Everyone is eating and drinking, and a lot of people are writing and talking about healthy food, diets, superfoods, and fasting. The choice of diets is endless these days; Some go Vegetarian, Vegan, Ketogenic, Paleo, Flexitarian, Mediterranean, High/Low Fat, Raw Food, and so on. Navigating through these various diets and trying to find the best one for you can be overwhelming.

Let us remember: Our ancestors – 100 years ago – didn´t have the possibility to choose, they ate what they had in their gardens, on their farms, what they found in nature. And sometimes they went to bed hungry. What I know is – they ate real and whole food! A few days ago, I listened to the Pioneers of Change Summit from Austria. This sentence from Vandana Shiva inspired me to think about the political dimension of food, “Democratic alternatives grow where people regain control over their food.” There are a lot of aspects of food we can focus on!

In the meantime, I have come to the point that in my daily life I balance the following three things:

• Giving thanks for my food, looking at my plate and pausing, considering who might have planted and harvested this, and how.

• Conscious eating means, for example, eating without cell phones on the table, sitting down in peace, chewing thoroughly.
• Carefully and consciously chosen foods (nourishment).

I suspect that our ancestors have passed something on to us, which is worth remembering once more.

By Margarete Sprenger, Germany