07/11/2025
Do you gobble your food?
Do you read, scroll, or watch something while you eat?
Do you sit down with your family, partner, or friends and have great conversation—sharing the little yay!s and oof, that’s hards of your day?
Well, I do all those things.
I know they say that paying attention to your food as you eat—chewing slowly, savoring the textures and aromas, appreciating the colors, breathing, not distracting yourself with screens or conversation—does all kinds of good things for your digestion. It activates the parasympathetic “rest and digest” system. Enhances nutrient absorption. Helps you register satiation. Supports a healthy gut biome.
All the stuff we know we need.
And still, after the first bite, I often barely taste it.
The Tangle of Eating
Eating is such a complicated, loaded part of life for me, and probably for most people. What to eat and what not to eat? How much to eat? When to eat, or not eat? What to eat together, and what to never eat together? Organic? Local? Home grown? Travel miles? Fair trade? Juicing, fasting, raw, oh my!
I once spent 45 minutes standing in front of the wall of chocolate bars at my local co-op, considering all the options, reconsidering, reading labels. Tears streamed down my face and I finally left, paralyzed, heartbroken, and emptyhanded.
I’ve made my peace with the organic/conventional dichotomy, the environmental and justice “options”, the virtue signaling, the foodie in me. And shopping, cooking, eating have become a little less stressful.
But lately, something new has come into my awareness...
Continue reading on my Substack: https://thresholdwitch.substack.com/p/how-to-eat-like-the-earth-is-alive