What do we eat and why?

“What shall I eat today?” It is an elementary question that requires a significant, yet simple answer that is seldom satisfied. Nowadays, when it comes to eating, it is quite impossible not to be influenced by the guidance found in women’s magazines, by the special offers proposed by supermarkets and by the food ads plastered all over the place, to the point that without the aid of these entities we are not able to chose by ourselves what to eat. Hence, the fact that the most natural of human activities (eating) has become a mission that necessitates a remarkable amount of help from experts, nutritionists, psychologists, dieticians- you name it, does not leave me perplexed.
Eating well simply means eating fresh products with delight, tradition and serenity (slowfood), regardless of the various food pyramids that have been published. This would explain why in the USA, a nation positively obsessed with healthy eating, there is the highest rate of obesity in the world , whereas Italians and French, who religiously consume foods regarded as fattening such as pasta, olive oil, cold cuts, cheese and foie gras are, on average, happier, healthier and skinnier.
If we are not able to understand what to eat and why we eat it, it is also due to the lack of an adequate knowledge related to food, which, in turn, makes us vulnerable to the recommendations of food science and marketing experts, who see this as an opportunity for profit-making. Indeed, it is in the interests of strategists of the food industries to consolidate our food related anxieties, in order to relieve them by packing the supermarkets’ shelves with new ready-made products (to be bought) which are put forward as ‘solutions’ to our ‘problems’.
One of the most subtle tricks used by supermarkets is to place fruit, vegetables and flowers at the entrance, in order to indirectly communicate that everything is fresh. Indispensable items such as sugar, salt and flour are regularly moved in different departments in order for you look for them and therefore to be tempted to buy other products that you encounter during the search. The pleasant background music is relaxing and also notice the total absence of clocks, so as to make you momentarily lose the notion of time, and therefore prolong your stay whilst you buy, buy, buy.
A possible solution to the immunity to slowfood eating would be to favour organic food …it’s more expensive, fair enough, but it definitely pays off, if you think about all the money we spend for anti-cellulite creams, anti-imperfection serums and so forth. Or at least we could prepare our own food: it is inexpensive and the plus is that you actually know what you’re eating. The burden of preparing everything in advance may seem to be excessive, but in reality knowing what you eat and why will eventually give you many satisfactions.
Claudia Sciumbata

Tags: Food, Sciumbata, what we eat