Healthy Can Taste Good

What does it mean to eat healthy?

Let's be clear, food can be pleasurable and can even taste good, but the primary focus of food is health. Food provides energy and nutrition. Food boosts or depletes the immune system. Food supports our health or destroys it. Food is a necessity whether we like it or not.

We are bombarded with opinions and research, some legitimate and some biased. We are told by a million different sources that the same thing is healthy and unhealthy. We are lead to believe we MUST eat this thing or that thing.
All of this has created a food industry more interested in collecting our money than in providing nutritional value. 

Food-like substances are sold as food far too often. Far too many people buy them thinking they are getting what they need and then wondering why their health is so poor. 

Sometimes doctors prescribe these food-like substances rather than push their patients to put forth a tiny bit more effort to get the nutrition they need from actual whole food.

I've long had a love-hate relationship with food that has shown up in my poetry as well as in my fiction, including the short story, Grandma's Table, which appears in my book, Take a Chance & Other Stories of Starting Over. The texture of food grossed me out for years. The taste was nothing special. I struggled to understand people's pull toward food. Sometimes I still do.

I started doing research because I wanted to eat healthy. I'm not even sure when my research began, maybe as early as high school. I started eating bran flakes after learning they were a "healthy" cereal. 

Since then I've read myriad books trying to find the way to eat healthy and be healthy. I made changes, some incremental, some abrupt along the way. Eventually, I discovered nutritionfacts.org, a website that compiles and dissects research to examine nutritional value and the best way to eat one's nutrients. Dr. Gregor also has a good book called How Not to Die based on the research he discusses on nutritionfacts.org.

When I became a vegetarian and my stomach issues disappeared, I was surprised. It was an experiment that was supposed to last six weeks. Instead, I remained a vegetarian especially after a few dips into eating meat that left me with terrible stomachaches. Eventually, I took the next step and became vegan, or more precisely I adopted a whole food plant-based diet. Suddenly I felt better than I ever had. I was more energetic. I was more alert. I was focused. I was more compassionate. My whole life improved. Read more here.

And... surprise, surprise. I actually started to enjoy the taste of some fruits, vegetables, and grains. They tasted cleaner, brighter, and natural. As I adapted to this new idea, I still struggled from time to time because I still find the process of eating disgusting. 

But... This new, healthier way of eating inspired me to create new recipes, to play with food in new ways, and to try new things. I worked to incorporate foods as medicine into my diet. I looked at the nutritional value of food as an integral part of creating recipes that didn't sacrifice taste.

All that said, it's easy to eat unhealthy as a vegan. There are many vegan food-like substances available in grocery stores and restaurants. Recently while travelling, I ate at a few places where the food was vegan, but it didn't quite qualify as healthy. I allow myself that indulgence on occasion, but I prefer to eat as healthy as possible. 

As I started noticing how often people eating vegan diets depended on these food-like substances and how often friends and family thought eating a plant-based diet must be so difficult, I started to want to make it easier for people to try a healthy whole food, plant-based diet. Eating a whole food, plant-based diet doesn't have to be difficult or lead to a feeling of deprivation. I'm more satiated now than I've ever been. Eventually, I created a blog, Vegan Cooking with TLC, to share recipes, cooking tips, and thoughts on eating a healthy vegan diet.

The healthier I eat, the better my body functions. The more I indulge in unhealthy foods, the worse I feel. While an indulgence might feel good in the moment, that feeling is fleeting. Eating nourishing food offers the body the opportunity to reach a lasting level of feeling good.