In July, I shared my thoughts and experiences on the subject at a talk I presented on my real food reasoning sessions at a benefit event for directAbundance.com's education and community development work in Jamaica. Here's an excerpt...
The result is that we cut ourselves off from knowing the source of our nourishment, the source of life. We spend a lot of money to buy food, yet so many of us have no idea what we are ingesting, how it was grown or prepared or where in the world it comes from.
This ignorance and disconnect leads to improper nutrition, all the suffering from the chronic diseases we are being diagnosed with (I know. It happened to me!) and, of course, premature death.
Accessing clear and bias-free information about what we can eat to nourish and maintain these wonderful bodies we've been gifted with, is an important and crucial first step to living a life of wellness and becoming more healthy, more sane and more whole.
In the words of the great Bob Marley's Redemption Song:
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Food literacy is really about breaking free from that faulty consumer mindset that says the answer to my health problems lies outside of myself, in a prescription drug or a medical procedure, or some product we humans have made.
Being food literate means I understand some very important life- and health-changing truths: that processed, packaged foods and fast foods harm and do not nourish me. And that prescription drugs and surgery are good in an emergency situation to deal with the symptoms of disease, but they can never address the root cause or provide true healing.
My journey to more vibrant health in body, mind and spirit started when I stopped giving my power over to the corporate industrial medical complex and realized I have the power to improve my health -- simply by learning about and consuming the real/whole foods & plant-based nutrition our bodies were designed to thrive on.
Read: Top 5 reasons we need food literacy now!