These simple but incredibly effective dietary measures can be seen as radical ‘first aid’ for bodies which, instead of being treated as temples, have long been treated as convenient depositories for the food we now choose, unconscious or unaware of its nutritional value, and sometimes to fulfil and quell our need for comfort and our taste addictions.
Do we live to eat, or eat to live? Metabolic illness is becoming an epidemic, and it seems that our food choices are at the bottom of this.
When did this really obvious decline in our collective health begin? I do remember, after visiting Canada in 1972 (and availing myself of the glorious and cheap takeaway burgers at The Red Barn in Toronto) being extra aware of the introduction to the UK of North American cultural icons and values: TV shows and movies, but fast food in particular.
Alongside growing economic & socio-political change (leading to the birth of a huge processed food industry), our spiritual foundation has at the same time become very shaky: churches have been emptying for years and Christian principles increasingly abandoned. This, alongside cracks in family structure with an according increase in divorce and single parenting, seems to have been accompanied by an according decline in what Daniel Goleman, (author of Emotional Intelligence) terms 'civility', as well as in mental and physical health.
So much of this can be put down to changing social and spiritual mores and to accompanying degrees of neglect. Much difficult behaviour can be explained purely by early failure in nurturing.
But with the accompanying decline of nutritional standards as well, it seems more than likely that much depression and many mental health issues, as well as physical ills, could also be explained by the quite simple nutritional deficiencies many millions must be suffering.
Can we call this 'malnutrition'?
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