i've noticed a lot since taking a course called eco-sensual, taught by indigenous instructors, emphasizing the relationship one has to the earth. during this time, i've tried many new practices (or actually ancient practices). deepening my relationship to plants & the earth has been eye-opening, especially when it comes to eating & consumption.
much of modern day consumption revolves around packaging, numbers, expiration dates, nutrition facts, advertisements. these are helpful aspects of modern food consumption, of course, but recently i noticed anxiety arise around natural foods. from a cow that i met in my family's pasture. from foods i prepare rather than buying premade in the grocery store. drinking probiotic soda in a can versus the naturally fermenting fruit in the back of the fridge.
what i noticed was anxiety birthed from disconnectedness to the land & a lack of trust in my ability to safely & properly nourish myself without the promise of the packaging. when on a diet of more processed foods, my stomach might get queasy at the thought of a fresh salad or chewing on fibrous textures. on the other hand, i think of how easy it is to snack on potato chips because they're 'tasty' despite the harmful chemicals within them. it is so easy to munch on these mindless foods & not see a connection to chronic fatigue or irritability.
all of this makes me wonder, is this a near-universal experience for the modern human? when did we become so far removed from the land, we couldn't translate the produce in our fridge to the dirt of the earth? what do the highly processed foods we much on do to our collective perception of food? i think of children growing up in this edible landscape & wonder what this means for the future of dietary consumption.
when i was 7 years old, i remember eating honey bunches of oats & loving them. now, i can go to the store and buy the "same" product with very similar packaging, but how similar is it? when i looked up the ingredients from 2007 i could not find the information. although, some consumers on the shrinkflation reddit thread discuss the way the product has evolved to "honey bunches of no oats", saying their bowl was "90% corn flakes with minimal granola and only one sliver of almond in my whole bowl" with to companies giving way to less & cheaper ingredients.
more & more people, especially kids, are becoming averted to natural textures & sour, bitter, or expressive flavors of the many wonderful plants & foods that humans have cultivated for over thousands of years. i believe that much of this aversion has leaked into the collective subconscious in the past hundred years as the modern human becomes further removed from life, death, food, & plants.
as i dig my feet further into the earth, learning from her nature of my own nature & needs, i see a call for more of us to nurture ourselves by integrating ancient knowledge surrounding consumption (& many other areas) back into our lives. technology & modern life can & should exist integrated, or we lose touch with the actual roots from which we are made.
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