Growing up I often heard the saying, “I feed to fuel, not to fill.” At the time the idea was somewhat revolutionary, the thought that a banana might actually be a better choice than than a Snicker’s bar offered a shift of perspective.
I recently heard an interview with Alice Waters, the sui generis chef that originated the farm to table idea nearly 50 years ago. In it she remarked that food does more than simply feed us, food lifts our spirits. At that moment I realized that ideas once thought fringe are entering the mainstream. We are in the midst of an evolution from viewing eating as a function that fuels us to eating as an experience that can enhance our spirit. The more awareness and attention we give to how food is grown, where and how we buy it and how we prepare it, and what is our mental-emotional state when we prepare it, the more we understand exactly how food can lift our spirits. There is a difference in food that comes from soil full of wonderful earth minerals that mixes with sunlight and then is harvested and made with love by hands that love to eat it. In this way food does lift our spirits, we can taste it and we can feel it. And as you can see from these quotes below others have felt it too.
We are currently experiencing an evolution
from eating for mere sustenance — to fill and fuel us — to
eating as an experience that enhances our spirit.
FOOD AS ART
Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste rather than exact measurements. -Marcel Boulestin
When we acknowledge, as we must, that there is no such thing called perfect food, just the idea of it, then the real purpose of cooking becomes clear: To make people happy. –The French Laundry Cookbook, Thomas Keller
FOOD AS LOVE
Food is our common ground, a universal experience. –James Beard
Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly. ― M.F.K. Fisher
Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. _ Harriet Van Horne
Gastronomy is the greatest form of therapy that anyone can be exposed to. – Marco Pierre White
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. — Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
FOOD AS MEDICINE
You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces, just good food from fresh ingredients. – Julia Child
The best and most efficient pharmacy is within your own system. – Robert C. Peale
To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. – Buddha
Real food doesn’t have ingredients. Real food is ingredients. – Jamie Oliver
Salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea. –Pythagoras
When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need.” – Ayurvedic proverb
Jane's Dynamic Unwinding Compass 