The Path to Wellbeing
Begins with Food

Brwyn Griffin Outreach/Education Manager, The Food Co-op

The theme for this year’s Wellness Directory is “The Heart of Wellbeing.” The first concepts that came to mind when applying this theme to The Food Co-op were many and varied, yet oft-mentioned: The Food Co-op is a community center and in many ways is literally the heart of wellbeing in Port Townsend.

This community-owned natural foods store is often a place associated with the wellbeing arrived at by right livelihood – eating foods grown without dangerous pesticides, without genetic modification, sourced locally, sown and cultivated by our neighbors whose faces and stories we know or can discover.

The heart of wellbeing could be associated with sustainable growing practices: living in harmony with our environment, without the use of deadly pesticides and herbicides, reducing packaging, applying the principles of Fair Trade and recognizing the true cost of food. I have written about the above concepts often and wanted to find a deeper connection to this theme related to The Food Co-op.

The word “heart” is often associated with the center, the core, love. Without the heart, we have no lifeblood, no love, no animation. To get to the "heart of the matter" requires a path. And, just as life can be seen from many perspectives, so are there many paths to the heart. The heart can be considered the seat of wellbeing. When we are well, we can be filled with lifeblood, love and the energy of animation – all assets when rounding the corner to a more fulfilled spiritual life. When you are filled with love and energy, more psychic space is freed up for growing our spiritual awareness.

When one is feeling ill, it is difficult to be filled with joy. Chronic headaches make it challenging to be filled with light and love. Living with chronic pain of any kind can make you cranky. Of course we all know or have read about exceptions to this generality – that food is the path to wellbeing. A terminally ill patient whose spiritual light infused all those around them with hope and courage; the yogi whose path towards rainbow body involved years of sustaining his or her physical body with little or no food. But generally, it is now understood (even scientifically!) that healthy food is a critical first step to overall health and wellbeing. There is an old Chinese proverb that states: He who takes medicine and neglects diet wastes the skill of his doctors.

I want to speak about how the path to spiritual wellbeing can begin with food. Conscious living begins with mindfulness. This applies to all aspects of being, but applied to food, it can be especially significant. In today’s Western culture, food is generally not produced or consumed mindfully. Let’s begin with the way conventional food is grown: mono-crops that allow for no consciousness of the needs of the myriad species of the terrain, even without the assault of the vast amounts of pesticides and herbicides sprayed on them, or of the soil in which crops are grown. We have layers of unconsciousness related to the production, manufacturing, preparation and consumption of food in our modern lives. Packaging of food alone can be connected to such lack of consciousness, leading to the damage of our basic source of sustenance, the Earth. Pseudo-food for profit is sustaining large corporations, not the health of our citizens. How many families still sit down together for meals? But let’s not go there in this article.

Let’s talk about how feeling good can be a simple path to wellbeing and how feeling good can be achieved (often) by applying consciousness to our pattern of eating. Meryl Streep has been quoted as saying, "It’s bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children’s health than the pediatrician." And as food activist Michael Pollan recommends, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Keep it simple.

What exactly is food? In our culture, much of what passes for food is actually created in a laboratory and now factory-made foods with chemical additives are a significant part of our diet. Artificial colors are chemical compounds made from coal-tar derivatives to enhance the color of processed foods. Artificial sweeteners such as Acesulfame-K, Aspartame, Equal®, NutraSweet®, Saccharin, Sweet’n Low®, Sucralose, Splenda® & Sorbitol are highly-processed, chemically-derived, zero-calorie sweeteners found in diet foods and diet products to reduce calories per serving. Artificial flavorings are cheap chemical mixtures that mimic natural flavors. I think you get the idea. When considered from an educated and conscious perspective, the list of ingredients on a conventional frozen entrée or boxed "skillet dinner" can be as far from our basic definition of food as our vast human imagination can allow.

In the natural foods classes I teach at The Food Co-op (free), students often come to my classes after a visit to their doctor, where they received a diagnosis of some form of illness. Poor food choices or lack of awareness of what is considered healthy food is often the origination of illness and many illnesses that cause a lack of wellbeing are directly connected to eating a diet of fast food, overly processed packaged convenience foods and low consumption of whole, fresh foods. As a culture, we have moved away from the act of preparing our own food from fresh sources and are now paying the consequences.

A long-time Co-op owner recently shared with me that he was seeing a health practitioner in Sequim that had almost reversed his diabetes simply by changing his diet. He explained to me how shocked he had been that this illness that had caused him suffering for so many years was simply a symptom of his diet. By eating more plant-based foods, he discovered, he was enjoying better health!

So how does this relate to wellbeing? Pretty obvious. If you are suffering from a low functioning immune system, there are many times you will feel ill. When feeling ill, it is difficult to apply yourself to life—when we feel sick, it almost feels as though life is happening to us.

Alison Rose Levy writes in her article "An Ancient Cure for Modern Life" (Yoga Journal, Jan/Feb 2002), "In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else." Could that "anything else" she refers to be wellbeing? I know plenty of people who are so obsessed with food, food issues, and their approach to life is so confrontational that spiritual wellbeing is far from a reality of their lives. Self- righteousness and soapbox lecturing can be a chronic and unpleasant side-effect of advocating for sustainable living and food wisdom. I loved the movie Bill Cunningham, New York for one simple reason: Even though this fashion photographer who loved his subjects had lived a rigidly frugal lifestyle, when asked how he managed to reconcile his own personal beliefs about waste with his lifelong career covering outrageous fashion icons and the social elite, he said, "Well I don’t care what other people do!"

The Heart of Wellbeing? Good food, exercise, clear thoughts, and love. As Larry Dossey, author of Reinventing Medicine says, "The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around....Throughout history, ‘tender loving care’ has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing."

Tender loving care for your body. Our path to wellbeing begins with food.