Food for Thought – Thoughts on Food

When I was a kid one of my favorite foods was pork chops. I loved when we would have them for supper. I would even request pork chops for my birthday dinner. They are the first meat I can remember learning how to cook. But around the age of thirteen I stopped eating them. Not because I stopped liking the taste but because I decided to stop.

Why the change? Because I am Jewish and eating things such as pork and shellfish are prohibited in the Torah. It wasn’t that I hadn’t known that before but the knowledge hadn’t made an impression on me until then. I finally understood the importance of being connected to my history and my people and how the simple act of eating, of mindful eating, could impact my life. So began my life of reading labels, inspecting ingredients and finding polite ways to turn down offers of food from friends. Once I made the choice to check my consumption it never occurred to me to go back.

I am now in a new phase of checking labels and ingredients. This time my choice is not for religious reasons but for health reasons. I have chosen to follow a program which will help me learn to eat better, to get into shape by exercising and losing weight and then to maintain a healthier body.

How come this choice is so much more difficult for me? Why can’t that easy decisiveness I experienced at age thirteen be present for me now? Clearly the desire to be there for my children is even more compelling then the desire to connect to my people’s history. Yet somehow the lure of eating now still has greater pull than the possibility of losing out on time with my kids in the future. It is a constant struggle.

Fortunately this week I seem to be winning the struggle to be a mindful eater and I trust, though it may continue to be difficult, I will be able to report the same in the weeks to come.