Going into my garden these last three mornings, I have been a-maize-d at the buzz of bees up in the tops of my Cherokee corn. Corn relies on wind, not insects, for pollination. But that doesn’t stop the industrious honeybees from seeking out the male inflorescences in my corn patch. You see, bees don’t live on nectar alone. They also collect considerable amounts of pollen to serve as a food supply stored in their hives.
It was fun to observe the bees at their important work really close up. This was no problem, as they were way too busy to worry about me standing there watching them and taking a few pictures. They seemed particularly excited at having stumbled upon such a bonanza of pollen in their neighborhood and were collecting it with great enthusiasm, if the loud hum from just a handful of bees is anything to go by. The pollen gets formed into little clumps that the bees carry back to the hive with them – quite a feat, if you ask me! If a bee were as big as a human, the clumps of pollen would be at least the size of a football, and carried in a similar manner to how a football player runs along with the ball. But instead of a bladder filled with air, these bees are carrying a solid mass of nutrients.
As I had never considered that bees would go beyond the attractive nectar-bearing plants in search of sufficient pollen, seeing them go gaga over my corn made me think about all the recent news on Colony Collapse Disorder, the name given to the strange die-off of honeybee colonies happening in many places. Given that the majority of corn grown in the world today is genetically modified, and that evidently bees consume corn pollen, it doesn’t take a big leap to wonder if GMO crops are a factor in the perilous plight of the honey bee.
This is something that needs to be very seriously and honestly looked into, as bees play a crucial role in pollinating many of our food crops as well as many ecologically important tree and herb species. It also raises the question whether it will be possible to keep harvesting bee products for human consumption that are not contaminated with GMO materials. Bee products such as Raw Honey, Bee Pollen, Propolis, and Royal Jelly are of such perfect nutritional composition that their absence from our repertoire of medicines and healing foods would be a great loss to human health and wellness, provided we could still even grow enough regular food without our heroic little helpers from the insect world. And honey is the archetype of all that’s sweet in life – if it were to disappear from the world, it would take a good part of our souls with it.
Bees have given us humans such great gifts for such a long time, it’s time for us to give them some appreciation in return. We can do that by casting our dollar votes in favor of clean foods that are grown without synthetic chemicals and GMOs, which will clear our own as well as the bees’ living and working environment of the hazardous, toxic substances that threaten their – and our – existence. As soon as enough people unwaveringly refuse to swallow the poisons, it will no longer be profitable to produce them, and so they will be dropped and the real healing can begin.
Currently we are bombarded every day with news about eating disorders, obesity epdemics, contaminated food supplies, and other indications that all is not well with how we relate to food and eating, especially in the United States. At the same time, we have had for decades an army of “experts” equally bombarding us with their prescriptions for specific diets, exercise regimes, supplement pills, one-size-fits-all food regulations, etc. Can you see the irony in this picture?
Problem: much of the available advice is rife with contradiction, controversy, and conflict of interest. How do you make sense of this overload of confusion being poured out? How do you choose from the myriad of diet and food access options to arrive at a nutritional pattern that will sustain the unique human being that you are at your ideal body weight and optimal wellness?
In order to help you successfully find your way through the nutritional quagmire, I have drawn up a very simple set of blueprints. No matter what your background, genetic makeup, or personal preferences, you can use this as a guideline for discovering what kind of eating habits are the most beneficial to YOU. Somewhere deep down, your body KNOWS exactly what’s good for it, and what’s not. Unfortunately, access to this knowing has been socialized and conditioned right out of most people. However, with a very small amount of dedicated effort every day, it is possible to reconnect to this amazing resource inside of you.
I’m going to start by outlining a basic boundary within which you can safely experiment to your heart’s content. It is a very short list of hazardous things to avoid when food shopping, much shorter than the typical avoidance list out there with most diets. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be easy, because these few items on the list have become extremely common ingredients in most of the processed foodstuffs you can buy today. If you’re new to this, take it easy, practice one point at a time until you feel comfortable enough with it to move on to the next one.
Avoid all GM (genetically modified) crops. In practice this means anything that contains corn, soy, canola, cottonseed, sugar beets, or a substance derived from any of these, UNLESS specified as “certified organic” or “guaranteed GMO free”. Beware of “vegetable oil”, vegetable protein”, “vegetable broth” – usually telltale signs of soy, and “sugar” without any further qualifications is now likely to be from GM sugar beets.
Avoid monosodium glutamate, the popular “flavor enhancer”. Watch out, due to the bad rap this additive has been getting, it often hides behind names such as “nutritional yeast”, “Torula yeast”, and “hydrolyzed vegetable protein”.
Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup. It’s what sweetens many things nowadays, from sodas to ketchup.
Avoid all artificial sweeteners.
By now it will be clear that this part of the exercise requires a good bit of label reading at shopping time, especially in the beginning. The good news is, you can skip that part of the label you may have been trained to read in the past. That’s right. Skip the calorie count. Skip the carbs, protein, and RDA counts. Go straight to the list of ingredients. If you see anything there that was mentioned above, or anything you don’t know how to pronounce, put it back on the shelf.
Another great food assessment technique is this: while you’re turning the item over in your hand, imagine taking a trip with it in a time capsule to go and visit your great-grandmother 100 years ago. Does she recognize the thing you have in your hand as food? If yes, you’re good, if no, put it back and try something else.
Now that the hard part is out of the way, let’s have a look at the really fun part. As you go through your day, whenever you’re hungry, eat whatever you have in the house that you feel like eating. But only if you find you really are hungry. That means that whenever you feel the urge to eat, first check yourself to see why you feel the urge to eat. If it is because of boredom, nervousness, sadness, or any other reason that is not tummy-rumbling hunger, don’t eat yet, go do something active: take a walk, start decluttering a room in your house, call or write a relative or friend and express your appreciation for that person, do a business task you’ve been putting off doing…anything that will keep you actively occupied for a little while.
Keep going until you feel real hunger in your body. Then prepare and eat whatever you fancy. Eat slowly and savor every bite. Take your time to really enjoy your meal, without anything else to distract you. When you start feeling full, stop. Sit back for a little yet to let the food settle in your stomach. From here on, it’s basically “rinse and repeat”, throughout the day, throughout the week. If you find that an urge to eat without being hungry more often than not coincides with a certain behavior, it may be sending you an important message as to whether or not that behavior is a good fit with your unique, authentic life path.
After the first few weeks of doing this, you will have opened up a vital line of communication with that part of your body that knows best what is good for it. Your body will have started telling you its secrets because you are bothering to listen to it. No matter what kind of eating habit ultimately emerges from this process, whether you become a vegetarian or vegan, or a carnivore, whether you end up eating one big meal a day or frequent small meals throughout, or the middle-of-the road 3 square meals, it will be the eating habit that is right for you. And since the emphasis is on awareness and acceptance of what is rather than forcing changes according to some contrived external ideal, it is very likely to become an enjoyable and empowering journey towards radiant health and happiness.
