21 quotes on food, nature and true nourishment

The healing potential of food is what originally drew me to study nutrition at university.

Although the nutrition principles that I believe and practice are worlds apart from the staunch industry-led science force fed to students, I still marvel in child-like wonder at the nature of it. Miraculous I think, of how the compounds in an apple can clear toxins and how pectin, a naturally occurring fibre, can sweep heavy metals from the body.

I’m endlessly fascinated by the shapes found in nature and foods: the star inside an apple core, the spheres inside a carrot and the juicy chambers inside a tomato. Nature’s sacred geometry and mystical, subtle clues of each plant and its correlation to the body are nothing short of pure beauty.

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While pinning recipes to my nutritious Pinterest board I caught myself staring at the word healthy. I was mesmerised to see that within the word itself was a clue to its true meaning; healing. Healthy = Heal Thy

My inner word nerd went hunting for the origin of the word and found healthy is to be ‘whole’ or in a state of ‘oneness’. Interestingly, 21st century definitions of healthy are based on ‘being in a good physical or mental condition’.

Plato had it right when he said: “The part can never be well unless the whole is well.”

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The rise of the industrial revolution has sadly stripped away the idea of a human as a whole, smashing to pieces the fact that our bodies are bumbling, busy little communities. We’re a galaxy of living components: trillions of cells, perfectly pink tissues, lean muscles, strong bones, whip-smart nerves and synapses, the incredible, incomparable heart-brain connection and our intuition.

They’re affected constantly by an ever-changing, hyper-responsive environment which works to protect and bring you back into balance. Not unlike the universe; dotted with pinpoints of glitter, blazing planets and whirls of energy all working harmoniously to maintain cosmic equilibrium.

And just like the universe, we are built from the very same elements: Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Oxygen, in different chemical compositions designed to carry out different tasks.

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‘Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: YOU ARE ALL STARDUST.

You couldn’t be here if the stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today’. Lawrence Krauss

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Our societal agenda is geared toward ensuring people doubt the communities within them. In short, companies pay big money with the aim at brainwashing, creating doubt in our innate power to control our health, heal our bodies, and flourish in the face of all the pill-popping, stimulant guzzling, fast food advocating that we’re bombarded with.

How? By advertising repeatedly, by coming up with so-called preventatives and instilling fear in the masses to use them or suffer the consequences. By ensuring that nobody can actually understand our food labelling laws let alone read a food label, and by reinventing the nutritional wheel so often that trying to grasp the truth about food becomes impossible.
Understandably, many throw their hands up in the air and decide it’s too hard.

They feel hopeless and hand over their rights to making unadulterated choices, and in doing so line the pockets of giant corporations and help another CEO buy his third holiday home.

So how do we get away from all the propaganda?

Turn off your televisions.

If that seems impossible at least mute the advertisements. They’re nothing but emotionally charged attempts to encourage purchasing opportunities.

Boycott buying magazines.

Magazines are 80% advertising, especially womens magazines. I used to buy Vogue magazine when I was at uni and gaze longingly at the clothes, the bags, and the shoes – oh the shoes! It wasn’t long before I was staring at the size of the models gracing the pages, willing myself to look like them. I remember this line from one edition, which seared itself into my pre-frontal cortex: ‘A good Gucci girl wouldn’t be caught dead with a centimetre of cellulite under her miniskirt’. Until that point I’d never paid any thought to cellulite. And what the heck is a good Gucci girl?

This video that I shared on my Facebook page shows the sheer amount of advertising in magazines and the effect on readers.

The average cost for a glossy magazine is around $8. Given that only 20% of the mag is actual content if we’re being generous, we’re paying $6 for two-thirds of that magazine to be littered with double page advertisements so we can hate ourselves.

Astonishing? Not really. I wrote in this post that the majority of people doing purchasing food for their homes are women. They’re spending the dollars and so they’re the targets of almost all food marketing campaigns.

Ever seen an ad of a man in a supermarket – unless he’s trying to flirt with a women by making a bad joke about not being able to find what he’s looking for? Didn’t think so.

