Food is more than fuel

We’ve all heard it. Just think of food as fuel. Fuel for performance, fuel for body composition, fuel for energy.

But food isn’t just fuel. Food is a part of our culture and our environment. It is a purposeful part of our celebrations and mourning and religious events. We have turkey at Thanksgiving and ham at Christmas. There is a laundry list of important foods at a Seder. Even lack of food or fasting has an important role in observing Ramadan. Looking at food as fuel ignores all of these realities.

There also is a risk at externalizing food. If we are always turning food into numbers we are moving further away from the nature of food itself. We step away from our internalized cues on hunger. We step away from the emotions that might come up around food. We step away from our biological history. In short duration and for many people this doesn’t present a problem. But in others it can.

We need to stop looking at things in isolation and understand the risks and downsides in seemingly innocuous practices. We must be aware that everything is interconnected and that acting on one thing affects everything.

Food is fuel. And it’s so much more. If you want to get a better grasp on how food is affecting your life you can’t just look at it in isolation. Embrace all that food is and can be and make regulating food a part of your life. Not your whole life.