healthy life, schedule your free consultation with me to get started today. Remember, it’s never too late to get started on improving your health!
Written by: Adam Skowyra MPPD, RDN, LD
