I just ate a slice of wonderful Finnish cabbage pie I baked modifying my mum’s recipe ever so slightly towards my Italian culinary preferences. A bit of parmesan won’t hurt any dish. Or maybe a fish dish… oh no, I do put it there as well sometimes!! Flexibility is one of the requirements of good living so I am justified.
Back to the point, I ate a slice, and then I ate another. I ended up eating so much I had to open the button of my trousers and lie on the couch as sitting up was too much. Even if I made the cabbage pie from very healthy elements: white cabbage and onions fried in ghee (does not turn to transfat), baked in spelt flour mixed with ghee and water for dough and flavoured with Himalayan rock salt. I mixed in mashed boiled eggs and grated the parmesan with cabbage, added some pepper. The only non organic item I used was a dollop of dark molasses to give a nice sweet twist to my pie. So, that should be a pretty healthy, only slightly Italian Finnish dish, right? Except that it ruined my good night sleep and in the morning I was grumpy and I certainly couldn’t get the leg behind my head.
Any food can be toxic. Even the healthiest of foods can become toxic if you consume it in a wrong way. Eat too much, too fast, in wrong combination whilst concentrating on something else like media or eating to calm down negative emotions. Stress, both physical and emotional brings digestive power down. There are so many factors that can go wrong with a superfood bomb green smoothie.
Inversely, even the food that is not the healthiest of all can yield nutritional benefits if it is consumed in a correct way. Sitting down, eating slowly, chewing properly concentrating only on eating, not washing food down with drinks, eating seasonal food, emphasizing the right balance of meals is the way to go. These rules will allow you to enjoy foods that are not exactly on your preference list for absolute health.
You can’t always be in control of what is on your plate. Knowing how to eat it makes a big difference though. And, even if you binge on cabbage pie and feel ill and lose your sleep, there is still something to do. That’s a topic for another blog entry. In the mean time, call for a health consultation for information.
Anu Paavola