{"id":6029,"date":"2023-09-16T20:55:09","date_gmt":"2023-09-16T20:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/?p=6029"},"modified":"2023-09-16T20:58:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-16T20:58:10","slug":"how-courageous-are-you-when-it-comes-to-healthy-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/how-courageous-are-you-when-it-comes-to-healthy-eating\/","title":{"rendered":"How courageous are you when it comes to healthy eating?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>When we think about Meal Making Transformation are we yearning for something more and deeper in our food lives?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago I was outside watching an incredible super moon pop over the horizon when a neighbor walked up with her dog. I barely had time to ask &#8220;How are things&#8221; when she started enthusing about her trip to Ireland. She had just returned and was so excited.<\/p>\n<p>She had been completely captured by the Irish culture &#8212; the simplicity, the slower pace, the friendliness, the real-ness&#8211;and the food! She so appreciated the culture&#8217;s embrace of local, real, whole food and its careful preparation and enjoyment.<\/p>\n<p>I could sense her yearning to have some of that Irish peace and comfort in her American life &#8212; and was right there with her as I was watching the moonrise on a soft summer night.<\/p>\n<p>Why indeed are our lives so complicated and hurried? Why are our food lives dominated by industrially prepared stuff that can&#8217;t even be called food?<\/p>\n<p>The answer, I think, is that we aren&#8217;t willing to pay the price for lives less complicated and food more nourishing.<\/p>\n<p>That price isn&#8217;t a monetary one. If a simple, nourished life could be bought, we would all be reveling in it, because we&#8217;re good at buying things.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, the price is courage. Because it takes courage to say &#8220;No&#8221; more often to all the glittering, sparkling opportunities that beckon in our abundant modern lives. And when it comes to food, it takes courage to instead<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>take time to figure out what to make<\/li>\n<li>take time to shop for the food needed<\/li>\n<li>organize life so you&#8217;re home in time to make good meals&#8211;or organize so easy meals are within reach for busier nights<\/li>\n<li>take time to sit down and eat meals, with enjoyment<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s a universal law at work here. I call it the Universal Law of Tradeoffs. In other words, acquiring one good thing (like super convenient meals that take no time) requires a tradeoff of at least one or more other good things (like nutrition, comfort, community, taste and economy.)<\/p>\n<p>Food marketers have led us to believe that modern life has delivered us into a you-can-have-it-all, free-for-all bonanza. In reality, our wonderful world of processed convenience foods has exacted a terrible tradeoff price, not only in terms of our health but also in terms of deep enjoyment and communal sharing&#8211;those intangible elements that my neighbor sensed and yearned for.<\/p>\n<p>Generally, we are so immersed in our crazy, misleading culture that we don&#8217;t even notice its toll. But immerse yourself in a sane eating culture, as my neighbor did, and the shortcomings become obvious, glaring and even dismaying.<\/p>\n<p>A clarifying trip to Ireland may not be in your future, of course, but you can still experience an &#8220;awakening&#8221; of sorts. Just skew up your courage and take the time to make yourself a good meal. Doesn&#8217;t have to be fancy, just tasty and comforting. Then take time to sit down, eat and enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>I know that there is precious little in our culture to support such a wildly time-consuming activity that hardly seems a worthwhile use of your precious time. Can I tell you how many times I have felt pitied, ridiculed and even belittled because I devote some of my precious time to making life-giving meals, every day.<\/p>\n<p>But this is where courage comes in. Courage to do what&#8217;s right for us, regardless of what our culture or friends and family think.<\/p>\n<p>Share in the comments: Do you ever yearn for more in your food life? What does it look like? Do you have the courage to create the food life you yearn for?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we think about Meal Making Transformation are we yearning for something more and deeper in our food lives? A few weeks ago I was outside watching an incredible super moon pop over the horizon when a neighbor walked up with her dog. I barely had time to ask &#8220;How are things&#8221; when she started &#8230; <a title=\"How courageous are you when it comes to healthy eating?\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/how-courageous-are-you-when-it-comes-to-healthy-eating\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[784],"class_list":["post-6029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-supportive-thinking-for-healthy-cooking","tag-healthyeating-courage","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6029"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6034,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6029\/revisions\/6034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}