Daily Aliment

A life of moderation is generally considered wise. Today, however, it is difficult to live moderately when society and culture demand more and more of each person. Regarding the USA specifically, significant changes have occurred in recent time: both parents have to work when just one used to; on average people work more than they used to. Because of these factors and many others, problems such as insomnia, obesity, and diabetes have become increasingly common. With excess comes imbalance.

What can reason tell people about living a life of more and more, versus one of moderation? More specifically, what can reason and the intelligence of moderation tell people about good nutrition, and how to live a healthy life?

The diet many people are accustomed to is one in which the intelligence of their own taste has been tricked: essentially re-engineered to addict people to ways of eating that are bad for their bodies but immensely profitable for companies. Recently, an article on this very subject, called The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, caught many reader’s attention, with over 1300 comments at time of writing. This type of elevated response shows that the issue of what we eat is vitally, and obviously, important. Though this response was tremendous, it’s not enough. Though there is a widescale rejection of processed foods, people have been inundated with the extreme tastes. This has made them used to eating, and craving, what is essentially bad for them.

Outside the glass doors of where I write there is a stack of bee screens and hive supers from my girlfriends beehive. Bees come and go in ones in twos, swooping in and out of the crevices between the screens. The weather has become warmer, and with it swarms of “robber” bees have shown up to purloin honey and supplies from the hive, which is currently vacant. The screens have wax on them, some with honey still embedded in the combs.

Honey is the sweetest thing in nature, with 28g worth (roughly the amount of sugar in two Yoplait yogurts) taking ~ 125,000 flowers to produce. This illustrates just how sweet the food is that many people eat every day. A latté with 15g of sugar is the equivalent of roughly 61,000 flowers worth of nectar. The average bowl of cereal is the equivalent of about 80,000 flowers.

While some fruit may have more sugar than the figures mentioned above, it is in the form of carbohydrates that are mixed with vitamins, minerals, water, and fiber. All of these things slow down the absorption of sugar by your digestive tract. In other words, pure sugar is a concentrated dose of only the sucrose/fructose/glucose, without any of the associated nutrients. I use this illustration to put in perspective how extremely sweet and concentrated pure sugar is. While it is going overboard to condemn it totally, now you know nature’s equivalent.

So when did our tastes get so out of whack? For many, it begins in childhood. When I was younger, I craved super sweet cereal, as do many kids. It is basically like eating dessert for breakfast, what kid wouldn’t want that? The companies intention to hook people with sweet cereals, however, moves past childhood, with over 31 percent of the US population eating cold cereal every morning. Many cereals have sugar as their second ingredient, with the first usually being white or corn flour. These first two ingredients, plus milk (which also naturally has sugar) are not a sustainable source of energy. When your body takes in simple starches and sugars, it is a concentrated dose of pure energy, that your body rapidly converts into glucose, the basic energy currency for cells. Eating sweet things every day, multiple times a day, causes ones’ body to become dependent upon this boost in glucose, and, correspondingly, insulin. If this happens chronically, people become insulin resistant: the cells of their body no longer respond as well to insulin in the bloodstream. This is the beginning of Type 2 Diabetes. To explain exactly what is at stake, here is a graph showing Type 2 Diabetes rates in recent years —

(Note: this is an oversimplification of the factors that result in Type 2 Diabetes — please read further into the subject for more information.)

Not only does this way of eating morph what people think tastes good, it makes their body physically dependent upon eating this way. When a body is out of balance, it craves things to return to a balanced state. However if that “balanced” state is dependent on sugar and simple starches, things which make your body insulin resistant (along with contributing to a host of other health problems), then the cycle of satisfying cravings becomes a viscious cycle, that leads your body further out of whack.

It is possible to get back in balance. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to stop eating in extreme ways. When I used to do regular karate training, I heard someone ask my sensei how to lose weight. “Watch what you eat!” he snapped back at them. This is the most effective diet in existence.

In my own journey to reduce the amount of sugar I eat, I discovered a few techniques —

• By not eating sweet things for breakfast, my cravings for sugar throughout the day mostly disappeared. And after several days of not eating sugar, my cravings essentially went away.
• Another, more gentle way to approach eating less sugar is deciding on and eating only one sweet thing a day (one cookie a day does no harm).
• Yet another way is to eat meals that are balanced in tastes at least twice a day. These tastes are sour, bitter, pungent (spicy), astringent, salty, as well as sweet. Eating a balanced meal like this, while it may be the most particular and labor/thought intensive of the above techniques, is the best way to get rid of imbalances in the diet.

Sometimes there are many things to do
Sometimes there are very few

When there are few things to do, it feels nice. Every day feels loose and relaxed, whether sunny or cloudy. On cloudy days I sit inside and drink tea. On sunny days I go outside and walk around. I can do what I want with my time, not worrying about the things that have to be done in the future. Tasks fall like dominos, one after another, or they stay piled up for a while, waiting for me to act on them. Either way, procrastination isn’t an issue.

When there are many things to do, it feels like my body is worked up in a tightened state. Things have to be done quickly, there is no time for wandering or curiosity. In fact, during these times I see a lot less, even though I am ‘doing more.’

That tight, rushed feeling of doing many things can transfer to the times of doing few things, but it seldom works the other direction — Many times I feel tight and rushed when there are actually few things to do, but I can’t feel loose and relaxed when there are many things to do.

I see this happen a lot in school. There we will be in a class, and then the class ends 20 minutes early. Some students rocket out of their chairs, gathering all their things together and almost dropping them in their haste, rushing out the door. They did, however, unexpectedly just get out of class 20 minutes early. This is an example of how the tight/rushed state transfers to a place where the loose/relaxed would actually be the proper reaction. I see it again and again, day in, day out.

There’s no conclusion to this kind of a grouping of ideas. Some people will live this way, others will live that way. When something changes in life it’s easy to say “things are better now.” Then one day you get used to things again. Once again something changes, and things are better now. But maybe things are neither better nor worse.