Playing with food
Some time in human history, a loaf of bread was fairly standard and cost a penny or two. It was made of non-hybrid wheat and other similar grains. It was part of a good, healthy meal of non-hormoneenhanced chicken or beef stew and veges untainted by chemical sprays.
In supermarkets a huge variety of items seems to promise to solve all our health problems. This loaded mix of complex marketing is a landmine for people with serious immunity and allergy issues. There is no best product in the context of such commercial liberty because genetically (therefore metabolically) we are all unique.
The huge yield hybridised approach to food crop production has not contributed to human metabolic health. A high yield of what? Nutritional values measured in calories (and the bank account of the manufacturers). A calorie is the energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water through 1 degree Celsius.
Obviously we need energy production in our bodies to be alive.
Calorific measurement has become misused scientific/medical paradigm and has become a kind of social fulcrum — a contract between food science and a world obsessed with speed, winning (wars and sports), production and so-called high energy activity.
Modern foods contribute to unnatural ( socially misplaced) adrenaline cycling, inflammatory conditions and most of the chronic diseases which have exploded statistics off the planet.
A truly balanced diet should generate an appropriately controlled cycling of energy pathways. Calorie counting is only part of the health picture. It is very important but needs to be understood within the context of the total synergy of food, digestion and overall wellbeing.
I would like to present everyone in Whanga¯rei who grows their own vegetables a certificate in socio-biology but I cannot afford it. Fat chance of me ever buying a loaf of bread for $10.50.
Anthony Warren
Whanga¯rei