So, on to social and personal preferences. As far as social preferences are considered, I like to adhere to social norms in social situations since I tend to feel most comfortable that way. In the case of food, to me that means eating whatever the person serving the food is serving, and trying to eat the amount of it provided, if I don’t have a choice over the amount served. This is just a me liking to conform to social norms type thing. Fortunately, I don’t have any foods I really can’t stand to eat, and I’m happy to make occasional exceptions when it comes to environmental or nutritional guidelines, so that’s all okay.
In terms of personal guidelines that aren’t related to food appreciation or preferences, I like to eat food that is mostly grown relatively locally (like- within Canada!) and grown using sustainable practices. When it comes to meat, I like to eat meat that is free-range with a free-range diet, or wild. Of course, these guidelines sometimes come into conflict with my eating preferences, which are up next for discussion.
In terms of what appeals to me, I know I’ve said it in my blog before, and I’ll say it again now. Quite apart from whether or not I need it from a nutritional perspective, I like fat. If I had a choice, while I wouldn’t want my foods to be swimming in fat (usually), I would definitely want fat to be present as a food component in pretty much all of my eating events. All in all, I think that’s my primary food preference. From a straight food appeal perspective, I can’t think of too many foods or food categories that I couldn’t give up if I had too and remain reasonably satisfied. Having said that, I can’t think of too many food categories that I don’t like, either!
I can however think of a few food categories the loss of which I wouldn’t shed too many tears over due to my ambiguous feelings about them from a nutritional stand point. For example, although I actually like them from a taste-wise perspective, I’m a bit suspicious of beans and grains. I can’t help but feel like they are a bit of recent addition to the human diet (only for the last 10 000 years or so ( wheat and rice)) and I wonder if they are such a good idea. It’s true that we might be adapting to eating them, but it’s also apparently true that our brains are shrinking, as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog article.
This, however, is where my environmentalist guidelines and my food preferences frustratingly collide. While I might enjoy a diet made up almost entirely up vast quantities of vegetables for carbohydrates, cooked tastily in fat, combined with some meat on the side for protein, it doesn’t work so well for someone who is living an urban life in a cold Northern country and wants to be somewhat sustainable. Which, come to think of it, is probably why we started eating beans and grains in the first place- easy storage for long periods of time and able to feed large bunches of people stuck on small amounts of land (aka cities).
Thinking about wheat also leads me to think about the question of eating
processed foods, by which I don’t just mean processed in the current sense
of the word but also in the sense of foods that are made up of various
combinations of other foods, like baked goods and sausages. For me, these
foods confuse the eating scheme a bit, because it’s just plain hard to
know what you are actually eating. The potential problem with this has
become apparent in today’s current processed foods, which often tend to be
composed at least partially of items which I consider to be non-foods.
That’s why I tend to feel happiest with a whole-foods approach where
possible.
posted at 20:41 on Fri, 20 Oct, 2006 |
path: /living
All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.