Food

For the past year I have been going through a transformation. Lets call it a food transformation. For 34 years of my life I did not worry too much about what I ate. My views on diet consisted of eating everything in moderation. Then as I started to get more serious about triathlon I was overwhelmed with information on diet and performance. So without ever really trying I started to gather information and started trying to make sense of the convoluted, controversial, and confusing industry of food. Now, almost two years later I am still learning and trying to make some sense out of the endless contradiction we call food, but I have learned a lot, which only scratches the surface, but awareness is the key and knowing all sides of an issue is what allows us as humans to make an educated choice.


Anyway, I am not an expert, or even remotely qualified to tell anyone what to eat but I have started to develop a philosophy on food and the other day I did come across a quote that I think sums up my entire view. It is from The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. In his opening chapter there is this line. "A great number of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature's complexities". So what does this quote mean to me? It means eat as natural as possible. It means pay attention to where your food is coming from (i.e, preparation, origin). It means that we all know what food is better for us than others so just know that your health is a conscious choice that YOU make. It means eat variety and never an overabundance of any one type of food.



Food is a very personal choice, people eat for many different reasons. Mine are for the long term health of my body and my performance at a race. Identify yours and follow the steps above.