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The Food industry, the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry, the National Heart Foundation, advertising giants, the media and corporations are banking on your to doubt your own ability to be healthy in your own right to keep them afloat.

”Hundreds of billions of dollars spent every year to control the public mind.” Noam Chomsky – one of the most brilliant, enlightened and ballsy journalists, linguists, anti-war activists and political theorists of our time.

Guess what?

You are the power. I’m writing this post to remind you of that in case you’ve forgotten your brilliance. Also, I want to ensure you know this: industries, corporations and their CEOs are nothing without your vote, your dollar and your loyalty.

Here is a compilation of some of my favourite quotes on health, healing and transformation. To remind you that change starts with you, and that nature always has and always will provide you with exactly what you need to ensure you continue blossoming, in any way you please.

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“What most people don’t realise is that food is not just calories, it’s information. It contains messages that communicate to every cell in the body.” Dr. Mark Hyman

“Weight loss does not make people happy. Or peaceful. Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or name. Even a wildly successful diet is a colossal failure because inside the new body is the same shrinking heart.” Geneen Roth

“Food reveals our connection with the Earth. Each bite contains the life of the sun and the earth…We can see and taste the whole universe in a piece of bread! Contemplating our food for a few seconds before eating, and eating in mindfulness, can bring us much happiness.” Thich Naht Hanh

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“Food is not just fuel. Food is about family, food is about community, food is about identity. And we nourish all those things when we eat well.” Michael Pollan

“The answers we’re looking for are all within ourselves, we just need to become better connected, more present…to what we eat, to nature, to our surroundings and to our inner guide.” Mariel Hemingway

“We must avoid the temptation of “food as a source of cheap, nutrient-devoid entertainment” and instead make conscious, deliberate and wise choices about what it is we mindfully incorporate into our living matrix.” Nora T Gedgaudus

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“Dwelling on the negative merely lowers your vibration and create sickness in the mind and body. Use your internal strength and willpower to rise above the thoughts pulling you down and watch your world rise alongside you, continuing to meet you exactly where you are.” Victoria Erickson

“Wishing you a day of remaining in the moment. Not the past or future or story. Not your thoughts or anxieties or lists. But right here, right now, straight into the centre.” Victoria Erickson

“and I said to my body, softly ‘I want to be your friend’.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this’.” Nayyirah Waheed

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“We can’t solve our problems by using the same kind of thinking we used to create them.” Einstein

”Hurt people hurt people. Thats how pain patterns get passed on, generation after generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future.’ Yehuda Berg

“The parts of your body that frustrate or sadden you are simply messengers asking you to eat, drink, move, think, breathe, believe or perceive in a new way. See them as the gift that they are.” Dr Libby

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“To cook for the pleasure of it, to devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organise our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption.” Michael Pollan

“People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.” Wendell Berry

“You as a food buyer, have the distinct privilege of proactively participating in shaping the world your children will inherit.” Joel Salatin

“Food is more than a commodity. It’s also a community. What you eat literally becomes you. Every bit connects you to the whole world.” Ocean Robbins

“The mode of CAN’T: If you go from ‘I want that but CAN’T have it’ to ‘I CAN have that but don’t want it’, theres a massive paradigm shift! “Jason Vale

“Organic is something we can all partake of and benefit from. When we demand organic, we are demanding poison-free food. We are demanding clean air. We are demanding pure, fresh water. We are demanding soil that is left to do its job and seeds that are free from toxins. We are demanding that our children be protected from harm. We all need to bite the bullet and do what needs to be done – buy organic whenever we can, insist on organic, fight for organic and work to make it the norm. We must make organic the conventional choice and not the exception available only to the rich and educated.” Maria Rodale, author of Organic Manifesto: How organic farming can heal our planet.

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That last one by Maria Rodale is my favourite.

Tell me your fave in the comments, and if you’re feeling super sparkly generous feel free to share it on social media.

Self-love. Self-sustain. Self-Educate.

C.x